Renewable energy

[Murphyv310]

Hi.
Well the generator has been up long enough to evaluate its performance.
Here in the environment its been mounted it is basically a waste of time. Even with it higher up it is still not consistent to give a reliable output. Even on a day with light winds it does rotate and fairly reliably but not sufficiently to give any charge. With strong winds it does intermittently charge and I've seen over 10 amps for a few seconds. It though is spoiled by turbulence that is an issue in a built up area.

It would for me take a lifetime to recover the money I've spent on it.
I am going to sell it along with the pole and cabling brackets etc. Over all it cost just over £200 I'd probably accept £100 but this needs to be mounted somewhere more open than in a housing scheme.

[Murphyv310]

See this clip.
https://youtu.be/ZSZYktSf1y4

[peter scott]

It looks quite small but is certainly getting a few revs. Can you not mount it on a chimney? It may be against the planning laws but would anyone notice?

Peter

[ppppenguin]

Unless it's a really strong chimney I don't think it would survive.

[Murphyv310]

No I'd not go down the chimney route.
The particular turbine gets good reviews and is a third of the price other sellers were selling it for.
It does work well with the right conditions but they are not consistant enough. I'll only remove it if I get the price I want and being fair it's really a bargain with the pole and brackets etc.

[Murphyv310]

Hi.
After a lot of reading up I decided to try a vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) It came last Monday and was up in the afternoon.
It's been a funny week wind wise, it was nearly calm for a couple of days with only 2-3mph winds. The start up speed is 2 metres per sec which is 4.5mph approx but it did rotate very slowly. The wind did rise later on Wednesday to 10-15 mph which is around 5.5m/s. This is still below the rated speed and although it did spin faster it only got to around 20rpm.
On Thursday the wind was stronger for a couple of hours, enough to blow over a garden chair and slam shut my gate so wind speed must have been around 25mph or just above 11m/s the rated speed of the turbine. Using the charge controller there was no charge at this point and the spin speed was 40-45rpm tops.
I had already lashed up 6x Schottky diodes as a three phase rectifier and a 15000uf cap as a means of measuring the peak DC voltage that the turbine could achieve and the best I could get was 6v and that's off load remember. There was also some gusting but the rotational speed remained the same. Last night it was really windy which woke me up and when I checked early this morning the cap only showed 6.1v. With the meter disconnected this cap takes days to discharge even 0.5v.
On youtube they don't get good reports at all with only the odd one working.

I've done a clip but today its not that windy only between 6-8mph, we though are at one of the highest points in Kilmarnock but surrounded with buildings, allegedly these VAWT generators are better for turbulent wind.

https://youtu.be/2QF-aUArPl0

[Murphyv310]

Watch this video and you'll see what I mean.
https://youtu.be/2tuQ_cchxfY

[ppppenguin]

From what I've read, small scale domestic wind energy is rarely worthwhile. Trevor, I think you're disocvering this the hard way. If you're off grid then you want all the electricity you can get.

[peter scott]

I looks like you've confirmed what this guy found Trevor.

https://youtu.be/DUtw4xiveus

Peter

[peter scott]

I shouldn't really show you this Trevor but....

Peter