WindyNation's Complete Wind Turbine

Hi Guys,

It has been several months since I have posted mostly because we have been working non-stop on our complete wind turbine unit. It will come "ready to fly" and even includes a brushless slip ring. The furling tail is based off of Hugh Piggott's design and starts to furl at around ~33 mph. Anyways, enough rambling. The point of this post is to share some of the video footage of the turbine with you.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkAuEkEj5js

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u29HzfJGYg

[Gotwind Ben]

Mmm.
The turbine looks a little flimsey to my eye.
Take a look at Hughs construction techniques, super strong in all aspects.

Nice furling though.
Might be worth testing to destruction on some remote windy farm, stand well back :D

Not sure what you mean by Flimsy. That is 1/4 inch thick steel plate and all stress, strain and load bearing force calculations have been done. On top of that, we have tested the #$%! out of this thing. This is not a Hugh Piggott copy cat turbine. I was only stating that it furls in a similar manner to his design and I wanted to give him credit for that.

It has seen 70 mph winds (112 kph) and it handles that wind speed just fine. It is fully furled at that wind speed. But if you got a REALLY windy place near you, I could send you one for free to see if you could destroy it. You would just need to pay for shipping (and wait until mid-September which is when the final version will be ready).

I will take some close-up pics of the mount when I have some free time. I think that will give you a much better idea of what it looks like.

Hey, put it next to an Airx and then say which one looks flimsy :D.

Other than what Ben said.

The thing is gawd awful loud.
If the wind speed is 12MPH all day, it makes no power (4:15, 4:18).
100W at 20MPH (4:25).
The "truck test" is known to be faulty and give higher wind at the blades than the speedometer.

I don't doubt some of the sub assemblies are OK when looked at individually.
The videos look like a hodge podge of miscellaneous stray mismatched parts.

Ghurd if you have ever filmed a wind turbine, you would know that the sound of the blades in the video footage is a lot louder than the actual sound in "real-life". I could supply you with the e-mail addresses of over 500 customers of own these EXACT blades and they could confirm this. (I Would of course need to get their permission first before releasing their e-mail address to you.) BTW, we have sold over 7000 blades now and I have never received a complaint with respect to the blades being too noisy. I know you are going to accuse me of fabricating those numbers but, oh well.

Your second point is well founded but completely incorrect. The "cut-in" speed for a 24 volt battery bank is 8 mph. The reason you see no amps into the battery is because the blades require time to come up to speed and equilibriate their rpm. I could drive a long at 8 mph while filming and show amps going to the battery bank.

You say the "videos look like a hodge podge of miscellaneous stray mismatched parts". Well, that is not the feedback I got from about the 10 e-mails I have received so far from people who have found the video on youtube and contacted us. They are impressed with the design and enjoyed the close-up video footage of a turbine furling. Furthermore, I clearly state in the video that this is a prototype. There is exists no finalized part on that prototype turbine in the video except the generator head, hub and blades. Therefore, it is very natural for the turbine to appear "unfinished". You know, if you were to have seen some of the optical set-ups I built during my Ph D, you would have been the guy who would have said "this set-up looks like a worthless cluster &*%$". But, we were able to publish some really interesting papers using that set-up and eventually we refined that set-up to a very professional install in which other labs on campus came to use.

No words of encouragement. No constructive cristiscm. Just direct and inferred insults.

Thanks for your feedback. I guess we should scrap the entire design because Emperor Ghurd does not like it.


PS -- Can you please refer me to some peer review published literature that indicates a test truck provides higher wind speeds at the blades than the speedometer? If this is "known" as you say, then it must have been studied and reported?

Windy Nation,

I think it is refreshing to see someone employ engineering principals and follow them up with real world tests. Building a prototype and testing it prior to finalizing a design, that is very unusual in the hobby side of RE, and not much more prevalent in most direct to consumer MFGs, so, again, I find these videos refreshing, not an obvious target for ridicule.

Ben, Ghurd,

So I am a bit confused by the hostility. Does Windy Nation have some bad history I am unaware of? Is the fact that he is obviously intending his project to become a for-profit product garner him wrath for displaying a prototype? I only ask because this is not generally the way projects are received here, at least not in my tenure as a member.

