I have decided to document the building of my own wind turbine, or wind generator, as it is also named. I will be using a Fisher and Paykel motor as the basis of the generator, which I plan to modify. My goal is to have a generator that produces close to 1kw in roughly 20mph winds. The blade diameter will be about 8-10 feet in diameter and I will mount this on a 35-45 foot pole in my backyard. I want to produce high AC voltages so I can connect this to a grid tie inverter.
I have documented my progress and failures along the way to help others who wish to pursue this course. The first part of this diary focuses on the Fisher and Paykel based wind generator. I modify the rotor, construct the stator, and test the voltages. I then construct a tower and make a winch to raise it. Later, I pursue an axial flux based wind geneator.
Generator:
I obtained the 0.6mm wire model, wired already in the Star configuration. My initial thoughts were to rewire the stator. I unwinded one of the coils and found it to have 170 winds. There are 3 sets of 14 coils. One end of each set is connected to a common point forming the Star configuration. After thinking about it for a while I decided to get another hub and change the ceramic magnets to neodymiums.
Each of the original 14 magnets has 4 poles going (N-S-N-S). I will extract them and replace them with 1" x 3/8" x 1/8" N42 magnets mounted at a slant to reduce cogging. Cogging occurs when the edge of the magnet is more attracted to the iron than the air gap leading to the next coil. Slanting the magnets should reduce this effect and yield a lower start-up wind speed.