My 17' Turbine so far

[nekit]

Thought I would post some pictures of my 17' Axial Flux turbine








Adjustable tail angle

[nekit]

More pictures

[TomW]

Lookin good.

Thanks for the share.

Tom

[nekit]

Tower Bases for tilt up 100' guyed tower.  All pads are 4'x4'x4' concrete

[Volvo farmer]

Wow! nice work there. By the looks of those pictures, you did a good job of building with a good deal of safety margin.

Please post construction details of your tower when you get a chance, there's not many 100-foot tilt up towers out there that I have seen.

[willib]

Thats a nice turbine!
curious of the outer diameter of those rotors?

[freejuice]

Nice!
 I really like that setup!
 Wow 100 feet up? I was looking at mine the other day and thought of adding 20 more feet, its already at 65 feet and looks like its really up there!.....100 feet.... I'm green with envy!
I think I will stay below the clouds

Those anchor points should not give  you any trouble!....4x4, thats over a cubic yard of concrete per hole....you've got some weight there!

 More pics are required as you continue your fun!

[nekit]

Here's my specs.  Hopefully it will work out well.

It's a 17' dia  Grid Tied unit

Stator:
12 coils wound 118 turns, one in hand of 14 gage wire wound to the "Otherpower" design.  I used a high temp epoxy resin and it has cooling holes in the center of each coil.

Magnets:
32- Neo 3x1.5x.75" countersunk bolted down with cs stainless bolts and stainless band around the rotors.  Rotors are 1/2" thick 18" dia with cooling holes.

Yaw bearing:
4" tubing with bronze bushings and grease fittings.  I also used a thrust bearing on top of the Yaw shaft, that is a throw out bearing from a Ford mustang

Generator Mount:
12" forward an 10" offset

Wiring Yaw Head:
This is a used unit I removed from an old pivot irrigator.

Tail mount:
I made this adjustable with three sets of holes at 10, 14, & 18 degrees.  The tail pivot has bronze bushings and grease fitting.

I also add an adjustable shock that is a after market motorcycle steering staibilizer to cushion the tail movement.

The curved tube is for a cable that will pull the tail in by a small hand winch at the base of the tower.

Tail:
The tail is made of thin walled chromemoly tubing to keep it light.  It has bungs on the end that I can add weight as needed.

Blades:
G-222 profile carved by Royal Wind from Ash wood.

Tower:
I am currently building the tower .  It will be made of 8" x 1/8" wall tubing.  It has two 45' sections and one 10' top sections and a 43' gin pole.
It has a removable 10,000# truck winch that I can take in when I'm not using it

[nekit]

Here are the controls specs:

Inverter:
Power- One Aurora PVI-6000 grid tied inverter

Control Box:

Omron k8ab-vs3 voltage adjustable relay that switches a Telemecanique LC1D258 contactor on and off.  This system switches on a 6000W dump load when the grid goes down and when the voltage goes over 450V. 

I also have a Telemecanique gv2me16 motor controller in the 3 phases from the alternator. If one of the phase get disconnected or shorts, it will disconnect the entire alternator.

At the tower I have a 3phase switch that will work as a shutdown switch by shorting the phases.

[bj]

Nekit--Nice build.  Your attention to detail will motivate lots of us.

Welding is nice, Tig?
Thanks for sharing

[nekit]

Nekit--Nice build.  Your attention to detail will motivate lots of us.

Welding is nice, Tig?
Thanks for sharing

Yes all TIG welded.

I am a fabricator for a living, so a lot of the materials, equiptment and abilties I already had around.

Thanks for the compliments.

[luv2weld]

Absolutely beautiful.
You do excellent work.
Thanks for sharing it with us.

Ralph

[jvnn]

I agree with the others, beautiful work.

Is that slip rings I see on top?  more info about those if you would be so kind...

[nekit]

I agree with the others, beautiful work.

Is that slip rings I see on top?  more info about those if you would be so kind...

I think your referring to the yaw terminals, or whatever they are officially called.  They let the unit spin around without twisting the wires.

That is off of a pivot irrigator that they use in farm fields.
It came off and old unit that was being removed. It 8 terminals, but you can remove as many as you want. I'm only using 4.

[TomW]

I think your referring to the yaw terminals, or whatever they are officially called.  They let the unit spin around without twisting the wires.

That is off of a pivot irrigator that they use in farm fields.
It came off and old unit that was being removed. It 8 terminals, but you can remove as many as you want. I'm only using 4.

What you call "Yaw Terminals" are generally referred to as Slip Rings here.

Most home built units simply use a pendant cable down the tower center and occasionally untwist it. Often there is a plug and socket at the tower base to allow this.

Just to clear it up.