To All,

The physics of wind mills pretty much preclude small turbines from producing much power. Claiming 500W @ ~27mph is not unreasonable for a 4 foot diameter turbine, but in a nearly perfect world the same turbine would produce less than 100W @ 15mph, and less than 20W @ 8mph. There are very few locations where such a turbine would be economically viable, but there are a lot of people who want one regardless of the economic viability. So, would I invest my money in such a turbine? No, but not because I see anything fundamentally wrong with Windy Nation's approach, or Prototype, but simply because I do not live in an area with sustained 25+mph winds, and even if I did, I cannot see 360kWh a month largely impacting my consumption. A 20ft diameter turbine has the potential to produce ~1.5kWh @ 15mph and ~15kWh @ 30mph. I would consider investing a fair amount of money into such a turbine in the right area, but here I am in the minority. Most people want to make a small investment for the right reason regardless of the viability, and very few are willing to make a large investment that actually has a chance of paying off. So, in short, I think Windy Nation's approach is sound from the perspective of developing small, affordable wind turbines for people who want to "feel good" or charge the batteries in a windy, remote location, but even if there were 100,000 of these in operation turned into 15mph winds we are only talking about 10,000kW of power while a single large turbine might produce the same power at a fraction of the cost.

Again, if Windy Nation has previously proven himself to be an unsavory character, or is in some way disreputable then I am not attempting to promote him or his products; however, if he has not, then I find it quite odd that he has been treated with such hostility for posting about his prototype.

Fish

Fish4Fun,

Thank you for the post.

One small correction: The turbine is has a ~7.7 ft. blade diameter, not 4 ft.

I completely agree with you that one of these turbines is not going to even make a dent in your electric bill. But, a majority of our customers live off grid so they have no other option but to go with wind, solar or hydro. Additionally, many of our customers have structures on their large properties which have no power and it is cheaper for them to put up a turbine/solar than bring the grid to that location. Finally, we have lots of DIY customers who simply enjoy building things.

I can confidently say that I have never criticized, insulted or "picked a fight", with Ben or Ghurd. Simply put, I have never treated either of them disrespectfully.

I have noticed that people have pretty much stopped posting on this forum. And I can not help but wonder if it is because they are treated so negatively.

I actually received a private message yesterday on gotwind from another member. He said that he stills reads forum postings on gotwind but has stopped posting himself because of the negativity on the forum boards. Ben, you could probably give Ghurd a big THANK YOU for that.

[Gotwind Ben]

I think I had better step in at this point.

The purpose of Gotwind (to include this forum) has always been, from my mission statement in 2006.
'To share ideas and thoughts on the design and building of renewable energy projects'.

Now please let me share something with you.
I spend every day monitoring this forum myself for free, listening, reading, and helping if I can, and always bow to an experts opinion, Ghurd being one of them in certain areas.

Other duties involve banning and deleting the ever more spam crap on the forum which is almost a job in its self..
Therefore I am often cautious when a new member posts a product(s) for sale (that also includes a direct web link to their own website) - I check it it out and evaluate as best I can.

I don't think I am ever negative about projects, quite the opposite, I welcome them.
I simply say what I see/read, from both experience and the safety aspect that I apply to my own projects.

Let's not forget, Myself and a partner (2 guys) designed, built and had shipped a metric tonne 7000 miles from the U.K. to Las Vegas, to reach the exacting U.S. Fire Marshal laws - the LG Skycharger. - It almost killed us delivering it on time..
http://www.gotwind.org/lg_skycharger_recharge_pod.htm

I am not a novice - but happy to admit I'm still learning myself.
I've made countless mistakes - but hopefully learnt, a little bit :)

I hope this forum thread can continue on a more positive line of communication.

did i miss it? seems there must have been more to this thread and it was edited out?

windy, that should be a good kit for folks when it's ready for release. right now the individual sub assemblies
are looking really good!

not sure where that emperor stuff came from? but it's good to have someone around who will stand up and say "hey! that guy has no clothes"

cheers, dave

[Gotwind Ben]

Nothing edited here,
If i do occasionally tidy up a post, usually grammer/ spelling, I always comment at the base of the posted message.