hi, im designing a wind turbine
 

Hi, Im going to be moving to Fairbanks Alaska in about 18 months, going to be buying me a piece of land and build a house on it, but for power i wanted wind turbine, ive been designing a turbine on paper at least that i want to build, never buildt one before but its the kind of stuff i enjoy doing. anyway, for my wind turbine i have a few issues im trying to work out (id like to work out a good theory and design before building, since ill be building it on site when i get there, with no grid. luckily i can live with low power tho id like to eventually get 10 kw - 20kw which should be plenty for my home. can even be achieved with multiple turbines

well heres the issues ive been trying to solve.

1. how much average wind speed is there even in fairbanks alaska
2. im working out a verticle design, tho what would be more efficient and cost effective, verticle or a more normal WT
3. braking system, is there a motor that doesnt need a braking system, is the braking system buildt into the motor or am i going to have to build the braking system myself? and how does the braking system fully work on a WT
4. so the math part, dont know the equations, for either a verticle or normal WT with either a 10 or 20 kw motor or 4 times 5 kw motor wind turbines, how big would the fins need to be to properly produce electricity. (and height, how high would the wind mill need to be)
5. are there any zoning restrictions for the height of a windmill in fairbanks. (ive heard of places that do)

so far those are the things im trying to figure out, thanks in advanced.


Edit. i found a decent comparison of VAWT vs HAWT and it seems a HAWT is a better choice overall, so ill change my original design to a HAWT and will just work from there. the issues still are issues just deciding to go with HAWT :)

meescha

I looked into turbines a while ago then realised just how big i would need to build to make any useful power and abandoned the idea.

You need to find out the wind speeds then put numbers into this calculator and see the results Turbine Calculator

You will likely be surprised just how big a turbine you will need.

Steve

hi Ormston,

yea i know itll be big, but my house will be in the middle of nowhere, and insta,lling power lines to tie into the grid is going to be even more tricky. i found a decent link with a kit, (id post it but the site wont let me yet ) its from prairie turbines

the big kit they offer is 10 kw, for 8k, tho i dont know if i like the idea of wood blades, but id love to build my own, plus, once i move there i plan on going to school for engeneering, i may not be very knowlegable now, but i do plan on getting knowlegable.

i technically dont need to build my own i could buy one, but id rather reduce costs, and have fun doing it :)

Big as in needing a crane to put it up right?

yea tho if you anchor the bottom of the pole properly theres a way to put up the pole without a crane. like using a hinge pivot, but we are also very power conservative and only really need a 5 kw wind turbine. tho im going to put up multiples, rather have more then less.

w w w . prairieturbines.com/otherpix/img_0812.jpg

so far it seems like people think even renting our buying a crane is difficult, im going to alaska and building an entire house, ill need to use heavy equipment either way.

Direct pic link:
http://www.prairieturbines.com/otherpix/img_0812.jpg

Here's a graph showing average annual wind speed:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HDASYIwAI6...9_Stations.png

I hate to break this to you, but Fairbanks got its name from its weather conditions. It's well below average for both Alaska and the lower 48 for average and maximum wind speed. The recorded top speed is only 22 mph. Not a great place to build a wind farm.

Hi jeff5may,

Thank you that wind speed graph is very usefull, do you have any other suggestions for electricity, i thought about solar but in the winter, well the lowest average daylight it sais is 4 hours, but considering you drive a little bit more north and theres 0 daylight in the winter, how much of that 4 hours can be harvested using solar panels? plus wouldnt solar panels be a bad idea, cause theyd get snow covered?

other then solar and wind are there any other options?

well i was doing a tiny bit of research and using a turbine calculator that ormston posted, with 7 meter rotar diameter, and a 75 percent efficient generator, with a wind of 2 mph id have 12 kw of power, at 4 mph its 101kw, considering annual wind speed of fairbanks is only 4 mph, i could still do wind energy just have to up the diameter of the rotar

Your numbers are off by a factor of well over 1000!
At 2mph the betz limit (maximum possible energy with a perfect generator and rotor) is 10w for a 7M turbine.

Looking at the average wind speed it's just not going to work.

Ormston

lol your right, but it depends where you live, where i currently live we use periods as commas, so to seperate decimals we use periods, its reverse to what the US, ive been here in germany too long lol.

well it seems im pretty much going to have to build one of those commercial wind turbines, which have blades big enough to do what i need at low wind speeds or go with a hybrid system that relies on both wind and solar, or go strictly solar.

well according to google fairbanks recieved 4 hours of sunlight in the winter, im not so much concerned about the summers alot of solar energy there, im nore concerned about the winter, how much of that 4 hours can be harvested, and what kind of a solar system would i be looking at, that can be used for those 4 hours? that could supply 10 kw, i will generally only use 5 kw, but id rather have more when needed.

