Wind turbines - can be DIY made?

[Andy Hall]

Did that get you use of the container for the WiFi gear and antennas on the mast? or how did you handle those aspects?

[Dave Liquorice]

This is one that could produce a lot of power with little on going costs or waste problems (be that waste CO2 or radioactive). There are a number of reservors around here all are lteting water down to keep the rivers below them flowing. Is there a hydro plant at the bottom of the dams to utilise that free energy source nope...

There is a 675kW hydro plant in the next village. Uses an old industrial dam built to provide power to the water wheels used in the lead works. I doubt many people know it's there. It looks like a slightly large garage and the only noise come from the outflow tube and that is not audible more than 50yds away. 675kW is about 1/3 of power demand for this area... This plant "uses" much less water than is being let down from Cow Green

24/7.

[Dave Liquorice]

No it just got a mains power feed from the TV Tx to our site. We had already got the WiFi kit in place and mast up by "utilising and making safe" the old 405 line transmitter building and mast.

[nightjar]

Traditionally, you use the generator from an old bus and make the rest from other bits of scrap.

Colin Bignell

[Matty F]

There are all kinds of regulations and qualifications needed when you have a steam boiler, because they are dangerous when they blow up. But to avoid that why have a steam reservoir at all? Just have a block of hot steel, and inject some water when needed that turns into steam and runs a turbine & generator.

[nightjar]

Generating electricity from wind turbines is not difficult. Generating it when you need it is more of a problem. The B&Q turbines rely upon mains electricity as a backup. Using the mains supply as the secondary source used to be a breach of most domestic electricity supply contracts and selling domestically generated electricity to the generating companies was once quite unheard of.

Colin Bignell

[Dave Fawthrop]

|> "nightjar .uk.com>" news: [e-mail]... |>>

|>>> ... How much would the parts be? |>>

|>> Traditionally, you use the generator from an old bus and make the rest |>> from other bits of scrap. |>

|> If it's so easy I wonder why aren't people doing it ... or perhaps they |> are and are keeping quiet about the results :-) | |Generating electricity from wind turbines is not difficult. Generating it |when you need it is more of a problem. The B&Q turbines rely upon mains |electricity as a backup. Using the mains supply as the secondary source used |to be a breach of most domestic electricity supply contracts and selling |domestically generated electricity to the generating companies was once |quite unheard of.

Worse synchronising the turbine output with mains AC at the correct frequency, phase etc, then adjusting the phase angle to feed power back into the mains is **VERY** **VERY** difficult. If you do not understand what I said above it is more or less impossible.

[Codswallop]

"dg" wrote: I noticed a wind turbine in B&Q, and it is nothing more than a motor, on a pole with a propellor and some box of electronics.

How are these valued at over £1500 when it seems it can be made for a fraction of that? How much would the parts be?

dg

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It is one of the more difficult diy projects but you can definitely build your own. There's lots of info on the net, e.g.,

luck!

[Andy Hall]

Ah OK. So are you then able to do an omnidirectional coverage of a large-ish area or is this to get the height/distance for a longer point to point connection?

[Gordon Henderson]

You don't even need that - just a good chimney and steam injectors to give it a bit of a push.

A 250psi boiler full of superheated steam (at a few 100C) is a different "kettle" of fish to manage though...

Gordon

[cupra]

It looks like a standard 6 pole AC induction motor to me - the electronics control box has to be powered externally so I suspect they're running a speed controller with zero speed demand, which'd magnetise the motor enough to regen back into the mains as the motor shaft moves.....

[David Hansen]

On Thu, 05 Oct 2006 06:13:52 +0100 someone who may be Dave Fawthrop wrote this:-

It *was* difficult in the days of manual control systems. However, engineering has advanced and now it is very easy, simply a matter of connecting the box between turbine and mains.

[David Hansen]

On Thu, 05 Oct 2006 01:03:20 +0100 (BST) someone who may be "Dave Liquorice" wrote this:-

Then their owner is missing an opportunity. A growing number of small turbines have been installed in just this situation.

[Andy Wade]

There's a link on there to Hugh Piggott's site at

is quite interesting (although not a model for good Web page design). About half-way down the page there's a section headed "rooftop wind turbines are a load of nonsense" - interesting that, coming, as it does, from an obvious home-brew wind power enthusiast.

[Dave Liquorice]

No it's not. Bung it across the mains and it will sync *very* quickly, probably to the detriment of part of your kit though depending on how far out you are. B-)

Commercial boxes can be bought that do everything but these small turbines generate so little power that that expense probably isn't justified. So you then either have a LV battery supply and distribution or some seperate mains via an invertor to seperate mains distribution.

Also the control box needs to fail safe. It *must* disconnect your generated power from the mains when the mains fails but if you are feeding the mains how does it know that the mains has failed?

[David Hansen]

On Wed, 04 Oct 2006 21:05:03 +0100 (BST) someone who may be "Dave Liquorice" wrote this:-

The uninformed might believe your statement indicates that there is something different about wind turbines. However, it is a fact that all forms of electricity generation do not produce 100% of their rated output over a year.

[Huge]

The last time I worked it out for here (when our 'leccy bill hit GBP1K/annum) the repay time for an aerogenerator was in excess of its expected lifetime. Waste of money. We've started an aggressive electricity saving campaign instead.

[Dave Liquorice]

This is a point to point site with links up to 5km or so. APs are also located at good sites and some user links are a few km long. Generally outside of the town there is a small flat plate antenna at the AP and short yagi at the user end.

[Bob Eager]

Rudyard Kipling did it in 1903...!

[Andy Hall]

It's just that the whole exercise was pointless, is pointless and always will be pointless apart from to those gullible enough to spend £1500 on junk in B&Q (and buy Lottery tickets). As long as no return is expected, both seem eminently sensible.