Wind Turbine

[Frank @ TX]

Hi Nick,
I was parking next to a full timer with a wind turbine.
He backed into a tree and broke two blades.
When he got the new blade , he started to polish them with a very fine steel wool.
He shined them both front and back.
He said if he kept them as smooth as posible the blades were pretty quite.
He also said about twice a year he would shine them up again.
His system was a lot quiter than any other turbine I was near.
Frank

[circusboy90210]

eludicate please ;-) Previous AIR designs required 300-400 amp hour battery banks so the trickle charge of the wind turbine could be adequately absorbed. The AIR-Xs charge controller periodically stops charging, reads the battery voltage, compares it to the voltage setting and if the battery is charged, it completely shuts off all current going to the battery. This function is performed within a few milliseconds. The closer the battery is to reaching its full state of charge, the more often the AIR-Xs circuit repeats this action. This means any size battery bank from 25 to 25,000 amp hours or higher can be charged safely. When the battery has reached its charged state, the AIR-X will slow to an almost complete stop. Only when the battery has dropped below its voltage set point will it startup and resume charging. The Benefit: Extended battery life, no overcharging.

[Kwajdiver]

Has anyone ever mounted one of these on a bus?  You could charge batteries while driving down the road, or stopped.

Hummmm,

Bill

[Jerry W Campbell]

Hi Friends,
   I  got an AirX 400 last year and took it to the beach for backup. I didn't have any way to monitor it so I never really knew how many amps it was putting out. But It acted just like it was supposed to. It stopped dead when the wind got over about 40. The charge light worked. It stopped when the batteries were fully charged. The average wind was about 15 mph.
   This year I have a battery monitor for it ( http://www.forcefieldmagnets.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=24&products_id=190 ) so I'll be able to tell exactly what's going on. It was VERY quiet. The problem is not the noise but the vibration. It should not touch the bus. Somebody makes a nice mount that you drive on and park but it is $800.
Good Luck
Jerry



   
   

[Nick Badame Refrig/ACC]

Hi Guy's,

My 1 1/2" galvinized pipe was delivered today so, I'm excited to get it up in the air this weekend.

I'm under the gun to finish up the 3 boilers that we are installing....By friday, I hope!

The boilers are a really cool install for us. We removed a 1.4 million btu Weil McClain with a Gorden Paiit gas gun and what a job it

has been removing 2 thousand lbs of Iron out of a Township building. Worst of all, trying to work with all the building employees

complaining about noise.... [had to buy 2-20ft legenths of 3" copper last week... $420 each! ]

The cool part is we are installing 3 really hi-tech Budarus Modulating boilers in it's place. These boilers will be 98% efficient....

They are coupled to a Honeywell pnumatic building controller and the Budarus boilers have their own modulateing controls that only

fire the boilers that are needed using indoor and outdoor temps. As of today, 90% complete! Our town is trying to reduce it's carbon

footprint to recieve state funding for a much bigger Solar project that will cover a 400 x 400 parking lot area.

I'll post some pics later in the week
Nick-

[NewbeeMC9]

The vertical sort work on a fundamentally different aerodynamic principle (drag rather than lift) and as such are not capable of producing as much power as a horizontal axis turbine. If you think about it is simplistic terms, a vertical turbine always has one side of the blade being 'pushed into' the wind, so a lot of power is lost. They do have the advantage of being able to work in wind coming from any direction without having to pivot, which is especially useful in gusty conditions. They also turn a lot more slowly, so produce less noise. Even the very fancy vertical-axis turbines with curved corkscrew-shaped blades have to be very big though to produce any useful power.

Jeremy

That's interesting Jeremy,  do you have a windmill?  would like to hear more

I find the cheap, easy to build ones interesting too like the barrels or the pvc pipe one.

[circusboy90210]

eludicate please ;-) Previous AIR designs required 300-400 amp hour battery banks so the trickle charge of the wind turbine could be adequately absorbed. The AIR-Xs charge controller periodically stops charging, reads the battery voltage, compares it to the voltage setting and if the battery is charged, it completely shuts off all current going to the battery. This function is performed within a few milliseconds. The closer the battery is to reaching its full state of charge, the more often the AIR-Xs circuit repeats this action. This means any size battery bank from 25 to 25,000 amp hours or higher can be charged safely. When the battery has reached its charged state, the AIR-X will slow to an almost complete stop. Only when the battery has dropped below its voltage set point will it startup and resume charging. The Benefit: Extended battery life, no overcharging.

calimexta in greek is hello like the rest of this.can anyone explain in english?

[belfert]

Northern Tool's Sunday ad had a wind turbine advertised.  I believe it was the AIR X.  This might a place to go look at one if you live in the Midwest or South where they have stores.

A wind turbine wouldn't do me any good when boondocking as we can't launch rockets when winds are over 20 MPH and prefer less than 10 MPH.  We usually won't launch anywhere known for high winds.

