Thanks to Ivan Juretic for these lovely pictures of the wind turbine he built and installed in the mountains of Croatia. I like the style of the tail stops. They are simple and slick.
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- Parts ready for welding
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- Interesting new ideas for the cable ducting and the tail stops.
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- nice castings.
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- Tail in low position. Note the way the stop works.
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- Tail in high position. Again note the stop.
The 24V system details:
2.4 m turbine(connected directly to the battery)
8 PV panels rated power 280 W (connected directly to the battery)
2 forklift truck batteries 12V 120 Ah (to be expanded later),
Victron inverter
2 x TS60 diversion load controllers
2 x temperatures sensors for battery
4 x 1.0 ohm 1000W resistors
AC diversion circuits (using tristar follower):
Under floor heating wires 220 V 2x 500 W
and water heater 220V 2000W 110 lit.
Slick! I especially like the paint job. Does anyone knows if they used anything special?
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More news:
“We finally did all modifications on our wind turbine and yesterday we raised it up again, on the same place near our mountain hut. We are ready for the next episode of adventure!
Because you discouraged us about cheap slip rings solutions, we didn’t wanna risk and at the end we decided to make it by ourselves from a car starter brushes.
We adapted our existing frame and constructed a new yaw axis with the tapered roller bearing. The sliding contacts are quite big and robust on the top of the axis, covered with the weather-sealed metal cap. The real test in the use is in front of us, but everything looks fine and working great for now.
Also we shortened the tail boom for 20 cm, reinforced the tower and welded on it the holder for the personal weather station.. We bought the cheap one (https://www.conrad.com/p/eurochron-efws-2900-efws-2900-wireless-digital-weather-station-forecasts-for-12-to-24-hours-1508025), but its working realy fine, for now: (https://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=IJELENJE2#history)”
Very nice turbine Hugh.
This mountain hill turbine site and thermally driven winds in some respects I presume is similarly like mine. My tower is located overlooking Coyote Canyon in Washington State as the canyon funnels the ebb and flow of wind. Unlike your turbine, my tiny useless ‘specimen’ of a PMA sits mostly as a ornament. The sight of all this is driving me bunkers as I could make good use of your turbine!
Your new faithful enthusiast.
Cheers
John Bouchard
Here is an update on performance and a couple of issues with the turbine. It survived some pretty high winds but the tower is bent and they need to work out a solution to the cable twisting. Tower design was to blame for the bending. It needs guys closer to the blade tips. Twisting of wires varies a lot between sites and this very turbulent site is a bad one as you can see in the photos. Other cleaner sites can go months with only a few twists.
“We knew from the beginning that our place for the wind turbine near the mountain hut is fully extreme, and that’s absolutely proven within just last 20 days!
“Second week after we erected it, from Sunday 21. October the famous “Bora” wind started to blow. We have PWS nearby positioned for paragliding take off and as you can see on the attached graph during that Monday morning Bora wind gusts were 175 km/h, with average wind speed over 35 m/s. That wasn’t so exceptional, we know here when is under 200 km/h it’s normal, we are not excited at all. The Bora is not steady, it’s turbulent, it’s comming from the mountains toward the sea and it’s generally N or NE directions. I would like to send you the video but is too big, the wind turbine behavior was amazing, furling, rotating… pure demanding dance!
“Last week from Sunday October 27, “Jugo” started to blow, the second of our famous winds, opposite in the direction and the character of Bora. Jugo is generally S direction wind and it’s blowing from the sea. It’s steady and it is never so wild and fast like Bora. But this time was really extreme, maybe you noticed the news from Italy, Genoa or Venice what a disaster did there. I have been near our WT last Sunday and I was surprised that there Jugo was much faster than Bora – the rocky hill near the hut where the turbine is standing is the exit of the long valley oriented toward sea, so its actualy real exemple of the venturi efect.
I have to put anemometer on the turbine tower in the future, but I can tell that was the speed out of mind, probably more than 200 km/h.
“The tail was almost all the time completely up, and I measured that WT alternator is producing constantly more than 20A on each fase!
“A two days later, tuesday morning the mountaineers alarmed me that our WT tower is bent! Diameter of that bent tube is 60,3 mm/3,6 mm thickness. I know, we guy the tower not enough high, but we have already prepared the additional set of guys, to fix the tower higher – beneath the blade tips.. but we were late. However, at the end not too late, the turbine did not fall down!
“Yesterday we’ve taken down the turbine and will have the first maintenance service now.
“First of all we have to correct and reinforce the tower, with second set of guys.
“I plan to shorten the tail for 20 cm to lower the power output and make the life of turbine a bit easier. In that way also the horizontal pressure on the tower and whole system will be reduced (to be honest the tail vane is now a little bit heavier than you recommended).
“Also we have to solve the problem with the cable twisting in the tower! This system in our case will not work at all. Please take a look at the wires from the tower just after 20 days! I found some prefabricated slip rings on the market, not so expensive 3 x 30 A for 19 USD or to be on the safe side 6 x 30 A for 36 USD! Do you have some experience with this kind of products? I hope that is worth to try with that!”