Powerspout documents for download

Powerspout turbines do not come with paper manuals included, because the manuals are online in the Document Index.

 

You can find the index on the web site under “Advice and Resources”.  We put a lot of work into preparation of these documents and trying to keep them updated over the years.  You can find a lot more than just product manuals here.  Documents can be viewed online or downloaded as pdfs.

A known issue with manuals is that once you include all the useful information you can think of, the manual becomes too long and boring so nobody can read it.  So we also did some more concise “check lists” keeping them to only four pages of really essential information.

And there is much more than just these manuals!  For newcomers there is the “Getting started guide” in the section titled “Planning your system“.  Also in this section is the guide to the Calculators that we use to quickly assess sites and consider different turbine types and sizes of pipes etc that could be used.  It’s a bit of a learning curve, so you may prefer to just have a conversation and let us do the calculations, which we are happy to do, but this tool is what we use and it is a wonderful resource.

There is a lot to consider when designing a power system and there are plenty more documents to help with this.  Whether you have a battery system and want help with MPPT controllers or you are connecting your Powerspout to the grid with a PV inverter there are guides to several different brands and models in the index.  There are also numerous documents in the “technical” section to help with understanding how to wire it all up.  For example the guide to the “Powerclamp” is in this section.  You might need a powerclamp to regulate the output voltage in some situations and keep the turbine from running unloaded.

DIY enthusiasts can find a great deal of useful stuff in the index, including a guide to using Smartdrive alternators for renewable energy projects.  Reading this guide you can select the perfect alternator design to go with your wind turbine or waterwheel or perpetual energy device or whatever you have cooked up.  There are also guides to DIY flow control systems that can manage a turbine on sites with variable flow rates.

Importantly for turbine owners there are guides to maintaining your Powerspout which mainly consists of monitoring and greasing and replacing the bearings over the years.

There is much more in the index including case studies and videos of installations.  Also information about the very successful solar pumps that Powerspout have developed in recent years.

I hope this helps to open people’s eyes to this great resource of information.  But if you do have any questions, I am very much here to find you the answers.

Posted in hydro, PowerSpout hydro turbines, products/technical, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Some Powerspout installations by customers over the last 12 months

Here is a random collection of pictures sent to me by customers with PowerSpout turbines.  In many cases they were still in the throes of installing the turbine(s) so please do not judge too harshly if they look a bit messy.  It’s just to give you a rough idea of some of the sites where I have helped to make hydro power happen recently.

Most of my customers lately have been in the UK, but I work with people all over the world such as the site in the Congo which was for a hospital. I have a number of customers in Ireland, Portugal and South Africa for example.  In most cases I do not get sent any photos but it is really nice to see them when I do.

Posted in PowerSpout hydro turbines, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Materials for my metric Wind Turbine Recipe Book designs

With the publication of an updated 2023 edition of my metric Wind Turbine Recipe Book it seems appropriate to update my suggestions for sourcing materials.  Often the best supplier will be a local one, but I will offer some links to online suppliers below in case this is useful.

This post is mainly for UK readers but if you are in the EU there will be other options that are easier to access such as the Ti-eole shop in France. Ti’eole offer magnets, and steel disks and courses and everything.

Neodymium Magnet Blocks 46mm x 30mm x 10mm thick :
Powermagnetstore have N40.
The web site may display low stock, but they tell me this is not accurate.
“We always stock these magnets ”  See them also on eBay
Guys magnets may have N35 blocks.  These are a bit weaker.

If you want to buy from China then I can recommend Lily as a trusted source for magnets [email protected]

In the EU there is :
Supermagnetic in Germany,
the Ti-eole shop in France
(or Enesmagnets in Poland who can offer 50 x 25 x 12 magnets in N38 which can also work well with the Recipes, slightly adapted.)

Winding wire
I buy my winding wire in 20kg reels from EC wire.
For smaller deals, here is an ebay supplier I found quite easily.

Resins, Vinyl Ester, Epoxy etc
East Coast Fibreglass
Polyfibre
These suppliers also offer the glass cloth you need for reinforcing the resin castings
Mostly I use West Epoxy nowadays for magnet rotor castings for maximum protection of the magnets.

Steel disks
Find a local workshop that offers profile cutting services. Bear in mind that it will be much cheaper to buy a larger batch if possible (shared with friends?). I like to get them sent to be galvanized on their way to me. Another option is to get them powder coated but I don’t find this lasts so long in my maritime environment.
It is fairly simple (if slow) to cut your own disks using a grinder (a big polygon works OK). Harder to get a precise result this way, but provided the assembly is balanced at the end there is no problem.

Trailer hubs
There are several online suppliers.
Trailertek offer stub axles and hubs for small turbines around 2m diameter
(beware of the seal behind the bearings which wears through due to thrust of the wind, so it is safer to remove this seal as the worn out seal causes a very slack bearing.)
You may wish to replace the bearings with decent ones such as SKF or other major brands.
I have also used AutoW for cheap options.
Towsure are another source.

For larger turbines I like to use 5-stud hubs with 140mm PCD (aka 5 1/2″)

I hope this helps. If anyone needs further advice (or if you have a good source to add to the list) please contact me at [email protected]

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Powerspout Pacific island installation video

Background document with photos here.

All Powerspout documents and videos here

Posted in developing world, hydro, People, PowerSpout hydro turbines | Leave a comment

Installing a Powerspout Coanda intake

Some good photos from a recent installation trip to a Pacific Island by Michael Lawley and his son Edward show best practice for installing their Coanda intake. Water is impounded in a small pool behind the intake so that it spills over the rounded crest, over an acceleration plate that keeps the flow adhering to the surface in an even layer at a good velocity to optimise the function of the Coanda screen.

