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If you haven't checked this out, you should.
Building the Alt."Long Version" Magnetic rotor VAWT stator Vertical wind alternator - YouTube
Here is the unit running:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV7w..._order&list=UL
In a nutshell, it is a VAWT not unlike other VAWTS in many ways, but very interestingly different in some, namely:
1. The VAWT employs a transmission to transfer torque to speed as the wind permits.
2. The VAWT employs a DC generator, also spun on the prime mover to induce a DC current into the AC permanent magnet alternator in a way I've never seen before.
3. The VAWT itself, the blades are quite large, about 5' tall, but more interestingly he has an inner set of blades, that during high winds only, counter the runaway speed effect and thus render it with no necessity for high speed cut out.
4. The VAWT employs a voltage multiplier in a sense.
At first, I didn't get it... I have played with HAWTS, ordered one in, I understand permanent magnet alternators, understand the limitations of VAWTS, and generally most suffer from what appears, anyway, to be all of the things this gentleman has conquered.
Not to mention he made the thing entirely from recycled materials.
I had some conversations with Mr. Delanco, because I couldn't understand the DC effect, so he explained it further, to me, privately.
Here is some of our discussion, (and I will try to start with the most interesting part, first) - verbatim:
Kyle
The 1st coil output is connected to the field of the generator and the armature of the generator is connected to the start of the 2nd coil. Both the alternator and the generator energize each other when they start to turn. This installs a charge into the alternator "as a
primer charge ignites the gun powder in a bullet" The charge is a small one about 10 volts at the start of the 2nd coil. then the 2nd coil acts as a voltage multiplier and energizes the 3rd coil at 20 volts with 450 watts, each coil is an increase of 150 watts x 16 coils. this is a no load measure before the rectifiers, there are 4 full bridge rectifier arrays. If you use 1 diode you lose 1/2 a volt if you use 2,3,or 4 diodes you still only lose 1/2 a volt. The more you use the less strain on each diode and the higher you can push the amps.
Now the generator output is rectified to DC before it enters the alternator that is already generating an output of its own in AC. So there is a mix of ac-dc entering the alternator this prevents the feed back effect in the alternator as each coil charges to the next coil, this AC current sucks in the DC like a siphon effect and the voltage is increased by the stepping charge from the alternator duty cycle. This can be seen on the scope as a straight line with clipping above and below. If you were to take a test reading between each coil you will see the straight dc voltage line rise from coil to coil but with each rise you will also see the clipping increase also. Now after rectification I pulse the charge into the batteries from the charge controllers. Now from the batteries to the inverters I enter a boost cap bank each cap is 2500f at 2.5 volts at 8000 joules, there are 6 banks with 6caps in each bank. This gives the inverters a stable current input to handle multiple start-up loads.
You should be able to understand how this works now.
That was his second message to me, in response to my lack of understanding of how the DC generator played into the power production equation.
His first response to me (sorry for the somewhat repetitive aspect here, but I'll stick to quoting him exactly...)
I started this project to supplement my electric usage because of high electric bills and continued price increases by the suppliers. I started with solar and found that the technology just was not invented yet, the panels only worked well or as advertized by the manufactures and suppliers on sunny days and to make solar economical or even affordable to the average homeowners without taking out a loan was not going to happen anytime soon. I then looked into prebuilt wind systems and found that all were over priced and not very well constructed to be environmentally friendly with Nature and or people with the noise of the blades, parts falling off and low pressure effects ect. I then decided that if I was to reduce high electric bills I would need to design and build a vawt design windmill and a low speed alternator-generator. That was environmentally friendly.
There are 16 coils, each coil is wound to produce +5 volts with one magnet layer. I added the second set of magnets to improve the strength of the output. The unit starts in a slow breeze and comes up to the 2 mph rotation quickly, at this point the transfer of torque is unrestricted and converted to increase the rotation speed of the alternator. "This can be seen it the up and running video" I hung the trans from the ceiling of the shed, torque and speed is the key. The first coil output is run into a generator from an old truck that is turned by a chain from the windmill drive shaft then run back into the second coil of the alternator this in-turn induces both the generator and the alternator fields and reduces the flux from feed-back. The coils in the alternator are wound with #12 wire with 115 turns in each coil this allowed the output to be strong at low speed. This gave the coils more height and the second set of magnets compensated for that with a higher level of magnetic saturation.
The windmill blades are 5 feet apart this gives the unit an easy start and supplies the torque to start turning the trans. The trans. will convert 1 rotation of the windmill to 14 rotations of the alternator. This is why the windmill unit looks like its turning too slow to produce much of an output, "but don't doubt the power in the wind" The output is high and I have had to deal with some overcharging of the batteries.
