Vertical axis wind turbine update

posted Oct 24th 2008 12:57pm by Caleb Kraft
filed under: home hacks, news

[Faroun] sent in his updated vertical wind turbine. After running his previous one for a while, he felt that the motor he was using was inadequate, it required too high of RPM to produce what he wanted. He didn’t want to gear it up, fearing that the light construction couldn’t sustain rotation.

He built a new version that has the same surface area of fins, but much higher RPM. The new one, dubbed V8 is made mainly from PVC and an Amatek DC motor. His goal was to produce 100 watts at 35km/h. He doesn’t really state whether or not he achieved it though.

Comments [14]

tagged: off grid, turbine, vawt, vertical axis wind turbine, wind

Reader Comments

im glad i get to be the first to comment i love the site.this is pretty cool try and get more post like this thanks for the hard work guys

Posted at 1:08 pm on Oct 24th, 2008 by will

i agree… any solar or wind power or greenhouse hacks would be welcome. (i’m getting ready to build my first greenhouse, kinda like hacking the weather!)

Posted at 1:30 pm on Oct 24th, 2008 by chr0n1c

I’d like to see a vertical wind turbine made from coroplast panels

Posted at 1:32 pm on Oct 24th, 2008 by liuite

100 watts that’s pretty ambitious is it not?

Posted at 2:02 pm on Oct 24th, 2008 by kurf

This is great, I agree, keep these kinds of articles coming !

Those ametek motors are great for beginners wind projects. (Not that this is a beginner project)

I did a small solar power install, blogged about it in the url when you click my name ..

Thanks Hackaday !

Posted at 2:22 pm on Oct 24th, 2008 by DigitalMind

100 watts at 35km/h (21mph) is not very efficient power production. It is hard to find average wind speeds over 14mph. At 14mph this “100″ watt machine would only produce 34.3 watts. And 14mph is a hard wind site to find at ground level. 5mph winds would result in a mere 1.3 watts of power. This machine would take forever to simply payback the amount of energy it took to build.

but cheers to trying.

Posted at 5:57 pm on Oct 24th, 2008 by james

A geared alternator from a junkyard would probably be much more efficient. The use of pvc pipes is interesting, I’d like to experiment with bigger ones.

Posted at 1:37 am on Oct 25th, 2008 by matt

I like the idea of people looking into decentralized power. There is a theory I came across in science fiction that attributes the down fall of civilization to centralization. If we all count on one thing, say a power grid, what happens when that one thing goes down? Chaos?

Posted at 8:12 am on Oct 27th, 2008 by poetryman69

He states 100 watts at 35 kilometers per hour. Which is equivalent to 21.75 mph.

So… 50 watts at about 10 mph isn’t too shabby.

Posted at 9:27 am on Oct 27th, 2008 by skylynx

This is pretty cool. It would be interesting to see if any kind of airfoil can be made from PVC or a similar material; then a Darrieus design could be made. Savonius rotors are designed to primarily use only drag forces, so they can only spin as fast as the wind is blowing. Darrieus rotors primarily use lift forces, like HAWTs, and can spin much faster than the wind speed. So, yeah, just some food for thought!

Posted at 7:07 am on Oct 28th, 2008 by JustinR

hi there guys, oops i did it again and changed the design of the vanes/blades by building V8-4″.
it is at http://www.instructables.com under faroun Vawt v8-4″.

now i think it is time to show the output.

later

Posted at 5:58 pm on Nov 3rd, 2008 by faroun

half wind speed doesnt provide half the power, maybe a small water fall could easyly provide half kilowatt.
Nice project, congrats

Posted at 10:05 am on Nov 8th, 2008 by Mosca

Intelligent writing- will definitely come back again.

Posted at 10:56 pm on Jun 26th, 2009 by home made wind generators

Good stuff, Will definitely come back again.

Posted at 11:37 pm on Jun 26th, 2009 by home made wind generators