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Forum Index : Guest Book : VAWT -?
| Author | Message | ||||
| Guests Guest  Joined: 01/10/2003 Location: Posts: 52 |
Hi Glenn, that vawt-you are using a timing belt drive ---are these the "more" efficient way of driving ,apart from the direct drive ? I want to experiment with my drive system to get more rpm's and have heard that the timing belt is the way to go . Even though there are losses. Is your's a "car part" or did you machine a specific set of cogs ? The vawt--- I would like to build a big one -say ,around 2 to 3 metres tall and around 1 metre diameter. What do you think, how big would the blades have to be ,width wise, and have you any ideas of the profile . Could they be of some archtectual building skirting or something readily available from the house used materials yard ? ( I was in an outback air terminal ,Exmouth WA, and they had vertical sun screens in an aerofoil type section ,that's where I got the idea. Anyhow, hope you are getting along OK and keep us posted Bruce |
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| Guests Guest Joined: 01/10/2003 Location: Posts: 52 |
Hi Bruce Yeah I like belt drives, quiet and reliable. I cut the cogs on the laser at work, figuring the tooth spacing was a pain. The VAWT was just thrown together without any real thought. If I were you I would search the net for other VAWT designs, there are some pretty good idea's poping up. Glenn |
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| Guests Guest Joined: 01/10/2003 Location: Posts: 52 |
Hi, your site looks really nice. I really enjoyed the very good pictures and all the descriptions. Would you like to publish more pictures of that clever tower? I think that there is a lot of work people could do developing VAWTs. I think that because of the simplicity in the longer run they wíll outperform HAWTs... One of the nice things is Ed Lenz's 'Lenz turbine'. www.WindstuffNow.com Anyone out there tried to build one? - Hannu |
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| RossW Guru  Joined: 25/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 495 |
Bruce, I built a generator for my home, using a 3-phase, 1500 RPM, 15KVA machine (de-rated for double-delta wired to give me about 10KVA single phase). Because I had more vertical room than horizontal, I made up a nice, solid frame to mount the generator BELOW the 4-cylinder auto engine. I wanted to run the engine at a nominal 1900 RPM or thereabouts - fast enough to get into the power band, slow enough to not run it too hard, and faster than the machine (yes, I could have used a 3000 RPM machine and geared up, but that'd work against me) - by using a reduction ratio 19:15, it also meant that variation in engine speed produced a smaller variation in output frequency (Hz). I used a quite wide timing belt (about 80mm I think) and some large pulleys from a performance engine specialist. The main advantage with a timing belt over a V-belt or multigroove is that you don't have to have it so tight to transfer lots of power. They are however moderately noisy - and more so if you use pulleys with shoulders. The common trick to reduce this noise, is to drill holes through the bottom of the groves to allow the (compressing) air to escape easily. Given my time again, I think I'd probably mount the engine and the alternator in-line with a decent axial shaft coupler, although mounted as I have it, it is a nice, neat unit. RossW |
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| JimmyR Newbie  Joined: 26/03/2006 Location: CanadaPosts: 2 |
I agree with Hannu that Vertical seems to be the way to go. I have a 500 W generator and not much room to go up into the wind as I live in a city. Have any of you seen plans for a small vertical prop. I will post a few pictures of the verticles I've seen in the area, one built by G.E. to power a light standard and a new idea from Greenfield that is 3 small vertical airplane wings tied together at 120 degrees. Also has anyone there tried to tie in Solar panels to thier inverter and found them to be worth the money as I have read that for the price the efficiency is still not there. Thanks, and great site. And Cool house Ross. Where in Australia are you? Jim |
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Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1395 |
Hiya Jim, Well I've got 3 seperate solar array's on my farm and they provide all the power I need in the summer months. On the house I have 14 Kaneka thin film solar panels setup as a stand alone system and they provide all our household needs, with the other 2 array's I have in my shed one is 24 volts powered by 8- 65 watt panels and the other is a 16 volt nicad array powered by a single 80 watt panel.I'm currently making up a F&P wind genny to backup the solar in the winter months for the house and I'll be setting up a seperate batterybank for the wind genny. So your question about solar is answered I reckon Cheers Bryan |
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| JimmyR Newbie Joined: 26/03/2006 Location: CanadaPosts: 2 |
Hey Bryan, thanks for the reply. Can you tell me more about the arrays, how much and I suppose you get lots of sun down there. Also what is your typical yearly load down there. Do you have power coming to the farm and are you tied into the grid or run things separatly from your inverter and battery bank? How many watts do you think you'll get from the F&P? I looked at the www.windstuffnow.com website and I liked his last project that puts out about 52W in a 12 mph wind. Where abouts are you in Australia, I have some cousins in Townsville. Thanks, Jim
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| RossW Guru Joined: 25/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 495 |
I have a very small amount of PV - four 80W BP panels. They're not currently tracking, but I hope to get around do doing that soometime soon. At the moment, I'm getting between 1500-2000 watt-hours per day out of them, which isn't really much given my current daily demand is a little over 14000 watt-hours. I'm planning to add more PV next year. It's great in summer, but about as much use as an ashtray on a motorcycle come winter months. My Windgen is a 1000W unit but it's only been up a month or so, so I can't really estimate how much it contributes in real terms. Certainly watt-for-dollar, the windgen is better, but so far its contributed very few watt-hours to the operation. (I run a 48V system with 5KW (continuous, at 40 deg C, 10KW peak) inverter and a home-brew propane-fired 4-cylinder genset). There is a locally (well, Adelaide) developed PV system called "SolarSphere" I think, which is a hemispherical arrangement of tripple-junction PV cells with fresnel lenses that magnify the sun 500 times, claimed to produce 330 watts for a 1.2m dia array and cost something like AUD$1600 - which is damn cheap - even cheaper when you consider it already has the MPPT inverter in it, and sun-tracking. Wish I could reduce the power consumption, but with over a dozen computers running all the time, all the meterological, microwave, lightning-tracking and other systems, modern family who want the wide-screen TV, dishwasher, clothes dryer etc, its only going to get worse, not better!
I live in Albury, an inland city on the NSW/Victoria border. I
actually live on the northern outskirts of the city in the top of a
hill that puts me about 175 metres above town. Cheers, |
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| Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1395 |
Hiya Jimmy, I'm not tied to the grid as the cost was way too high, well over $100,000 just for about 2 k's worth and I was told I had to buy the stobie poles on a public road to reach my place.( that's what privitising utility comanies do for the public rip you off and cut your power when you need it most). So the solar array on the house is rated at 3-Kwatts a day and for most of the year I don't have to run the backup genny and my 80 amp charger. But in the winter months when the sun doesn't really shine for weeks on end I need to topup for a few hours with the charger and genset. For the shed on the 24 volt array I've got 2-12 volt 200amp/hour deep cycle batteries coupled up with a 1700 watt inverter. The nicad array just powers 8- 12 volt cfcl's and 2 30 watt twin fluro's aswell as a few high brightness led's for directional lighting on my machines. When I need power for my lathes or mills I just use my 15 kva genset that run's on autogas. As far as the F&P power wise I won't know until I get it up and flying but I do get a strong wind most the time here and my place is up in the Adelaide hills near Kanmantoo in South Australia. Well the house array was $25,000 but we got about $8,000 in rebates off the govt and the shed solar was originally on the house, the 80 watt panel I got a few years ago when I lived in northern WA.
cheers Bryan |
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