The windmill also has an inner set of narrow blades 16" apart that will counteract the force of high winds and slow the units rotation in high winds, this is how I am able to control the 2 to 12 mph speed of the unit. The harder the wind force is the slower the unit will spin. This is for safety to avoid undue centrifugal stress on the unit. The unit has been tested in 80 mph winds with a tree limb falling on it and came out with no damage still spinning. The Polycarbonate blades are very strong and not affected buy the sun. I used these on a job where the young adults were breaking the glass windows, after I replace the windows with the polycarbonate a video camera recorded one of the young adults throwing a brick at the polycarbonate window without damage to the window the brick bounced back and injured the thrower, with that I knew polycarbonate would work for the blades and would be strong, they have a tint to them so the birds can see them also.
The drive shaft of the windmill is 3/4" iron pipe with a SKF-BR4 cone wheel bearing from a trailer axle to handle the torque on the drive shaft . I milled out a 2"x1 1/2" reducer to fit the bearing race and act as an auto oilier housing, the oil is drawn up to the top bearing with the rotation of the drive shaft and flows down inside the 2" drive shaft housing pipe to lubricate the lower bearing then is collected and drawn up again to the top bearing to complete the cycle. there is a 3/8" rod run inside the 3/4" drive shaft to adjust the pitch of the blades with the direction of the tail, the windmill unit is self maintaining.
I got to thinking... you know... a typical alternator in a vehicle does not work if it is not hooked up to a battery.. it has no permanent magnets... you need that incoming current ...
And then I saw this video... while very different... made it click for me:
A couple of sidepoints:
1. The guy is pretty friendly, opened discussion with me quickly, and generously; he has nothing for sale, no pitch, no e-book - he's just a guy making some power
2. Notice the treeline behind the VAWT and how low it really is
3. Notice he hasn't cleaned off his solar panels, not a big indicator that his VAWT lacks power!
4. Notice how he has been collecting a lot of large capacity forklift batteries (and also see his other video of those).
I find this very interesting, I've never seen anything quite like it.
The best VAWT I have seen to date, at that height and size put out less than 1/8th of that power.
Cheers
If you haven't checked this out, you should.
Building the Alt."Long Version" Magnetic rotor VAWT stator Vertical wind alternator - YouTube
Here is the unit running:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV7w..._order&list=UL
In a nutshell, it is a VAWT not unlike other VAWTS in many ways, but very interestingly different in some, namely:
1. The VAWT employs a transmission to transfer torque to speed as the wind permits.
2. The VAWT employs a DC generator, also spun on the prime mover to induce a DC current into the AC permanent magnet alternator in a way I've never seen before.
3. The VAWT itself, the blades are quite large, about 5' tall, but more interestingly he has an inner set of blades, that during high winds only, counter the runaway speed effect and thus render it with no necessity for high speed cut out.
4. The VAWT employs a voltage multiplier in a sense.
At first, I didn't get it... I have played with HAWTS, ordered one in, I understand permanent magnet alternators, understand the limitations of VAWTS, and generally most suffer from what appears, anyway, to be all of the things this gentleman has conquered.
Not to mention he made the thing entirely from recycled materials.
I had some conversations with Mr. Delanco, because I couldn't understand the DC effect, so he explained it further, to me, privately.
Here is some of our discussion, (and I will try to start with the most interesting part, first) - verbatim:
Kyle
The 1st coil output is connected to the field of the generator and the armature of the generator is connected to the start of the 2nd coil. Both the alternator and the generator energize each other when they start to turn. This installs a charge into the alternator "as a
primer charge ignites the gun powder in a bullet" The charge is a small one about 10 volts at the start of the 2nd coil. then the 2nd coil acts as a voltage multiplier and energizes the 3rd coil at 20 volts with 450 watts, each coil is an increase of 150 watts x 16 coils. this is a no load measure before the rectifiers, there are 4 full bridge rectifier arrays. If you use 1 diode you lose 1/2 a volt if you use 2,3,or 4 diodes you still only lose 1/2 a volt. The more you use the less strain on each diode and the higher you can push the amps.
