wind turbine

[snowcat]

Not wishing to drag another thread off topic, but you don't vote Conservative by any chance, Snowy?! Mind you with the wishy-washy attitude they're adopting these days I might even consider Robert Kilroy-Silk's lot!!! On second thoughts, maybe not.


I would have thought it'd be easier to build a 240V AC turbine but that's only because I understand nothing of electronics. Having said that, surely going for an integrated system with electronics and batteries means more flexibility in the building and running of the turbine and storage of power from the turbine so less need to run the genny. Problem is I suspect the electronic gubbins are F'in pricey...

Conservative, hummmmmmm, thatcher, Blair, brown, camaroooooon, I hate em all, and vote monster raving, tho lordy suchhh is no more (i think), tho even nailed in his box he would have more logic, than the running I had with the EA yesterday, flankers, getting the picture arch.....




Theres a few designs it appears on using squirrel cage motors to control A/C output to 240V A/C...... the problem to me, is always with all these sorts of things the storage is the bugbear, an A/C electric motor is massively efficient, but its completely inefficient by the time you've juiced up battery's, ran the stuff through an inverter and steeped it back to 240V...........mmmmhhhhh, its a quandary as logic says 24/48 is the tried tested method, but 240 is the engineering soulotion....... I'm actually incredibly disheartened by everything iv read, so I'm going nuclear, heavy waters out the question, so graphite controlled maybe????? anyone made a DIY centrifuge???

 

[Drains]

Trouble with 240v ac 50hz is you have to either keep the turbine running at the right speed regardless of the windspeed/ use a gearbox (or v. fancy hydraulic variable gearbox system, ahem), or invert it. Which is by far the easiest option. So you might as well rectify your 5/7/9 pole turbine generator output to dc and stick it in a battery, where it'll be useful when the wind dies down.

And archie, don't get Snowy talking about politics, Pleeeese !!!

 

[Archie]

Yet again Snowy, you speak absolute sense. Nuclear is the only way forward! Pity about all the greens and the 'Rainbow Warrior' or whatever it's called making such a rumpus over Chernobyl. For heaven's sake they were Russians and the place had less computing power than my desktop! Perhaps you should look in the members list for any North Korean members and ask them for a manual.....

 

[Archie]

Keeping the thing spinning at the right speed is also horribly inefficient. Either you need to dump power though a large resistor or you need to brake the thing or have variable pitch blades to bring it towards a stall. And those are all things to do if it's going too fast. I have no idea what you do if it's going too slow!

Sorry, Si. Have I started something?!! TBH, you don't want to get me on politics either!

 

[snowcat]

politics, rants???? you must have me confused with someone else Simon maybe Paul.......???

Yep Chernobyl was just purely a rotten design, without boring everyone with the details, the old graphite controlled reactors designed in the USSR become unstable at low power.........hmmmmm not good if your running a test to essentially stall the reactor, and to boot disconnect half the safety systems which should have stopped the graphite going into melt down...... still I have a feeling that when were all living on silent green, swampy might wish to have a reactor or two up and running.........


So variable gearbox si, anychance of tucking one in yer lunch bag, say you had a particularly large "piece" (I think thats what you lads call it)........ Johnny Cash built a hole car that way yer know......

 

[rusty69bus]

is there no variable prop blades that could be set up to a maxium speed?

 

[HasBean]

Off topic a bit I know but my Dad went back to Brittany for my Uncles 50th wedding anniversary a couple of weeks ago and found loads of these turbines had sprouted up everywhere

Indeed you can't escape them, whenever you switch the telly on there they are, a ghost moving in the back of the telly

They are not happy bunnies
(Neither am I, didn't bring me back enough pate )

 

[rusty69bus]

Ooo there is 'stalling'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine_design

 

[snowcat]

is there no variable prop blades that could be set up to a maxium speed?

Id imagine its possible to create an electronic clutch on the input shaft to reg the maximum speed, a decent (not Mickey mouse) turbine has to lock in high winds anyway to prevent damage......

 

[Archie]

You've probably found this already Snowy bit in the off chance you haven't it's got some really good info on it. I've been reading all morning!

 

[JW240]

One good thing about Piggott is he lives in a very (VERY) windy coastal village in Western Scotland where thay have no grid power. He's been building and mending turbines for over 30 years, and he knows what lasts, and what doesn't. His site will give you some good advice re turbines to avoid. The good thing about his home-made turbines is the bearing assemblies are based on vehicle hubs/drums. Build one around a lorry brake drum, it'll last a while...

http://www.otherpower.com/bdwm53.html

they have been using Volvo 240 hubs/bearings with success. easy to find as well. The bearings are adjustable so even a old set can be fixed up to last a long time again (on my Volvo i only had to adjust a bearing after 250kkm iirc, roughly equivalent to 1 year continuous duty).

A hub from a trailer would be an even better choice (and maybe stronger if you take one from a big trailer) since the spindle is probably easier to mount.