Tom

[nekit]

Here's some more info I have gathered on my setup.

-I ran my Axial flux in my Bridgeport Mill and got the following voltages out of the rectifier with no load.

RPM                    DC Volts
80                       96
135                    168
200                    277
325                    423


-Also the tail is 10' long

-When I stated the offset of the generator to the yaw bearing that figure is centerline to centerline.  The amount forward is yaw centerline to the center of the blades.

Hope this info helps others.

[snake21]

hi,just a curious question if you dont mind.how much did all these things cost you?i mean the whole system

[nekit]

I had a lot of the materials on hand from other projects, so it's hard to say exactly.  Turbine, tower, inverter, controls and all the misc. I have probably about $6,000 in it.  $3,600 of which is the inverter.  I'm a fabricator for a living, so I get some pretty good deals on most of the materials and had all the equipment.  If some one went out and bought all the parts I would guess it would be close to $10,000.

I'm doing it for fun and as long as I don't go broke I don't mind spending some money.

[SparWeb]

Here's some more info I have gathered on my setup.

-I ran my Axial flux in my Bridgeport Mill and got the following voltages out of the rectifier with no load.
RPM                    DC Volts
80                       96
135                    168
200                    277
325                    423
-Also the tail is 10' long
-When I stated the offset of the generator to the yaw bearing that figure is centerline to centerline.  The amount forward is yaw centerline to the center of the blades.
Hope this info helps others.

You bet it is helpful, Nekit.  Thanks a lot for all the information.  Especially the tower construction and performance info.  That is a lot of turns in the stator wire.  Designing for grid-tie may sound complicated at first, but I'm getting the impression that the programmable Aurora makes a lot of hit-and-miss go away.
I really look forward to seeing it in the air and pumping out the watts!

[itsandbits]

great looking rig so far. I bet it will light a good string of leds when its up and flying
;<)

[nekit]

Here's some pictures of my tower tubing.  Each section is 44' long and the top section is 10' long for a total of 98'.  The tubing is 8" Diameter with .109 /12 gauge wall.  The tubing is recycled from a pivot irrigator. It's guyed in four locations, at the center of each main tube and at the mating flanges.  Top guy wires will be 3/8" and the rest are 1/4".

[Boondocker]

Just impressive! Wow!  Looking forward hearing about the 1st power the system generates.

[freejuice]

looking good!

[jlt]

Excellent job . But don't forget the lock nuts on every thing. Because bits  tend to fall off wind turbines. 

[nekit]

Finally got my tower up.  Went up smoothly. Now I just need to get the gen installed.

[Boss]

Beautiful fabrication

[jaysicle]

That is gorgeous. Attention to detail at every step.

Seems you have put a good deal of pre- thought into this and when it was time to commit, - it would be built only once, and as solid as the pyramids.

Can't wait to see what it can produce.

[dlenox]

can you give us some information about the winch that you are using?

I know that you mentioned that it is a 10,000 lb truck winch.
I am assuming that it is 12v DC? if so then what are you using to power it?

thanks,
dan lenox

[nekit]

can you give us some information about the winch that you are using?

I know that you mentioned that it is a 10,000 lb truck winch.
I am assuming that it is 12v DC? if so then what are you using to power it?

thanks,
dan lenox

I just pull my truck up behind the winch and the cables are long enough to be hooked up to the battery.  The battery has two sets of lugs, so I hook it to the extra set.

[SparWeb]

Nice job!

Did you make the octagonal flanges yourself or did you find the pipe with them already?  (The reference to irrigation pipe would indicate you made it yourself).

Does it look rather stable as you raise it, or does it have the "wet spaghetti" look?  I'm guessing the former if it's 8" pipe.

[nekit]

Nice job!

Did you make the octagonal flanges yourself or did you find the pipe with them already?  (The reference to irrigation pipe would indicate you made it yourself).

Does it look rather stable as you raise it, or does it have the "wet spaghetti" look?  I'm guessing the former if it's 8" pipe.

The flanges were already on the pivot irrigator piping, although I did add the gussets that are welded to the flanges. 

The tower seems very solid so far, but I haven't raised it with the gen installed yet.

[kitestrings]

nekit,

Some interesting ideas (adjustable tail angle, top mount slriprings, damper), and exceptional workmanship!

The rectifier looks small for a 17' turbine and doesn't apper to be heat-sunk, but I could be reading it wrong.

Please keep us poste don you progress.

kindly,  ~kitestrings

[nekit]

 Got the tail feathers done the other day.  It's fiberglass with foam core.  Pretty light and strong.  I think if I have to make another, I would just make it out of aluminium with some ribs bent in it like Bergey does.  It would be a lot less work.