My Latest Projects

[bryan1]

Hiya Guy's
Well I've been busy I'm finally on making up my fisher& paykel wind genny but it's not so urgent now as I have to wait until I can get the new shunt regulator Oatley's are bringing out and my new 3kw sinewave inverter won't be here until the end of the month. I recently got 30 - 6 volt 105 amp/hour agm batteries for $250 so these batteries will be the base behind the new power scheme for my shed. As I already have 8-65 watt solar panels hooked upto 2 - 12 volt 200 amp/hour wet cell batteries and a 1700 watt mod sinewave inverter which isn't much chop. Anyway I'll take 6 of those 65 watt panels for the new array and keep the other 2 for the wet cells and change the panels back to 12 volts. This way I can dedicate the new battery array to the more seroius stuff like running my lathes and mills and the wet cells can have a mundane life providing lights and a 12 volt power source.

Another project is using a 5hp briggs & stratton motor hooked up to an F&P and I'm going to see how much amps I can get before the magnet stator melts but it doesn't matter as I can get F&P motors cheap but the idea is at what rpm 1400 or 1600 will give over a kilowatt of power at 24 volts. My mate who is a pioneer with the F&P is willing to help in this project so it could prove fruitfull.

So here's a topic revelant to alternate energy and I love love some comments to come in as I'm totally reliant on R.E. and I would like this part of the forum to be more Alternate Energy rather than scams like sterion etc.

Cheers Bryan

 

[Hero999]

What about safety, are you going to have fuses on the batteries and earth one side of the output from the inverter for the neutral connection?

 

[Pommie]

Brian,

Could I inquire where you get your F&P motors from. I see from another thread you only pay $20 for them. At that price (or even double) I am very interested.

Mike.

 

[bryan1]

Hiya Mike,
If you look at the freecycle website in your local area I'm sure F&P washing machines will comeup all the time like they do in Adelaide. Anyway my good mate has a deal with a local scrap mob and gets them for nothing and when I need one I pay him $20 to strip the washing machine down. Also mate checkout the backshed link I've put in the sticky as that site has everything you need to know about F&P gennies also with a great Aussie forum.

Hero Wrote;
What about safety, are you going to have fuses on the batteries and earth one side of the output from the inverter for the neutral connection?

Of course i'll have fuses setup, all my solar array's already have fuse's in place. Now where on earth did you comeup with the neutral connection on an inverter is 24 volts DC input and 240 volts AC output .
The shunt regulator will cut the load to the batteries when a preset voltage is reached and will be diverted to a dumpload which will be around 80 metres of heating wire setup as 4x20 metre strands in parrallel. This will all depend on what Oatley's bringout with their new improved shunt regulator kit.

Anyway when I get my new digital camera I'll put some photo's up to show my setup.

Cheers Bryan

 

[bryan1]

Hiya Guy's,
Well yesterday for a sum of $400 Oz money I managed to pick up 24 2 volt 275 amp/hour batteries which came off a ups system that never went into backup mode. I intend to set these up as 24 volt array's and put them in parrallel with my house batteries which are 12- 2 volt 600 amp/hours. Silly me forgot to get some S.S. bolts today so I'll have to wait until monday to get them setup. On measuring each battery they each measured between 2.22 to 2.25 volt which means they are still fully charged. Now I did the sums today and off memory I should have around 13,600 amp/hours for my house array. Not bad, I reckon it's time to install a 2hp split aircon for summer and when the mass's in town are suffering from power drop outs we'll be laughing and staying cool. Now when I finally get around to hooking up a wind genny on the house array I reckon I can get a mains system hot water tank put 24 volt heating elements into it and heat my water from the excess power from the wind genny and still keep the batteries in a good state due to the 14 kaneka thin film panels on the roof and the wind genny spinning away.

Anyway when I finally get my new digi camera I'll take some picks and throw into my anotherpower album **broken link removed**

I haven't upadat the album for a while but the album does show some of my gear on the farm

Cheers Bryan

 

[Hero999]

Now where on earth did you comeup with the neutral connection on an inverter is 24 volts DC input and 240 volts AC output .

Some inverters internally have the neutral connected to DC 0V, this is how it should be since if the AC is connected to the DC bus a fuse will blow while some inverters have the output totally isolated from the input. Either way in a domestic environment the neutral connection should be earth-bonded using a a large metal stake in the ground, it's probably easiest to just connect it to the cold water pipe which will be earthed anyway.

 

[casdon56]

thanks for your info....they are realy nice!

 

[williB]

hey Bryan,
You could send the excess power from the solar to water heaters and skip the dump load alltogether , good stuff !

