DIY wind turbine....

[Bod]

Being in the narrowboat world, of the inland waterways, I see quite a few wind turbines, most are not working, of those that are rotating, most are just idling, only a few are at any speed.
When attached to a boat, the vibration passed down the mast is unacceptable, so the few that do work are land based, with the cable going to the boat.
The harvest from them is so low, that solar panels easily out perform them for most of the year.
The best sight I have seen was two boats moored end to end, both with turbines, one going like the clappers, fifty feet away, the other was barely moving, due to the very local wind conditions.

Bod.

 

[Owd Jockey]

One of a number of makers channels I subscribe to on YouTube is Kris Harbour Natural Building. Kris is a young chap who 7 years ago decided to move to West Wales(?) to build a house from scratch and live off grid. His videos include a number of power generating projects involving hydro, wind and solar. His posted videos over the years plot his journey. While the videos are not really 'polished' or well organised they are honest and very informative. I am still working through the videos which I only came across a few months ago. There is probably something for everyone on his site whether its traditional building technique, power generation, arboriculture, market gardening or just general homesteading off-grid

https://www.youtube.com/c/KrisHarbour/videos

 

[D_W]

If you want to build one for fun, use used stuff like a car alternator and whatever else you can get salvage Not sure on the prop, but it would seem around here and probably most places that the thing will need to specialize at low speed generation and not be destroyed by gusts.

I had a relative who is now deceased who put a 10kw wind turbine up in the late 70s. It didn't look like the stuff made now, it was more blocky and bar stock steel type stuff. I don't know what it needed to get to its rating, probably 30 mile an hour winds, and most of the time, there wasn't enough wind to start it. I would bet that when it was running it was generally making about 10-20% of rated power and he'd invested in putting it on a 90 foot tower (that he erected, so cut cost for all of this- he was a self-made self-do kind of guy).

Within a couple of years, I remember walking into his utility building and the pole was generally up beside the barn (or tower) and the turbine laying on its side in the shed because something broke. The difference between then and now is that solar panels cost a princely sum. if he was still alive, I'm guessing he would find the south facing side of his barn and install a solar array and tie it to the grid. He was an electronics and electrical whiz, trained in the navy, so far ahead of the average person as to cost and components.

That said, as a project without expectations that you'll see it humming along filling your pocket, it'd be a great learning experience. The only place I see them here in the states now is coastal where the wind is pretty constant and they're usually on boats or tied to dock buildings. When they're on a building, they're kind of like a giant ...how do you say it. Vibrator? Vibrating a building like a drum.

 

[Spectric]

Don't forget that if you use a car alternator that they require excitation voltage via the charge warning lamp terminal to a positive 12 vdc supply.

 

[D_W]

Don't forget that if you use a car alternator that they require excitation voltage via the charge warning lamp terminal to a positive 12 vdc supply.

I think a man will need to stand on carpet under the turbine, in socks, rub his feet and then see if he can give the thing a zap to make this work.

(I don't know anything about making one of these with an alternator, just noted how many times before youtube was a retail site that people were making low speed water turbines from scratch and wind turbines with an alternator, so I'd have to defer on what they did.

Those videos don't involve buying things so they may be very hard to find on YT where the algorithm is biased to make people think stumpy nubs is a woodworker and some guy on a sailboat telling you that he has a coupon for you to buy a turbine is an expert in making things out of salvage parts).

 

[MikeK]

Don't forget that if you use a car alternator that they require excitation voltage via the charge warning lamp terminal to a positive 12 vdc supply.

When I converted my 1950 Ford 8N tractor from a 6V positive ground system to a 12V negative ground system, I replaced the generator with a single-wire self-exciting alternator. I can't remember the manufacturer or model, but it had a good output at low RPM and was a perfect solution for my tractor. These conversion kits are still available for the Ford 9N, 2N, and 8N tractors.

 

[D_W]

single-wire self-exciting alternator....

And my hypothetical man in socks skilled at rubbing his feet on carpet is out of a job again....

 

[sawtooth-9]

Reminds me of the old song " There's a hole in the bucket - Dear Lisa, Dear Lisa "
Sadly, we no longer have the real "genius of power" -Nichola Tesla to show the way.
When he was with us - very few listened or wanted to know.

So what are you left with ?

Nuclear - not a popular choice - Fission or fusion

Solar - sounds good but if you truely do your research, NOT environmentally sound.

