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.