 

[storm monkey]

There was a lad in the states who collected enough radioactive material out of lumionus clock faces, smoke detectors etc, and managed to reach critical mass. He had it kicking out some heat before the FBI arrested him on suspision of terrorism. This was before guantanamo, so he wasn't just locked away forever, and charges were dropped as he was just a really bright, damn stupid teenager, playing at home made nuclear reactions. Think he works for one of the US energy/research groups now.

Anyway, the moral is, home nuclear is possible, if not practicle!

Phil

P.s, give me a call in 50 years when you've finished with it......I'm nuclear decomissioning Engineer now!

 

[dutchman]

I thought (or at least, so I heard and read) that if we go all nuclear, practically all uranium that can be easily accessed would be used up within 5 years. Thereby making the "go nuclear" option a drop on a hot plate. ie not very effective.
Anyone have any thoughts about that?

 

[Archie]

If we use breeder reactors then we can use a much greater proportion of the original 'fuel' put in. The idea is that the breakdown of the initial fuel creates further fissionable isotopes. Couple that with reprocessing which, IIRC, allows about 94% (read that at the Science Museum on a school trip years ago) of the waste to be reused and we have a fairly long lasting supply in the order of tens of thousands of years.

I'm afraid I'm a bit of a nuclear fan and can't really understand the irrational fear of the word the general British public has. As an example, I'm sure someone here will have had an MRI scan. I have. The original acronym for this was NMRI standing for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging. This a far better description of what the machine does but no one would get in it so they dropped the nuclear despite the fact that the thing relies on magnets to detect the shielding of the nuclei of atoms. There's no radiation involved at all!

Sorry that was a bit of a rant. Bit of a bugbear of mine. I MUST NOT HIJACK THREADS!!!

 

[Luke]

a mate of mine has been using a DIY design wind turbine for a couple of years now.

home made windings, potted in epoxy. trailer hub butchered for a bearing assembly. he bought the vanes in, as their perfomance far exceeded anything he could make.

12v, dumped in to a bank of big batteries. 12v DC-DC PSU for 12v lighting throughout the house, and a inverter for 240v. Aga negates the need for a kettle/oven!

 

[angusb]

a mate of mine has been using a DIY design wind turbine for a couple of years now.

home made windings, potted in epoxy. trailer hub butchered for a bearing assembly. he bought the vanes in, as their perfomance far exceeded anything he could make.

12v, dumped in to a bank of big batteries. 12v DC-DC PSU for 12v lighting throughout the house, and a inverter for 240v. Aga negates the need for a kettle/oven!

12v devices in the house save a lot of hassle - here is a good basic example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-tmSWf89W0

Since the nuclear discussion has started I think it needs to be said that we are not far off a working tokamak fusion device now (50 years is a popular estimate) so the possibility of using fission for thousands of years hopefully won't be necessary

 

[Archie]

Hopefully in 50 years we will see the first commercial fusion-driven power stations but there's still a vast amount of work to be done and we need a realistic stopgap solution. It'll be more like 100 years before we can get a meaningful number up and running. Maybe instead of funding half the pointless things the government currently does, they should funnel a load more money into fusion and see if we can't get it up and running a bit quicker!

I'm not hugely into wind turbines etc (read hate them ) because I think we're being pushed away from the engineering solution (nuclear) by an irrational fear of a name drummed up by a load of loudmouthed swampys. Energy saving, on the other hand, makes total sense to me. Why throw away the energy we're paying through the nose for when there are plenty of simple and practical ways of keeping it.

Saying that, having read the otherpower site, all I want to do now is head home, order a large pile of materials and start building a sod off wind turbine!!!

 

[angusb]

Just read the otherpower article - love the way they made it all, really simple. I think this kind of thing is really useful but the only way we will get a realistic stopgap solution is going to be a mixture of technologies. The wind/wave/solar sources all have their place but I can't see us being able to avoid nuclear fission as a source.

 

[Shug]

There was a lad in the states who collected enough radioactive material out of lumionus clock faces, smoke detectors etc, and managed to reach critical mass. He had it kicking out some heat before the FBI arrested him on suspision of terrorism. This was before guantanamo, so he wasn't just locked away forever, and charges were dropped as he was just a really bright, damn stupid teenager, playing at home made nuclear reactions. Think he works for one of the US energy/research groups now.

Anyway, the moral is, home nuclear is possible, if not practicle!

Phil

P.s, give me a call in 50 years when you've finished with it......I'm nuclear decomissioning Engineer now!

This the guy?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Radioactive...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1225455908&sr=8-1

Makes interesting reading.

 

[snowcat]

Iv now been asked to get involved with a few of these "green projects", (heat pumps, biomass heaters, and now wind) and TBH once Iv done the research on most, I decide not to get involved, all are basically little more than snake oil......... yes honestly I do believe Nuclear is the only real alternative energy, the problem with most who protest, is they don't actually approve of any forms of energy, nuclear is dangerous, oil/coal/gas polluting, wind farms/ ugly/ and detrimental to the wildlife, as is wave........

Most complainers don't want to hear soloutions.........