Wind Blue mods & testing.

old wind
old wind Registered Users Posts: 15
Hi All.

I'm new to the board but I thought I'd share what I've been doing for the last couple months.

I acuiered a Wind Blue 540 PMA plus the factory Wind Blue TLG blades through some trading of RE stuff. I built my own yaw pivot, mount, tail boom and wing. So in terms of preformance it is 100% stock factory.

I also have another Wind Blue 540 alternator but it is and older unit and is fitted with the old style rotor. The older rotor does not have the stainless steel shaft and its NEO magnet is slightly smaller.

I've modifide the stator wiring on this 540. It is what is refurd to as IRP or individuly rectified phases. To do this I seperated the star point conection. Now each phase has 2 wire connection. This means 6 wires down the tower. These 6 wires lead to 3 seperate fullwave bridge rectifires at the ground or in the battery room. A 6 wire trailer cable makes a very nice down to tower cable. I'm using a 14 ga. X 6 cable. It looks like a nice black extension cord.

The DC outputs of the bridges are then perelelled. This lowers the impeadance of the alt. It also eliminates the 15% losses of the star conection. It does however increase the cutin rpm requierment of the alt. However faster blades more then overcome this rpm increase requierment.

The factory TLG blades are very slow blades. I can best describe them as dual snow plows. I use a 3 blade set at the same diameter but with a tsr of 6.5. These are way faster then the stock blades but with the greatly reduce electrical load they start up sooner.

I have 5 simular small wind generator mounted on an out building. They all feed the same 12v battery bank consisting of 4 golf car batteries plus and optional dump load if needed. The test meters are an analog anemometer, one digital battery volt metter and each wind generator has its own and seperate digital amp meter.

This is a great way to compaire each machine to another instanly. I have taken pictures of the wind generators and also the data gathering meters. Hopfully in a few days I'll figure out how to load the pictures here for now here is yesterday wind storm data.

18 MPH. Wind Blue 4 amps. Moded Wind Blue + my blades 7 amps.

20 MPH. Wind Blue 5.62 amps. Moded Wind Blue + my blades 9.48 amps.

22 MPH. Wind Blue 6.45 amps. Moded Wind Blue + my blades 10.15 amps.

23 MPH. Wind Blue 6.95 amps. Moded Wind Blue + my blades 10.92 amps.

32 MPH. Wind Blue 9.22 amps. Moded Wind Blue + my blades 13.85 amps.

My anemometer may be off a littel but the power increase is real and the wind generators were tested under exact same wind and load conditions.

I didn't post the data on the other wind generatrs being tested at this same time. They are home built. I just wanted to show the preformance upgrade diferances.

I know some folks are unhappy with these style wind generators and there are ways to make them better.

As for one of the home builts flying during the same test with the same blades it was producings over 21 amps at the 32 MPH reading. These blades are 55" indiameter.

The moded Wind Blue has start up around 6 mph.


Jerry

Comments

  • BB.
    BB. Super Moderators, Administrators Posts: 33,431 admin
    Re: Wind Blue mods & testing.

    What was the battery bank voltage (12/24/etc.)?

    Also, do you have a Amp*Hour / Watt*Hour meter on your turbines so you can get monthly production numbers?

    -Bill
    Near San Francisco California: 3.5kWatt Grid Tied Solar power system+small backup genset
  • old wind
    old wind Registered Users Posts: 15
    Re: Wind Blue mods & testing.
    BB. wrote: »
    What was the battery bank voltage (12/24/etc.)?

    Also, do you have a Amp*Hour / Watt*Hour meter on your turbines so you can get monthly production numbers?

    -Bill

    Hi Bill.

    No I don't have a Amp*Hour / Watt*Hour meter. The wind here is not consistant enough and is speratic. This is a 12 volt system. At the 18 mph reading battery voltage was 13.02 at the 32 mph reading battery voltage was 14.52.

    This is just a test system. I do however have a larger system consisting of a 48 volt 1600 LB battery bank and 3500 watt signwave inverter. At one time I hade 4 small wind generators charging this bank. I use this system primarily for backup.

    Jerry
  • Cariboocoot
    Cariboocoot Banned Posts: 17,615 ✭✭✭
    Re: Wind Blue mods & testing.

    I don't doubt that Jerry has done a good job on his wind turbines (often the homemade ones are better than commercial units in the same power range - the opposite of solar panels!).

    But I want to save this bit out and re-use it whenever people are inquiring after wind power:
    old wind wrote: »
    This is a 12 volt system. At the 18 mph reading battery voltage was 13.02 at the 32 mph reading battery voltage was 14.52.

    32 MPH wind = enough to charge a 12 Volt battery.

    Now, that efficiency could possibly be increased a bit but you get the idea: wind doesn't have as much power in it as people are sometimes led to believe (by certain unscrupulous vendors).
  • old wind
    old wind Registered Users Posts: 15
    Re: Wind Blue mods & testing.
    I don't doubt that Jerry has done a good job on his wind turbines (often the homemade ones are better than commercial units in the same power range - the opposite of solar panels!).