So often I see coanda screens with water flying right over them or poured in a jet onto the middle or submerged in slow flow. Correct installation is the key to getting the benefits of this type of screen, with its specially shaped bars that use the surface tension of the water to separate it from solid particles.

Coanda installation manual is here.

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Estimating your head

I just did a wee video about methods of estimating head and put it on Youtube.  It’s a bit rough in places, but I hope it helps.

Shown in this video are the following methods:

  1. Using a contour map (in this case an ordnance survey map taken on streetmap.co.uk)
  2. Using Google Earth Pro to make a track with an elevation profile
  3. Using a Johnson Sight Level that you can buy on eBay or wherever
  4. Using a “clinometer” app on your phone
  5. Using a pressure gauge on a pipe full of water

I did not mention that you can also use the clinometer to measure the angle of slope, and a long tape to measure distances, and thereby you can calculate the drop based on the triangle calculation for each step of the way.  This can also work well if the device is calibrated.  It also gives you an accurate pipe length.

An accurately calibrated aneroid altimeter can be a possible method on high head sites, but be wary of using GPS altimeters as they are not likely to be very accurate.  Nor is Google Earth, to be honest.  Each of these methods just gives you another rough indication which is why you should use several of them if possible and see if they agree at all with each other.   There are more methods for sure including laser levels and tubes full of water but these are ones that I actually use.

In the end you just need this head measurement to satisfy yourself that your hydro site is going to delivery useful energy.  As a ballpark figure, the output in Watts might be about 5 Watts for every metre of head and litre/second of flow.  So if you have 100m head and 2 l/s flow then you can likely make 5 x 100 x 2 = 1000W or 1kW of power, which after 24 hours adds up to 24kWh units of electrical energy per day.  More than an average home uses.

some links

http://www.microhydropower.net/basics/head.php
https://www.micro-hydro-power.com/how-to-measure-water-head.htm

Head and flow detailed review


Posted in hydro, PowerSpout hydro turbines, Video links | 1 Comment

Nice LH turbine installation

Mill sites are often ideal for the PowerSpout LH turbine.  Here is a nice one in England installed recently.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

More Photos of DIY turbine installations working well

Some recent installations that I have helped with remotely.  The owners of these turbines were kind enough to share these glimpses of the installation process, and of course they went ahead and tidied them up afterwards, but I rarely get the pictures of the final result.

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28-pole PM-generator design by Kragten (plus added rectifier papers)

Adriaan Kragten writes:
Report KD 730 can be copied for free from my website: www.kdwindturbines.nl at the menu KD reports. The title of this report is: “Ideas about a 28-pole, 3-phase permanent magnet generator using the housing and winding of a 4-pole asynchronous motor frame size 80”. This generator is using 28 neodymium magnets size 40 * 7 * 3 mm and the magnet costs only about € 25. It is expected that this generator can be used with the original 230/400 V winding for 24 V battery charging if the winding is rectified in delta.
I have added figure 1 out of this report as an attachment and you can use this figure in a blog about this message.
Nice days
Adriaan Kragten

ADDED 16th January:

Hereby I want to draw your attention to two KD-reports about rectification of an AC current.
Report KD 340 describes 1-phase, 3-phase and 2-phase rectification. Originally only star en delta rectification of a 3-phase current were described but recently I have added chapter 3.2.3 about rectification with three separate 1-phase bridge rectifiers. This way of rectification results in a somewhat higher voltage and power than star rectification but the rectifier losses are higher as the current always flows through six diodes.
Report KD 712 describes 5-phase and 9-phase rectification. Originally only 5-phase rectification was described but recently I have added chapter 6 in which rectification of a 9-phase winding is described. It appears that there are two ways to rectify a 9-phase winding and the way which is described in chapter 6.2 is favorable because this results in the highest power. The winding is split into three, 3-phase windings which are rectified separately. The three, 3-phase rectifiers are connected in series. The advantage of 9-phase rectification is that there is almost no fluctuation on the DC voltage and the DC current. This is of interest if the wind turbine is grid connected by a 3-phase inverter because it eliminates the need of using capacitors to flatten the fluctuations.
Both reports can be copied for free from my website: www.kdwindturbines.nl at the menu KD-reports.
Adriaan Kragten
Posted in Adriaan Kragten, construction | 1 Comment

Details of Ivan’s paint job

Several people have admired the finish on the turbine in my recent post about Ivan Juretic’s turbine, so I asked for details.  Here is what he told me:

Hi Hugh!

The blades and wooden parts of the tail are painted with a transparent polyurethane bi-component glossy varnish “Wood gloss” of Veneziani company.
I have been using this product for many years and I have a really great experience with it. It intensifies the beauty of wood and is extremely resistant to atmospheric agents over years, but is quite demanding for the application.
It is recommended to be applied in many coats, we’ve applied 10 times with brush, and in between coats the surface need to be over and over abrade with fine sanding paper.
All metal parts are galvanized and then yet protected with two layers of high quality coating based on modified epoxy “Hempel’s Selecta Metalni Efekt DTM”.
This paint is easy to aplicate with air spray, and the painted surface looks great with some twinkling sheen. We applied this paint also on the plywood part of th tail.
Some may say it’s all together too much, an exaggeration, but like what you said, and I believe, attention to the detail is always paying off.
In the attachment I’m sending to you Data sheets of both paints what we used and some additional pictures of the painting job!
All the best.
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