Email and pics from Matt about his own F&P creation.

I have been working on F&P Wind Turbines for about 3-4 years and started of with 10 amps in gail force winds, until recently when i got a massive 40+ Amps @ 14Volts =560watts with two motors on the same shaft.
When i was using a single motor i had it wired in series/parallel with delta output and 1.8M diametre
3 blade rotor, I got 25 amps at 10m/s but was not good in light winds around 5-6m/s and was getting noisy in
high winds due to higher rpm's. Since going to the two motor setup i have tried the two motors in delta to get a potential 60amps but you need a larger rotor to get 600+ watts, and a large rotor wont spin fast enough to get the 60 amps.
I now use star output giving me a total of 40+amps, with a larger 2.2M rotor which works well in light winds giving me 1-2amps at 3m/s, 5A at 4m/s, 10A at 5m/s, 15A at 6m/s, 20A at 8m/s, 28A at 9m/s, 30-35A at 10m/s with a peak of 40+ Amps.
I log the output via a Plasmatronics PL20 reg and a anemometre data logger connected to a laptop. Attached are some Pics of the turbine (rough construction but strong).

Note: Changing the pitch on my blades by just 2-3 degrees makes a lot of difference to the output, and even more so with my smaller 140 watt 1.2M rotor small turbines. I also build Stirling engines for fun.
If you are interested in testing my small turbines which are a rewound car alt with rare earth magnets
and small PVC blades 1.2M Diametre. They put out 10 Amps at 10m/s and up to 15A in very
strong winds, they have very little cogging and start in very low wind speeds, putting out .5-1A at 3-4m/s.
They weigh only 5kg, which would not cost much to transport if you want to test one for a month or so.
I am looking at selling them as a kit and would like your opinion on them.
Finally as you will see in the pics, I mount each motor at each end of the shaft. With your method and mine you could make a 4 motor turbine.

I'm glad you like the pics, lately in melb i have been getting an average wind speed of 3m/s and getting
30-50amp hours/day on average, in the past with one motor i was lucky to get 1 a/h in 3m/s av wind.

I was also concerned about the flex in the magnet rotor when bolting blades to it, but i use a 6mm
aluminium plate cut round with a jigsaw to mount the blade extensions and blades.

The blades don't flex much due the smaller size 850mm/7mm blades with blade extensions, I find using
5mm PVC they tend to flex and go out of shape, reducing power output in higher winds.

I would be more than happy for you to put my photos and details on the web.

My latest venture is to take off the weak ferrite magnets and replace them with 6.6mm rare earth
magnets, equals about 6-8 times the magnetic strength. Westwind also did this with the old 2.5kw turbine and
converted the alt to 5kw with the use of rare earth magnets instead of ferrite.

When making the small modified PMA car alternators, I found that the coils were half the size of the F&P and
only 12 coils per phase wound in series with .8mm wire and i can get over 10 amps at 600rpm, I think this is
due to the 20mm/12mm/6.5mm rare earth magnets, which are far more powerfull than the F&P ferrite or white
magnet rotor with small rare earth magnets. I have done the conversion lifting of the old ferrite
magnets with a gas flame and screwdriver and replacing with 11mm/30mm/6.6mm rare earth magnets.
The problem is that the grey rotor goes out of shape when i try to put it on the stator, this is due to the
extra strong magnetic feild, and i am trying to work out a way of strengthening the magnet rotor to avoid
this poling out problem. I expect a lot more power and maybe less cogging because i mounted the magnets on an angle to avoid cogging.

I will let you know how i go, if it works well i might sell the rotors as a hot up kit for F&P's.
I expect 2-3 times the power output, but am concrerned about the plastic rotor, would like to make one out of
steel.

For the last year or so i have used bosch car alt's, but you need to rewind the stator using smaller wire
more wingings, with 10A @ 10m/s. With the truck alt's, they are 1kw and have a larger stator with the correct amount of windings in heavy gauge wire for use with 12 volt systems, you would need to rewind the stator if you require 24 or 48 volts, as the speed would be too high for a turbine. Larger magnet rotor area also increases power. As i mentioned the new truck alt will put out up to 25-30A @ 10m/s with a 1.5M rotor. In higher winds it could put out up to 40A which is its rating. Go to the wreckers and ask for old ones that don't work, eg: bad reg or brushes etc as you don't need them. I have worked out a cheap easy way of converting the original exciter coil rotor into a permanent mag rotor.

Matt Lyons

matlyons@yahoo.com.au