    But I want to save this bit out and re-use it whenever people are inquiring after wind power:



    32 MPH wind = enough to charge a 12 Volt battery.

    Now, that efficiency could possibly be increased a bit but you get the idea: wind doesn't have as much power in it as people are sometimes led to believe (by certain unscrupulous vendors).

    I did have a 20 amp load accross the batteries during this wind event. This lasted about 20 HRs. Much of that time I had to leave the test station unatended.

    Speaking of home built wind power. I had the privlidge of visiting Dan Bartmin of Other Power/Feildlines.com at his home in the Collorado mountains. Dan is 100% off gride. He has a very nice comfertable home and a daily working fabrication and research shop. The day I visited Dan there was now perceptable wind at the ground level. At the top of his 70ft tower is his home built wind generator. We were seeing 200 watts coming from that machine at that time. Dan says there is several thousand watts coming from that machine at 20 mph.

    As far as I know this machine is still flying fine. Its been over 7 years scince my visit to Dans place.

    I'm building another wind generator that should provide around 10 amps at 10 mph and around 50 amps at 30 mph.

    This is a redo of a unit I had atop a 40ft tower. I used it in a 24 volt system. In that system it produced 2050 watts at 30 mph with a 7 ft blade. It is an AC motor conversion.

    I'm reasigning it to a 25ft tower and at 12 volt usage. It will keep the 6 batteries in my RV toped off.

    I know the 30 MPH readings are of very littel value. The Important wattage #s are those in the 7 to 12 mph area. That a more frequent and real life wind speed we can harvest daily power from.

    People use groups of solar pannels. I've allways concidered using groups of small wind generators or a single large unit equaly viable if you have the space, the wind and are able to build your own.

    I can build a 1000 watts of wind power fairly cheap and easy. Building a 1000 watts of solar may be more dificult. This works for some folks and not at all for others.

    $ for $ the home built wind generator can way out preform the comercial stuff.

    To me the hibrid RE system with both solar and wind (hydro to if your that lucky) is the ultimate. Cause as we all know, the sun don't shine at night and the wind don't allways blow.

    Jerry
  • old wind
    old wind Registered Users Posts: 15
    Re: Wind Blue mods & testing.

    Trying to load a picture. I don't see the picture attachment here. OH well lets see what hapens?

    Jerry
  • old wind
    old wind Registered Users Posts: 15
    Re: Wind Blue mods & testing.
    old wind wrote: »
    Trying to load a picture. I don't see the picture attachment here. OH well lets see what hapens?

    Jerry

    Hey it worked. The picture is the group of meters used in data gathering. I'll try to post the picture of the wind generators being tested.

    Jerry
  • old wind
    old wind Registered Users Posts: 15
    Re: Wind Blue mods & testing.

    Ok I think I've got the picture thing figured out. So lookout you guys. I've been known to go picture crazy.

    Jerry
  • BB.
    BB. Super Moderators, Administrators Posts: 33,431 admin
    Re: Wind Blue mods & testing.

    Photo looks good.

    Tall towers are one of the major factors for even a chance at good energy productions for wind turbines (good site and hardware are others).

    I do keep coming back trying to find sites/end consumers that have a month by month energy generation log for their wind systems.

    It would help others to understand the strengths and weaknesses of any systems they wish to implement.

    So far, most of the reports I have seen have been for grid tied wind--and those seem to only be up for a couple years before "something happens".

    -Bill
    Near San Francisco California: 3.5kWatt Grid Tied Solar power system+small backup genset
  • Cariboocoot
    Cariboocoot Banned Posts: 17,615 ✭✭✭
    Re: Wind Blue mods & testing.

    Yes, you've got it Jerry! In more ways than one. :D

    The problems with small-scale wind are always: 1). not enough wind available at the site; 2). not mounting the turbines in clear air; 3). turbines that can not live up to their hyped power claims.

    You've overcome all three.

    I've actually got a good location for wind power at the lake, except for the tiny problem that the tower would have to be located on the point which is a creek delta. That brings up the difficulty of raising 50' of tower in sand and gravel that gets flooded every year and iced every winter with no place to run guy-wires to, and the fact it is illegal to build anything that close to the water here.

    So I have solar ... and a generator.
  • old wind
    old wind Registered Users Posts: 15
    Re: Wind Blue mods & testing.

    My goal here is simply to help anyone that has a Delco based wind generator to get better preformance.

    Here is the close up of the Wind Blue, the Wind Blue with mods + my 3 blades and my home built dual rotor disc alt built into two 15" speaker baskets. It called the 14-11 in the meter test picture. It is unusualy large because it uses ceramic magnets not NEOs. A NEO version would be a fraction of it size.

    Jerry