Wind Tower is up (for now)

[imsmooth]

I have kept a picture log of my project.  I want to thank everyone for their help so far. The last page shows the tower going up with a video link.  I have to wait for some wind.  I have a wall of trees on one side; I am relatively clear on on the other sides.  When the leaves fall I will get a nicer, steadier breeze.

Tower height 36'

Type: guyed

Diameter 8.5'

Generator ouput: have to wait and see what happens

My project is at http://www.mindchallenger.com/wind

[JimmyZ]

Very very cool.You did a nice job on your project.I think I need my gen higher for sure.Thanks for sharing the info.

                  JimmyZ

[Todd a]

More specs....  I like the design of that generator.  Where did you find it?  You have 56 magnets and 42 coils arranged in 3 phases.... right?  That is a 4:3 combination.  That should work good.  170 windings on those blocks does seem a bit much.  That means with you are looking at something crazy like 2380 windings per phase.  If say you get about 4" of wire per wrap then you are looking at about 800 feet of wire.  6 AWG wire does seem a pretty good thickness.  At 800 feet you are around a 6 volt drop at 20 amps.  So if you generator is say 56v and 20 amps, the output is 1000 watts and the heat would be around 120w on your stator.  That does not sound too bad.

I hope I have everything right.  There are only 2 issues I see...  The effectiveness of the blades are likely not too good (low tip speed) and the other is all the trees around your tower.  The generator looks really good and it looks like the tower design and furrowing looks good.

So is it making you your 1000w you wanted?

[imsmooth]

Thanks for the comments Todd.  Each coil has 70 turns.  I also have a stator using 20g wire with 115 turns.  The tower should withstand very strong wind: the anchors should hold over 9000 lbs.  The cable is rated for 1400lbs SWL.  The trees are a problem, unless you like trees which I do.  I hope the winter will work out well without the leaves.

I had a good wind recently, but I did not have an anemometer.  I do now.  The blades were rotating about 200rpm.  What do you suggest for blades?  Bigger diameter?  Airfoil types?

At this time I am not close to 1000w.  Time will tell...