Wind Turbine

[makemineatwostroke]

I am parked in Quartzsite AZ with about 15 of those turbines around me with the wind blowing 25 mph all night it sounded like a helicopter pad                                          have a great day

[Nick Badame Refrig/ACC]

DONE!  It's about time!!

2 days behind schedule.... Now I can start the Wind Turbine project.

Here are a few pics of the boilers
Nick-

[HB of CJ]

Years and years ago we were plank owners of Home Power Magazine.  A very cool magazine then and probably better now.  Wish we hadn't sold the 5ac homestead and stopped the subscription.

If memory serves (always suspect!) the magic number with wind is 12 to 15 mph.  Ya' gotta have that much to do any good.  We did research wind for SW Oregon; no go, had to go with PV panels.

Anyway you can mount the turbine away from living quarters?  The feedback we received years ago was that smaller windmills are kinda noisy.  Let us know how it works out.  Some beach in Mexico?  HB of CJ

[Jerry W Campbell]

The newer Air-X wind turbines are much quieter because of blade design but mostly because they shut down right before the blades start fluttering. And it is true they work better on the beach in Mexico. One more week and it's adios for this bus.
Good Luck Nick
Jerry

[Nick Badame Refrig/ACC]

Hi Guy's,

The Air X turbine is up and operateing. It's 28 ft. in the air and generateing power "at times"... So far, it has not been so windy out

and there has only been 1 windy day for testing. Start up speed is as stated, 9/10mph and I have only measured 18 mph around here

so far. I have to admit, that this project has been alot of fun but, I can see where a combination of wind and Solar will be a better

set-up.. I'm sure when Jan/Feb rolls around I will have more steady winds around here to produce a constant charge on the batt bank.


The turbine has 3- 22" blades. I just located an aftermarketer that sells 6- 28" blades with a custom hub to fit my Air-X unit. They claim

that with the 6 longer blades, that the start up wind speed will drop to 4mph and give me a more steady surpluss of power. I ordered them

yesterday and I should get them next week.

So Far I spent
635 for the turbine
135 for 1 1/2" sch 40 galv pipe and fittings
180 for 60ft of 6-3 marine jacketed stranded copper wire
58 for connectors, fasteners, and misc items

1008 total.  My Labor, PRICELESS

After the new blades arrive I will have spent another 150. Still $1158 for 400 watts I think is still reasonable...

I will post pics soon
Nick-

[Jeremy]

I think the 'lack of wind' thing is the most common discovery people make after buying and installing a wind turbine. I've wanted to get one myself but did some measurements in my garden and realised that I didn't even come close to the minimum wind requirements to acheive any kind of useful output. I still want to build one though, and have recently been thinking about the viability of having a telescopic pole (possibly mounted to one corner of the bus) that could get a turbine 40 or 50ft in the air (wind speed and stability increase rapidly with height). Having a pole that can be easily lowered allows the turbine to be optimised for lighter winds without the risk that it will destroy itself when it blows hard.

On a sort-of-similar subject, I did a test with my solar panels earlier this week:- obviously at this time of year the sun is very low in the sky, and I found that the output of my panel when mounted horizontally (which 99.99% of panels are) was less than half of the output of when it was pointed directly at the sun. Given how expensive solar panels are for a very modest output makes you think that spending some of the money on a sun-tracker instead would make a lot of sense.

Jeremy