WHAT ITEMS HAVE A MOTOR THAT IS GOOD FOR A WIND TURBINE GENERATOR?

Hey F…Poppie is quite right, most any DC permanent magnet motor will work for a wind turbine project. We’ve built a couple ourselves, with limited success. Car alternators are a bad idea for two reasons, they are very inefficient, which means they need a tremendous amount of torque for the power they put out, and because they are not permanent magnet generators, the field has to be excited by an external source, in your case your batteries. So whenever the wind dies down, you are using the energy you just produced to keep the field in the alternator magnetized for nothing. What has really worked well for us is the 24 volt electric scooter motor. They are inexpensive, have permanent magnets, and ball bearing races, so they are much more efficient than most other motors. If you have any scooters in your trash pile, check out the motors, most of them are 24 volt DC, most people ditch the scooter because the battery won’t take a charge anymore, but the scooter is okay. Most of them have either a belt pulley, or number 25 chain cog on the shaft. We are in the process of making a stationary bike into an electrical generator with one of these scooter motors. Don’t worry about the voltage difference, the 24 volt motor will charge a 12 volt battery just fine as long as it is a good sized battery, like a marine deep cycle, or golf cart batteries. I would suggest installing a volt meter on the battery to monitor, as long as the battery doesn’t get above 15 volts, there is no problem. You will need some way to shut your wind turbine off, in case you are not using much power on a windy day, and I don’t mean just a switch to disconnect the motor from the battery, that will just allow your turbine to overspeed with no load on it. Something that can stop the blades from turning. What most commercial manufacturers do is put in a double pole switch that disconnects the generator from the battery, and then shorts the two generator leads together at the same time, this allows the generator to work as an induction brake, and slows the blades down almost to a stop magnetically, another good reason to use a permanent magnet generator.

We’ve been powering our home from solar and wind power for almost 10 years now. We’ve made plenty of mistakes and learned a great deal, most of it the hard way. If you’ve checked out the website, “Only renewable dot come,” you might find the videos enticing. The narrator of the vertical wind video quotes, “This is a vertical rotor under no load…” It’s because the rotor spins nicely when you don’t have a generator attached to it. Even if you used the smallest hobby sized generator you could find to generate 5 watts or less, it would sieze that little rotor up and there would be no power output. They neglect to mention or illustrate this. If you want to learn about wind power, torque requirements and power output, go to the source, the American Wind Energy Association. A used squirrel cage impeller from an old air conditioner is not designed to harness power from the wind, and the AC motors attached to them do not have permanent magnets inside. As far as the solar video, the drill battery charger runs fine, as long as it’s plugged into the electrical outlet you can clearly see in the video, not the inverter that they claim is being powered by the homemade solar panel.

There are some other good sources for wind power info you might find interesting, I will list them below. Take your time and digest what you can. Also, take a moment to google, “Renewable Energy Scams,” there are a few websites trying to expose some of the crazy ideas out there. Good luck, and take care…Rudydoo