Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Has anyone tried building one of those aeroelastic flutter "windmills?"

is that one of the ones that has flaps that raise and lower depending on the spin?

No, it's the kind where you attach a piece of elastic material vertically in a box that the wind can pass through. Put a magnet on the lower half of the elastic material, and coils of wire on the box on either side of the magnet.

As the wind blows, the elastic material flutters, moving the magnet back and forth.

The moving magnet creates a magnetic flux, which produces a current in the stationary wires via Maxwell's equations.

Too geeky?

no, I understood most of that, thanks for the explanation.

Would like to see a plan/drawing/ pic of one, never heard of it before.

I'll google it

This has been posted before. In fact, I think I first found out about it here.

http://www.jetsongreen.com/2007/10/windbelt-microw.html

Thanks tamo, another good idea for cheap electricity, ya gotta love that.

While there are places where the wind is constant, they are few and far between.
To utilise Wind Power one needs to have a windy location without turbulence, or sufficient height to raise the wind generator above the turbulence.
I have a 1KW wind generator feeding a 48V system which has delivered up to 6 KWH in a 24 hour period. There are weeks when the wind does not blow sufficient to generate even 100W.

I disagree about the life of flooded lead acid batteries Vs Sealed Gel Cells.
I know of flooded cells which are 25 years old and still have approx 90% of rated capacity. My 48V battery bank is 10 years old (second hand).
I have yet to see a sealed lead acid (SLA) battery which is 10 years old and has more than 75% of rated capacity, and never have seen any which still have any usable capacity by 15 years.
The failure mode of these SLAs is that one cell goes short circuit and causes the remaining cells to overcharge and dry out, causing them to go open circuit.
Automotive flooded cell batteries are not of the same quality as stationary flooded cells, and have different alloys to stand the vibration in mobile usage. These alloys eventually cause loss of capacity in the battery, normally within 5 years from first use.

The price of stationary Flooded cells is higher than the price of SLA cells of the same capacity, but on a 'cost per year' basis, the SLA are significantly dearer. The Flooded Cells do require maintenance. These batteries need to have the electrolyte levels checked regularly, terminals checked for corrosion (and cleaned if found) and measurements taken to ensure that all cells are performing correctly. Faulty cells can be repaired or replaced, without having to discard all cells in the battery. Inter-cell connections can be problematic due to high resistance joints.

SLA batteries are treated as a "disposable" battery and no maintenance is performed. Most are sold as a 10 year life battery, but it is rare that SLAs meet the life expectancy.

The voltage limits for SLA cells are much tighter than flooded cells and they are more easily damaged by over charging, high charging currents and excessive discharge, than flooded cells.

I hope this provides a balanced view of the characteristics of each type of battery.

Tony

don't need to worry too much about turbulence with a savonious rotor. it doesn't need to face the wind like a windmill. it'll just keep spinning.

DANG! Thats cleaver! I have seen that effect for years and never though about using it like that

Now they just need to invent a piezoelectric plastic to use as the strips and get rid of the magnets and coils.

Heh, in the mean time, get your neodymium (sp?) magnets ordered!

I have piles of Neo magnets laying around already! I got'a thry this by building a 1 square meter device to see how much power I can draw from our local wind. The question is what is the Ideal belt width for low wind speeds..

Dang, Dang, Dang! Now I have another project that is a must do

Sounds like an experiment to me!

Windspire, $4000, ready to plug in:

http://mariahpower.com/index.php?option ... Itemid=228

Be nice if they ever get those nano titanate batteries on the market.

Like the old telephone exchange batteries but never seen them for sale though.

While this has been posted before I think this is one of the easiest windmills to construct, note the bottom left pic of a fence top version and his neat flexi drive shaft for pumping. http://www.greenwindmill.com/urban.htm