We raised Adam and Jennies 10' diameter 'volvo' brake disk wind turbine last Aug. The page about building his machine is HERE and the story about buiding his tower is HERE. It's a 48 Volt dual rotor wind turbine that we actually built in the fall of 2003. We used the large 2" dia X 1/2" thick disk magnets on it. The tower was about 28' high, perched up on a rock on the very edge of his property (the highest location possible). We fitted it with a 10' diameter blade set. As it's been since we raised it... things have been turbulant, and the prop would stall. (the cutin speed was too low and these alternators we've since learned are a bit stiff for a 10' prop). It would make power in low winds, but even in the highest winds it would never top 400 watts and we never saw it furl. It stalled very badly. We decided to extend his tower 11' (so now it would be 39' tall), and a fit it with a larger 11' 6" diameter prop. This seemed a good choice, it's exactly what we did to Scotts wind turbine with good results. We agreed to work on this Saturday - weather permitting. It was nice on Sat morning, so we dropped his tower, took the machine apart, and ran up to my shop with the tail (Because we knew we'd want to lengthen it) and a plan for a tower extension. The weather forcast was calling for possibly 10" of snow by Sunday morning and over 30" by Monday morning, so while at my shop we had to cut wood, chain up my truck etc... it all took about 2 hours and we were headed back down with an 11" tower extension on the roof of my Volvo, and a longer tail (it was 5', now its 5' 8" long).
The tower exension fit right over the old tower, and hopefully the set screw will keep it from rattling. Its only 2" pipe, which would probably not take a machine this large. We welded square stock all around it both above, and below the guy wires to strengthen it. This isn't shown clearly in the pictures.
We didnt have anything to attach the closed turnbuckles to the guy wire anchors. Adam found a bunch of pad locks... We learned while adjusting the tower that this is probably not a good way to go. While tightening one of the top guy wires, one of the locks broke. We'll pick up better stuff in town - in the mean time we've doubled these up with bits of cable and cable clamps to hold it.
There's Adam proudly showing off his new 11' 6" diameter prop which Scotty made from laminated cedar. Adam traded an old propane heater for this... barter popular up here!
Heres the tower with the extension on it and the top guy wires mostly finished. Notice how the top wire from the top of the tower to the jin pole is attached to another wire. Kinda weird, but we couldnt climb high enough on the jin pole to get this attached directly to the jin pole. So we clamped it to another wire, figuring that once we raised it - we could undo it and put it where it needs to be. This was a temporary measure, we fixed it after we 'test raised' the tower with no machine on it.
Now we've test raised the tower, and Shawn (a nice fellow we met who's building a strawbale home and setting up an RE system in a neighboring canyon) is fixing that line to the jin pole. Shawn was very helpful. I expect we'll be putting a wind turbine on his property next summer sometime. At this point it's probably 5:00 PM, it's fairly breezy and snow is starting to fall... we were feeling a bit pressed for time.
Ward's driving the rest of the screws into the prop hub. We've got the alternator, and the tail on the tower. Not much left to do except balance the blades!
Pictured above Ward is fitting the prop on there. Hard to see from the picture - but crystal mountain (about 1 mile away) should be visible... it's whited out by what seems to be an oncoming blizzard.
There we go! It all went fairly smoothly. Of course, as soon as we got it raised the wind stopped... dead calm, the clouds mostly cleared off. The 'blizzard of 2005' never turned out to be what they were calling for. We did get more snow during the night - about 10" overall, not bad. Of course, Sat night ended with a small neighborhood party, some good supper... it was kind of like a Monday but our fingers were colder. There was some wind yesterday, so I went down to watch it for a bit. Hard to say 'how good' it is now, but it's definitely much improved. He was getting steady 100 - 500 watts from it and frequently pegging out his 10 amp meter (500 watts) in seemingly light winds. I expect, now that its' bigger, taller - and not stalling anymore, we've probably improved it by about 4X - this machine will definitely provide some serious power for Adam and Jennie if it holds together! (time will tell!) Its been a busy fun week, we did this, we raised DanF's wind turbine - and now it's Monday again!! (I better get my Pizza order in).