[Jeremy]

The vertical sort work on a fundamentally different aerodynamic principle (drag rather than lift) and as such are not capable of producing as much power as a horizontal axis turbine. If you think about it is simplistic terms, a vertical turbine always has one side of the blade being 'pushed into' the wind, so a lot of power is lost. They do have the advantage of being able to work in wind coming from any direction without having to pivot, which is especially useful in gusty conditions. They also turn a lot more slowly, so produce less noise. Even the very fancy vertical-axis turbines with curved corkscrew-shaped blades have to be very big though to produce any useful power.

Jeremy

That's interesting Jeremy,  do you have a windmill?  would like to hear more

I find the cheap, easy to build ones interesting too like the barrels or the pvc pipe one.

Windmills are for grinding corn, and I don't have much need for that. I would love to have a wind turbine - and a proper big one at that - but my garden is unfortunately far too sheltered to make it worth while. I have done lots of reading though, and as it happens my hobby is sailing so I have a grounding in the aerodynamics too. When I've made my fortune from selling magazines I'm going to buy a place in the country with lots of space and no neighbours, then spend my retirement playing about with alternative energy machines and other mechanical stuff.

Jeremy

PS. Try googling the term 'savonius' for info. on vertical-axis turbines - there are many home-build designs that are a lot more sophisticated that a barrel cut in half

[Jeremy]

eludicate please ;-) Previous AIR designs required 300-400 amp hour battery banks so the trickle charge of the wind turbine could be adequately absorbed. The AIR-Xs charge controller periodically stops charging, reads the battery voltage, compares it to the voltage setting and if the battery is charged, it completely shuts off all current going to the battery. This function is performed within a few milliseconds. The closer the battery is to reaching its full state of charge, the more often the AIR-Xs circuit repeats this action. This means any size battery bank from 25 to 25,000 amp hours or higher can be charged safely. When the battery has reached its charged state, the AIR-X will slow to an almost complete stop. Only when the battery has dropped below its voltage set point will it startup and resume charging. The Benefit: Extended battery life, no overcharging.

calimexta in greek is hello like the rest of this.can anyone explain in english?

It's simply saying that they have improved their charge-controller to include a battery sensing circuit - ie. the charge controller now acts as an intelligent battery charger to avoid overcharging the battery. Consquently you now don't need a big battery bank as you are no longer relying on the capacity of the battery to act as a sink for any excess charging current.

There was a closely related discussion about charge controllers on the 'solar panel' thread very recently

Jeremy

[Frank @ TX]

Hey Nick,
Check out this site , you could get some savings in taxes !!!!!!

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Federal-Government-Endorses-Small-Wind/story.aspx?guid=%7BDF6552E3-5A1A-48B5-BB9F-BC1B2955A821%7D

Frank

[Jerry32]

I bought a small wind turbine six years ago and it has worked well all this time . It does make some strange noises when the wind gets to 45-50 MPH. Jerry

[Nick Badame Refrig/ACC]

Hi Frank,

Thanks for the link. It looks like I may save some $$ on this project.

I will start the pole mounts tomorrow.

Thanks
Nick-

[JohnEd]

Nick,

Really interesting project.  Hope all goes well and quickly.

Now for what begged.....Money for solar project from the State gummint?  You know it is backed with Fed gummint, read tax, dollars.  That is socialism!  How could you Nick?  "Say it ain't so"....from Shoeless Joe Jackson legend.  Oh the humanity!  What a jerk I would be if I meant any of that, right?

Now, about that tax "right" off.  Every dollar less you pay is made up for by everyone else...from the many to the few....and deservedly so in this case.   More Socialism!  Get used to this sort of gummint interferance cause the brown ONE said energy independence in ten years(that echoed Gore and T boone Pickens).  You can plan on a whole slew of gumint interferience incentives to flow so stay flexable and frosty.

Ever the kidder....John

[Jeremy]

Going completely off topic for a moment....I was fascinated during the coverage of the US election just how much nonsense was spoken and written about socialism. I'm certainly not a socialist myself, but having lived under a socialist government for around half my life I can assure you that many of the anti-socialist beliefs apparently held by those opposing Obama have little basis in fact.

Just to give a couple of examples of how socialism doesn't necessarily lead to the ruination of the economy as many people seem to think:- The only two countries in the whole of Europe which haven't yet gone into recession are Britain and France. Both have socialist governments and very successful economies - Britiain for example has the sixth largest economy in the world and has one of the highest per-capita incomes despite the fact that the entire country is smaller than some US states.

By comparison Germany (capitalists since WW2) are in major trouble. Their problem ironically is that they have the perfect capitalist economy - huge balance of payments surpluses earnt from being the biggest exporter in the world - bigger than American, Japan and China. Unfortunately being so reliant on exports mean they are suffering hugely now because all those export markets have collapsed.

I must admit that as a capitalist I have been surprised myself how some pure socialist policies (the minimum wage for example) have turned out to be a very positive influence and not the dire catastophe that the right-wing politians predicted. Listening to some of the debates prior to the US election though I genuinely think that some commentators have been confusing socialism with marxism or even communism.

Jeremy