Now the generator output is rectified to DC before it enters the alternator that is already generating an output of its own in AC. So there is a mix of ac-dc entering the alternator this prevents the feed back effect in the alternator as each coil charges to the next coil, this AC current sucks in the DC like a siphon effect and the voltage is increased by the stepping charge from the alternator duty cycle. This can be seen on the scope as a straight line with clipping above and below. If you were to take a test reading between each coil you will see the straight dc voltage line rise from coil to coil but with each rise you will also see the clipping increase also. Now after rectification I pulse the charge into the batteries from the charge controllers. Now from the batteries to the inverters I enter a boost cap bank each cap is 2500f at 2.5 volts at 8000 joules, there are 6 banks with 6caps in each bank. This gives the inverters a stable current input to handle multiple start-up loads.
You should be able to understand how this works now.
That was his second message to me, in response to my lack of understanding of how the DC generator played into the power production equation.
His first response to me (sorry for the somewhat repetitive aspect here, but I'll stick to quoting him exactly...)
I started this project to supplement my electric usage because of high electric bills and continued price increases by the suppliers. I started with solar and found that the technology just was not invented yet, the panels only worked well or as advertized by the manufactures and suppliers on sunny days and to make solar economical or even affordable to the average homeowners without taking out a loan was not going to happen anytime soon. I then looked into prebuilt wind systems and found that all were over priced and not very well constructed to be environmentally friendly with Nature and or people with the noise of the blades, parts falling off and low pressure effects ect. I then decided that if I was to reduce high electric bills I would need to design and build a vawt design windmill and a low speed alternator-generator. That was environmentally friendly.
There are 16 coils, each coil is wound to produce +5 volts with one magnet layer. I added the second set of magnets to improve the strength of the output. The unit starts in a slow breeze and comes up to the 2 mph rotation quickly, at this point the transfer of torque is unrestricted and converted to increase the rotation speed of the alternator. "This can be seen it the up and running video" I hung the trans from the ceiling of the shed, torque and speed is the key. The first coil output is run into a generator from an old truck that is turned by a chain from the windmill drive shaft then run back into the second coil of the alternator this in-turn induces both the generator and the alternator fields and reduces the flux from feed-back. The coils in the alternator are wound with #12 wire with 115 turns in each coil this allowed the output to be strong at low speed. This gave the coils more height and the second set of magnets compensated for that with a higher level of magnetic saturation.
The windmill blades are 5 feet apart this gives the unit an easy start and supplies the torque to start turning the trans. The trans. will convert 1 rotation of the windmill to 14 rotations of the alternator. This is why the windmill unit looks like its turning too slow to produce much of an output, "but don't doubt the power in the wind" The output is high and I have had to deal with some overcharging of the batteries.
The windmill also has an inner set of narrow blades 16" apart that will counteract the force of high winds and slow the units rotation in high winds, this is how I am able to control the 2 to 12 mph speed of the unit. The harder the wind force is the slower the unit will spin. This is for safety to avoid undue centrifugal stress on the unit. The unit has been tested in 80 mph winds with a tree limb falling on it and came out with no damage still spinning. The Polycarbonate blades are very strong and not affected buy the sun. I used these on a job where the young adults were breaking the glass windows, after I replace the windows with the polycarbonate a video camera recorded one of the young adults throwing a brick at the polycarbonate window without damage to the window the brick bounced back and injured the thrower, with that I knew polycarbonate would work for the blades and would be strong, they have a tint to them so the birds can see them also.
The drive shaft of the windmill is 3/4" iron pipe with a SKF-BR4 cone wheel bearing from a trailer axle to handle the torque on the drive shaft . I milled out a 2"x1 1/2" reducer to fit the bearing race and act as an auto oilier housing, the oil is drawn up to the top bearing with the rotation of the drive shaft and flows down inside the 2" drive shaft housing pipe to lubricate the lower bearing then is collected and drawn up again to the top bearing to complete the cycle. there is a 3/8" rod run inside the 3/4" drive shaft to adjust the pitch of the blades with the direction of the tail, the windmill unit is self maintaining.
I got to thinking... you know... a typical alternator in a vehicle does not work if it is not hooked up to a battery.. it has no permanent magnets... you need that incoming current ...
And then I saw this video... while very different... made it click for me:
A couple of sidepoints:
1. The guy is pretty friendly, opened discussion with me quickly, and generously; he has nothing for sale, no pitch, no e-book - he's just a guy making some power
2. Notice the treeline behind the VAWT and how low it really is
3. Notice he hasn't cleaned off his solar panels, not a big indicator that his VAWT lacks power!
4. Notice how he has been collecting a lot of large capacity forklift batteries (and also see his other video of those).
I find this very interesting, I've never seen anything quite like it.
The best VAWT I have seen to date, at that height and size put out less than 1/8th of that power.
Cheers
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