Steam - Ah, the good old favourite. Steam turbines. But you have to boil water to get steam. That requires heat. So you can get heat from nuclear, burning coal and gas or whatever fossil fuels you choose. It's still a problem for those who advocate CO2
emissions are the cause of climate change

Wind is great if it always blew when you wanted and generation was efficient

Hydro would be great, but alas all the rivers will run dry due to climate change.

" With what will I fix it Dear Lisa, Dear Lisa
With a bucket Dear Henry, Dear Henry, Dear Henry
........
There's a hole in the bucket, Dear Lisa Dear Lisa "

 

[johna.clements]

Reminds me of the old song " There's a hole in the bucket - Dear Lisa, Dear Lisa "
Sadly, we no longer have the real "genius of power" -Nichola Tesla to show the way.
When he was with us - very few listened or wanted to know.

So what are you left with ?

Nuclear - not a popular choice - Fission or fusion

Solar - sounds good but if you truely do your research, NOT environmentally sound.

Steam - Ah, the good old favourite. Steam turbines. But you have to boil water to get steam. That requires heat. So you can get heat from nuclear, burning coal and gas or whatever fossil fuels you choose. It's still a problem for those who advocate CO2
emissions are the cause of climate change

Wind is great if it always blew when you wanted and generation was efficient

Hydro would be great, but alas all the rivers will run dry due to climate change.

" With what will I fix it Dear Lisa, Dear Lisa
With a bucket Dear Henry, Dear Henry, Dear Henry
........
There's a hole in the bucket, Dear Lisa Dear Lisa "

Nuclear - Fission not a popular choice - Agreed plus without nuclear fuel recycling there is just not enough Uranium. With recycling then lots of countries have the bomb or nuclear waste is being shipped around the world.

Nuclear - Fusion not sure why you like it with fission. The only problem with it is that it has not be made to work for more than a second or two. Maybe next decade or the one after.

Solar - But is it more environmentally sound to mine rare earths than minine coal and burning it..

Steam - Can be produced by solar, wind, hydro, anything that produces electricity. You might as well say electricity. Heating water to store the unwanted energy from solar then using that hot water later to heat buildings is a thing.

Wind is more economic now than coal in Europe. We just need to start storing the energy as hot water, hydrogen etc when more is produced than required.

Hydro - climate change does not mean lower rainfall, it means change. If the world is warmer there will be more evaporation. If there is more water in the air there will be more rain. Where it rains could change which could be a problem.

 

[Fergie 307]

If you want to build one for fun, use used stuff like a car alternator and whatever else you can get salvage Not sure on the prop, but it would seem around here and probably most places that the thing will need to specialize at low speed generation and not be destroyed by gusts.

Many moons ago made one from an alternator, and a large plastic radiator fan. Mounted on a swivel on the roof of the workshop. Did a good job of keeping spare batteries topped up. Not sure it would be much good for anything else. Was still going strong when we sold up years later and left it for the new owners. Have always intended to build another one, just never got round to it.

 

[Spectric]

You missed one out @johna.clements , using less energy so rather than trying to match the demand from a lot of people just wasting a lot then aim at better efficiency. I have said before that the pricing for electricity should be tiered, if you are a sensible user then you pay less but if you are using way more than a comparable household you move onto a higher tarrif.

 

[D_W]

You missed one out @johna.clements , using less energy so rather than trying to match the demand from a lot of people just wasting a lot then aim at better efficiency. I have said before that the pricing for electricity should be tiered, if you are a sensible user then you pay less but if you are using way more than a comparable household you move onto a higher tarrif.

At least some of California here does that. The tiers pretty much create the boundary where heavy users will seek solar contracts instead of just buying.

I recall a member on another forum saying about 10 years ago that their bill went to $700 a month when the tiered system started, and they didn't want panels or something for various reasons.

Well, tough, get them, anyway, if you want to use that much, or invest in a solar farm. California is a perfect case for solar in areas that aren't right in a bay where there's a mist. Cold weather in the south is uncommon and consumption pretty much parallels the sun.

Trouble with permitting and local government there, though, in terms of getting anything at all done, but that's not exclusive to southern CA in the US. And then a few states over and if you want to build a jungle gym and put panels on it in your front yard entirely DIY, no trouble. But that's the US.

 

[D_W]

Many moons ago made one from an alternator, and a large plastic radiator fan. Mounted on a swivel on the roof of the workshop. Did a good job of keeping spare batteries topped up. Not sure it would be much good for anything else. Was still going strong when we sold up years later and left it for the new owners. Have always intended to build another one, just never got round to it.

radiator fan is an interesting idea. I vaguely recall one of the videos showing someone making a huge slow speed long diameter prop and getting 400 watts out of their setup. I think that's a novel thing, but to get 400 max even with a prop designed for slow speed suggests 1kw hr on a good day, and damage in a storm.

