Overview of %90 completed project
This thing works pretty good. below is my inverter, logger, and panel in the shed, and also my large battery bank. I got lucky on the batteries, they are surplus 2volt cells @ 850 Amp hours, so 6 per bank, 3 banks so far.
This runs my whole house very well. I have had only two things in my house that don't agree with the modified sine from the inverter. Both I don't care about, or will miss. One of the two is kind of a big thing, my stove, but only the oven, as it needs 220VAC. I never use it anyways, I use a small convection oven that works quite well, probably better than the larger oven. If ever a demand arises in the future for a full sized oven, I will probably just put it on the generator as it has a 220VAC supply, and I will make it all automatic for start.
I got lucky - a local battery shop kept there eyes open for some batteries for me. They found some 2VDC cells and I bought as many as I could as they were incredibly cheap. The usually have to pay to dispose of them so they were happy for me to purchase the batteries. These were used in a large UPS system and they were charged 99.9% of the time. They are in excellent condition. You can tell by how much sediment is on the bottom.
These weigh quite a bit! You should of seen how much it squished my truck down with one pallet. There is no way you can lift these units from the truck. Using a motor hoist worked pretty good.
The next step was to build a shelf inside the shed to hold these batteries.
The inverter I use is from Canadian Tire. It is 3000watts and seems to run everything that I need it to. The reason why I use this one is the cost. It was on sale when I bought it. I have no issues with this inverter. Remember, this is a modified sine wave inverter. Here is the link for the inverter.
OK, I cant leave it alone. Here is the newest modifications to make my windmill into a six blade unit. I want to make the startup speed lower. if you look close, you can see a level on it. this is how I balance the blades. I hang them from a thin wire, and level each direction a blade set is. It seems to work very well. I always place the weights at the tips of the blades when I figure out what they need. I usually just use bolts and washers bolted through the wood.
This six blade setup seems to work too well. Now the windmill seems to turn 90% of the time. I will post more pictures when I get them off my camera.
I doubt you can see it, but I really built up the hub to be stronger. I always like over-kill. It can never be too strong.
The blades seem to start very easy now! They make very little noise when the speed get up, but you can hear the blades a touch. I think I like it this way because they seem to regulate themselves very well.
So far testing is pretty good. The windmill starts in about 15km/h wind, and goes up to about 35km/h. After that is tapers out of the wind. I generate about 10amps at 20km/h and 50-60amps at 35km/h. The voltage is about 28VDC, so if you figure this out it would be 1680 watts. But I hate those figures, I go by this, my batteries only use 12.2VDC PEAK charge, so I figure my usable watts is 732watts. If I draw 60amps from the batteries into the inverter, it is about 800watts @ 117VAC for the house. Now that the windmill runs what almost seems constantly, I should have tons of power from this.
I will post a video, you can hear me holding the camera the wind is so calm, but the windmill is turning. It was at night so sorry, its a bit DARK. Its 5 megs large so might take a while to download!
Next change
I think the tail seems small. At times the windmill seems to hunt for the wind. I am going to try a larger tail and I believe this will do two things. First of all with the larger tail, it will force it into the right direction sooner, and also because of the additional weight from the tail, it will raise the wind-speed that it normally tapers out of the wind.
This next weekend I am installing and I will let you know how it goes.
Well, the tail seems to force the windmill into the wind sooner. I also reduced the size of the blades again so now they are 5 feet radius total. It turns a bit faster and therefore it starts to produce power in much lower winds. I am trying to find a balance as I don't want them too small and have too much RPM. I think I am getting close, but now I have to wait and see what the peak RPM will be in larger winds before it starts to furl out of the wind.
This unit is now producing power in winds of 15 KM/H at about 10 to 15 AMPS @ 12 VDC. I will post what I see if I get a day that the winds are higher, for some time now we have had little wind to complete testing in. This is rare where I live, but its probably due to the fact that I want to test that its not windy! It has been calm for about a week and a half now.
