WINDPOWER UPDATE FROM MOTHER'S ECO-VILLAGE
The specifics and benefits from Mother's Jacobs wind plant.
 |
MOTHER's 1,800 watt Jacobs windplant has been ""on call"" 24 hours a day for over three years now. BELOW.' Until we implement our planned supplemental photovoltaic system, a portable generator and charger will still be used occasionally to boost the batteries throughout the often windless summer month.
|
For many folks, a marriage of wind and sun may be the best alternative energy system going!
RELATED CONTENT
Carmen's Inertial Storage Transmission is the key to greater car mileage....
These easy to make office paper holders can be made in a matter of minutes from small-mesh wiring....
How to install fencing, including posts, holes, tension, brace, corners, stretchers, wire, filling ...
Inexpensive wire mesh can make gardening easier through trellises, tomato cages and miniature green...
Feedback on ..."How to Mend a Barbed Wire Fence" September/October 1975
by SANDRA FIN...
For about three years now, a rebuilt, 1,800watt Jacobs windplant has been providing much of the energy used by our gardeners in their Eco-Village residence. And despite our fickle North Carolina winds — which are made still more unreliable by the disruptive effect of the terrain on air currents at our 622.4-acre research center—that old bird has managed to keep twelve 790 amp-hour batteries charged from late September through May of each year.
The power stored in those series-wired cells is used to run lights and several small 12-volt appliances in our growers' 32'-diameter yurt. However, to date, the use of the wind--generated electricity has been limited by the amount and type of power available.
Our original scheme for battery-wiring matched the Jacobs' rated output of 32 volts by linking 16 two-volt cells in series. Not only was the generator unable to push much power through our 450 feet of doubled No. 2 aluminum transmission wire at that voltage, but the availability of 32-volt hardware was also quite limited.
Consequently, in 1982 we switched the batteries to 24-volt wiring and arranged to tap off the bank for 12 volts positive or negative (as shown in the accompanying illustration). This approach has kept line loss to a tolerable level at our normal output (10 to 20 amps), allowed the generator to begin sending a usable charging voltage at a lower wind speed, and permitted us to install common 12-volt equipment. The lower-voltage juice is, in other ways, definitely less than ideal: The consequent higher amperage, for example, results in so much resistive power loss that the aluminum cable is effectively turned into a space heater . . . but it has proven to be our only economical choice, since stouter cables cost $1.00 or more per foot.
Our sole significant hardware reliability problem occurred on two occasions, when lightning damaged the blocking diodes (devices that prevent stored battery current from powering the generator during calm spells). We're now fully alert to the fact that if the blades spin frantically on a dog day in July — one that happens to follow a violent electrical storm — trouble has struck again. Thus far, we've been unable to avert the problem completely, but we have come up with what we hope will be a more "expendable" circuit by wiring an inexpensive wafer rectifier parallel to the $30 diode. Lightning-induced surges should burn out the legs costly device first.