A specific use for something making that much power could still be other than pointless, though.

Years ago, a guy put a low head high volume low speed water turbine on YT. He showed the making of the entire thing (which wasn't really a beginner's product). It probably cost him $100 to make the thing and it wasn't theoretically efficient.

However, he had it in a stream on a far end of his property where he wanted to keep a small building and a fridge without running power to it (think really rural). He showed the turbine running, which it had been doing, and the little fixes that he'd made to prevent it from getting plugged by trash or fish and said that it generated about 350 watts. It was genius for what he wanted, big crude and loosely made and robust and ran two fridges or a fridge and a freezer.

the comments were about half amazed (I was) at the guy's ability to design something crude, simple and effective and reliable for his situation. The other half were people deriding him about the design of the turbine fins, which were pretty much a fan on the end of a rod hanging below the device, efficiency or whatever else, and how dumb he was.

350 watts of continuous power for something made from salvage parts that's proven to literally work years mostly unattended is no joke.

He eventually put up a revised video that was really short and didn't show the making, and then removed it entirely.



Point in this case, most people with a 3kw air conditioner would think 350 watts is pointless. To a guy who has no grid tie for half a mile and even running it would have to pay a separate meter fee since it's not part of the residence, having 350 watts of continuous power that only involved sweat equity is just about priceless.

He reminds me of my tinkering uncle - when someone asked him where he read about it, he said he didn't read a whole lot other than the Bible. My tinkering uncle was spatially intelligent, excellent with electronics and electrical stuff because he understood how it worked, but I'm fairly convinced he was functionally illiterate.

 

[D_W]

It's not germane to this thread, but one of the original videos i mentioned above of the low speed turbine is back up on YT, the comments are cleaned up and the guy who made the turbine shows some parts of it and mentions that it was featured on netflix "america unplugged", which may be the reason it was offline for a bit.

I was wrong about two or three years, but it was eons ago that I saw this video ( has to be close to a decade). He mentioned that the second one that he's making in the video is a replacement for the first one that lasted 13 years (!).

Netflix to me is kind of like hand tools to most people. I have it and don't use it (the wife does), so I've never heard of "america unplugged". Once a video goes from the original creator to someone else cutting it up, the result isn't usually better.

"Vertical turbine hydro generator system. Low rpm" will find the video on YT. ​

 

[johna.clements]

It's not germane to this thread, but one of the original videos i mentioned above of the low speed turbine is back up on YT, the comments are cleaned up and the guy who made the turbine shows some parts of it and mentions that it was featured on netflix "america unplugged", which may be the reason it was offline for a bit.

I was wrong about two or three years, but it was eons ago that I saw this video ( has to be close to a decade). He mentioned that the second one that he's making in the video is a replacement for the first one that lasted 13 years (!).

Netflix to me is kind of like hand tools to most people. I have it and don't use it (the wife does), so I've never heard of "america unplugged". Once a video goes from the original creator to someone else cutting it up, the result isn't usually better.

"Vertical turbine hydro generator system. Low rpm" will find the video on YT. ​

13 years is a long time to be receiving 350W for.

Price in the UK in 2017 was about 15p per KW hour.
If you assume it was working about 90% of the time that's 7.5kw per day for 13 years.
Or £1.12 per day for 13 years.
£5k worth of free electricity allowing for £100 materials and 20 hours wages at around minimum wage.
He may not have been able to use all the electricity so most likely less than this but still very good.

Seems like a very good return on the investment.

 

[dickm]

There is a burn which goes through a narrow V-shaped valley in our neighbour's garden; her father is a retired civil engineer and keeps prodding them to think about a turbine there. I did some very crude calculations which suggested possibly 500W most of the year (not this one!). Can't imagine it will ever appear, but do wonder.
The Laird installed an Archimedan screw turbine in another local burn some 6 or 7 years ago, but it's never been a roaring(!) success and Laird himself was never an enthusiast.
Suspect there may be some rekindling of interest in micro-hydro after the coming winter!

 

[Inspector]

burn?? For the distant relatives that have lost some of the old language, what is a burn?

Pete

 

[artie]

burn?? For the distant relatives that have lost some of the old language, what is a burn?

Pete

It's a little bigger than a sheugh

 

[Inspector]

I had to look up sheugh.
So if the sheugh fits it isn't a burn.

Pete

 

[Fergie 307]

A burn is a small sream.