Green 1kw wind turbine in Northumberland

[Alan]

On my 1 K.W. hub the reverse side of the blade assembly was curved. I made up tapered washers that matched the curve before fitting lock nuts to the blade holding bolts. Not sure from your picture, the back of your hub looks quite flat, maybe it’s a latter hub and the casting was modified. If any of the curved  ones have lock nuts fitted without a tapered washer this would load one side of the casting where the lock nut touches and could assist the possibility of the hub fracturing.

Regards

Alan

[Adam]

Hi alan, my first 1kw had standard blades, this hub was curved on the rear and appeared a little stronger, this one met it's ill fate when one of the guy ropes snapped totally destroying the turbine, blades and mast (basicly everything).

[Adam]

Well, ive come to the conclusion that i need a standby generator, i could make one to charge the batterys with the old turbine generator?

[frotter]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Kubota-2600-Twin-Cylinder-Diesel-Engine_W0QQitemZ230239541662QQihZ013QQcategoryZ121876QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Go on- you know you want to.... 

[martin]

"As new"...........c'mon - the vendor has got to be a member of the government - that's worthy of Blears or the dreadful Caroline Flint...........

[dhaslam]

Come on,  how could you call someone who looks like that dreadful?

http://www.patricktaylor.com/127

[Adam]

I'm tempted, Come's with belt pulley too

[KenB]

Adam,

The Kubota is a good engine. Why compromise with the 1kW wind generator?  Sell the wind gen and buy something better.

You can pick up a nice 3kW or 5kW ST alternator from Pete at Listerclones, and then have a genny that can actually boil a kettle and produce mains directly.



Ken

[Adam]

Yes i see your point ken.
The reason i was going for the 1kw wind gen is because i allready have one and i was hoping to pick up a 2nd hand little lister/petter or simlar for under £50, the wind gen is damaged and probably not worth very much , but it will make power.

Although the st generators are good value for money they are still around £150-200, then a engine powerfull enough to drive it at 1500 rpm would be the same again.

It's rare that the mains is off for more than 1 day, and i currently have lights, tv, central heating pump and a travel kettle connected to the inverter so all i need is a small diesel generator for under £100 to run the few hours a year the mains fails and the wind does'nt blow.

[billi]

Hello adam

it all depends how you want to use the generator.......

if you use it for charging your battery bank than you are limited anyhow to a small version

 you said you have 4  110 ah batteries   ......so these shouldnot be charged with much more then 500-700 watt   or about 11 A  at 48 volt

i donot know how good they are but the chinese changfa engines are sold for about 170 pounds  for a 2kw diesel engine on ebay.......

or you have a bigger generator and supply direct ac 220 volt to the house , but waste of fuel i think.....

perhaps increasing the battery still makes sense and no need for a generator then 

regards billi

[Adam]

Hi billi
Ive been watching those new "chinese diesels" and they seem good value for money, we have one of those silent type diesel gennys on the farm which is used for power cuts, sheep shearing ect and it's fine, starts well even in the cold and runs sweet, only done 50hours though, changed the oil at 30hrs and there was some metallic filing's in the filter i just hope they were off it's manufacture .

As for charging, im not too worried about overcharging the batteries as the controller will divert the extra power into the bathroom heater, as it does with the turbine The power generated should be controlled by the throttle of the engine so there is no need to waste any power.

I've given the extra battery capacity some thought, to get enough capacity i would need another 8 110ah batteries and would cost at least £480, which is ok as a one off payment, but knowing i will have to shell out at least the same again in another 5-7 years

If i cant make this back-up generator happen for under £100 i may go down the extra battery capacity road

Thanks for the advice (keep it coming )

adam


 

[billi]

adam

i understand the dump load idea in relation to full batteries , but still pushing too much amperes into a battery during charging (depending on size) is not good....

100 pounds budget to built a generator   

tight budget i think

but ....

regards billi

[Adam]

Ahh i see were you are coming from billi did not know that too many amps is bad for batteries , however my Morningstar controll er start's cutting in the dump at 8-10 amps when the batteries are at 40% (Try not to take batteries below 60%).

The Morningstar seems a clever piece of kit, say the turbine is producing 20amps it can send 8 to the battery and 12 to the dump and as the batteries get charged, more power is sent to the dump (you probably allredy know this ) some of the cheaper controller's just seem to switch the dump on or off .

Yes i'm probably alittle optimistic with the £100 budget but if i could get a second hand little lister/petter or similar for around £50 i wont be too far away

I have two old vibrating pedestrian rollers with petters on but the rollers work fine and i dont have the hart to break one

Thanks ad

[northern installer]

Adam,why not ebay one of the rollers to raise funds for a decent engine?'traffic signal'lister might be good?quite a few older traffic signal generator trailers are coming on the market as the hire firms are switching to led units.But whatever, if its part of your power supply,it really needs to be more on the reliable side of b*ggered
Batteries,after costing the set of batteries you will see the need to make sure they are charged correctly,regularly maintained,not over discharged etc.If you search on here theres plenty of info,and properly applied it will make a big differance to the service life;good luck with your project

[Adam]

Believe me ive thought about selling one for over a year

I do use them as part of my business and could manage with one, i bought them as a job lot complete with purpose built trailer for a mere £400, they seem to have seen little work and have been owned and maintained by a large rail company (jarvis), bieng handle start they had to be decommisioned due to health and safety grounds, but if i sell one i fear that the other will brake down and cost more to repair or replace

As for a traffic signal lister, they seem just the job i could even use the genny it comes with (allthough 110v)

Thinking out loud here

If i connected a 240v-110v transformer (site type) to the 110v output of this genny, would this give me around 50v ac?

If i connected the transformer the other way round, eg 110v genny to 110v transformer would i get 240v ac?