An 8kW PV array in Fairbanks, AK situated with 180° azimuth, and 65° tilt would generate roughly the following monthly output:

January: 148kWh

February: 449 kWh

March: 901 kWh

April: 1,200 kWh

May: 1,078 kWh

June: 977 kWh

July: 939 kWh

August: 892 kWh

September: 650 kWh

October: 471 kWh

November: 244 kWh

December: 37 kWh

December is going to be tough... Modifying the tilt to 87° only adds 2kWh to December.

I generated this data using PV Watts on the nrel.gov website.

thats very helpfull thanks where2
well im most likely going to still have to do solar, and find out where the nearest grid is, i wont be purchasing the land till summer next year, so i may have to choose land thats near a grid. but i my hosue is 150 feet away from the nearetst power pole, the price to have grid hooked up will go up dramatically, from googling the price for 1 mile is supposedly 80-100k, so if i hook up to the grid ill have to plan accordingly, 80-100k is a bit much, tho tbh for 100k what kind of solar panels could i get lol.
ive read about micro hydro but again thats probably not so good in the winter when the ice could be a few feet thick, no water = no electricity.

does anyone know of any other solutions at least for the winter? or is hooking up to the grid my only option?

Meescha,

HAWT is more efficient than VAWT but VAWT's are easier to build and don't have the furling requirements of HAWT's.

From the wind data it looks like your location is a poor wind decision, sorry, there's no easy way to put it.

You can build your own but once you start getting up to and over 10 foot blades (wood is fine) you are introducing stresses and design requirements that take several built windmills to understand.

Wind is attractive, it looks so easy and we can see it spinning around but it's a bear to do right, take a look at the failures in commercial designs.
Using a crane to hoist a 300 lb windmill up 80 feet isn't just a one time thing. Windmills are mechanical and that means service. Bearings fail, blades fail and alternators fail. They fail when the weather is the worst, the little buggers!

MY suggestion after living with alternatives for several years is to go PV. Prices are under a dollar a watt for systems today and you'll get more bang for your buck than any windmill ever made.
Don't mount your modules on a roof unless you don't have the ground area, snow will kill your output for months. Put them on poles, especially in Alaska where the latitude angles are steep in the winter when you want that snow to slide off the modules. ( I use a foam brush on a long pole to clean off my ground modules and I'm good all winter in the Western Catskills of NY - 42 latitude). Besides if you have a problem nothing is worse then climbing on a roof with 2 feet of snow cover, I've been there!

Once you learn how to live with PV you can experiment with wind which compliments PV, by the way, if you still want to but living with alternatives is a learning curve that you can't get fully out of books.

I started like you, I built my house and then put in a 1400 watt PV system to learn from. Today (10 years later) I have 10.6 Kw's and because I took my time not too many mistakes.

I'm just getting to implement wind (I've been monitoring my wind for years with a high quality monitor, I suggest you do the same) and hydro here so don't rush, that's when you make mistakes.

Rob

Any updates on the project meescha?

At those latitudes, you can set your solar panels vertical, but the snow is usually dry enough to blow off anyway. Reflection from the snow will help make up for the angle, but you can't produce any vitamin D when the sun cutting that much air, and panels perform poorly too.
Most of your neighbors will probably be storing summer solar in biomass for winter use.
Historically, heavy equipment has not been necessary to home construction. Even large masses can be moved by hand. I recommend camping on your land for at least a year to study it and other local habitations before building a foundation. By June you have to learn to sleep before it gets dark.
One caveat on wind towers: Don't attach them to your habitation unless you love noise. If I was going with wind, I'd find a hill where I could have a pond both top and bottom. I'd use micro-hydro to produce power on demand from under the ice, and replenish the upper pond with tanks of water drawn up a railway by kite power.

Meesha,
Sorry if you posted it and I missed it but what is your land acreage? Also do you have streams, steep hills, etc?

Rob

The best source of info for owner-built wind turbines is Other Power, Wind Power | Otherpower
They offer workshops that include actually building a working machine in about 6 days and they have a good book covering the machines and their construction and design. If I was going to build a wind turbine I would follow their designs.

I have however been using a 1940s 2.5kw Jacobs since around 1977 and it is an extremely reliable machine. But--today PVs are so cheap compared to even a few years ago that unless you are in a very good wind site it isn't worth considering a wind turbine instead of PVs. By a "good wind site" I usually mean at least 10 to 12 mph average wind in the vicinity and a site for the tower with no surrounding trees or buildings and the ability to have a tower at least 120 feet tall or taller. And remember no matter what the sales pitch might be, all wind turbines require maintenance, usually at least an annual inspection and bolt tightness check, and this can't be done from the ground.

Having designed and built approximately 600 small wind turbines in the early 1980's I can assure you that the only way to even approach useful power from a turbine, under the conditions you describe, is to build a horizontal axis "drag" machine. think American standard windmill, the type you see pumping water on farms. The blades are flat plates with a high angle of attack, there is no way for any molecule of wind to pass through the disc without imparting its energy to the blades.
Imo your best bet is to buy a diesel generator, run it on bio fuel and invest any cash left over in shares in a solar panel manufacturing company. Sorry.