 

[Pommie]

With regard to windmill design or rather windmill electronic controller design. Does anyone know of any sites that discuss the relationship between windspeed, power and efficiency.

For example,
In a 20mph wind, as I take more current the voltage will drop and the blades will slow down. At some point I will get maximum power out of the 20mph wind. If my blades go 60rpm with no load, I may get maximum power at 54rpm(10% slip) or 30rpm (50% slip). Is there an equation or rule of thumb to calculate the ideal "slip".

Mike.

 

[casdon56]

Thats Good, I Like Your Work

 

[williB]

With regard to windmill design or rather windmill electronic controller design. Does anyone know of any sites that discuss the relationship between windspeed, power and efficiency.

For example,
In a 20mph wind, as I take more current the voltage will drop and the blades will slow down. At some point I will get maximum power out of the 20mph wind. If my blades go 60rpm with no load, I may get maximum power at 54rpm(10% slip) or 30rpm (50% slip). Is there an equation or rule of thumb to calculate the ideal "slip".

Mike.

i think the only way to determine , the relationship between windspeed, power and efficiency is by actual testing of the blades and alt together..
This is the main reason i am making my data logger , to be able to say my blade design will produce Y power at X windspeed....
the blade calculator below will show the relationship between blade output power and windspeed and efficiency of the blades (not the alternator)

**broken link removed**
i also use warlock blade calculator ,but the site is not up at the moment for download...

 

[williB]

Warlock is back up .
i like this calculator because it gives the chord length in inches
https://www.warlock.com.au/bladecalc-abstract.htm

 

[bryan1]

Hiya Guy's,
Well it looks like I'm getting hold of 4 new solar panels, each panel is rated at 175 watts with 36 volts dc output. My mate who already has one has managed to split the panels to get 3 strings at 12 volts. So I have a spare plasmatronics 24 volt solar controller and I'm going to setup the new 275 amp/hour batteries in 2 strings of 24 volts and put them in parrallel to my current battery array. Now with the increased solar array I'm putting in I will have about 1.6Kw of solar power and around 1600 amp/hours worth of agm battery power. Now with the extra Re capacity I will be able to turn my fridge over from using gas to electricty, be able to heat water and in all I should be able to cut our monthly bill by about a 1/2 of the current spending and with the cost of the upgrade I will amortize it within 2 years.

Cheers Bryan

 

[mramos1]

Where did you get the panels? They sound nice for sure. Were they expensive?

 

[bryan1]

Where did you get the panels? They sound nice for sure. Were they expensive?

Hiya Mramos,
Well a mate of mine found a bloke selling them and got onto me straight away, they cost $500 each and on research the price of a new one is about $1,700-$1,800 each. I was supposed to get them today but the bloke selling them went fishing for the day so I'll pick them up tomorrow arvo. Also my 3kw sinewave inverter will be finally turning up this week so as far as RE goes I'm in for a big week. Once I get everything hopefully I can borrow my works digi camera so i can get a few photo's.

Cheers Bryan

 

[mramos1]

Bryan1,

Please post pictures and plans. We have plenty of Sun where I live. 3Kw would be nice. I have items in my house that run all day and would like to knock them off the electric bill. I could power my computer room with it for sure.

 

[bryan1]

Hiya Mramos,
I got those panels home today and this weekend i'm borrowing the digital camera from work so I'll be able to take some photo's. I'm looking for a mppt to put on these panel and the morining star looks like the one I'll get as it's only $199 US whereas the Aerl-900b one I have on my current solar array is over $1,400 Oz. Hopefully my 3 kw inverter will turnup before the weekend as I'm keen to get it up and running so I can finally utilize those 6 volt 105 amp/hour batteries I got a couple of months ago and their just sitting there floating at the moment.

Anyway give me a couple of days and I'll get some photo's up here.

Cheers Bryan

 

[mramos1]

Glad you got them. And thank for future pics. I think I need to build something as well. $400 US electric bills are getting old. Mostly kids and computers. Maybe flip hot water to solar. Bought a 3'x4' fesnel lens and can not think of a good use for it, unless melting pennies counts. Maybe hot water, but it gets really hot. I have no wind, to I have to count on the sun.

 

[bryan1]

Hiya Guy's,
Well here's a pic of those solar panels I got, I've taken the photo beside my 5,000 gallon rainwater tank to show a size relationship. Sometime this weekend i'm going to put all 4 panels in parrallel to see how much short circuit current I get to establish what size charge controller I'll need.




Cheers Bryan

 

[mramos1]

That is nice.. Wish I could find a deal like that here. If I found the deal, the shipping would kill me.