# Question about wind turbines.



## Ultra (Dec 29, 2009)

I own a cheap chinese made 500 watt wind turbine which I traded for last spring.

I installed the tower and turbine in June or July. About the time the summer doldrums hit Mid Tennessee.

Long story short said turbine never turned a full rotation on it's own. Additionally, the three other turbines involved in the mass purchase that mine was included in, have as yet to produce near as much output as we had expected based upon their rated sizes and ambient conditions.

Late in the summer I had the brief luxury of time and I lowered the tower to inspect it all. Everything was as required by the manufacturor. But the durn thing still won't turn.

Being blonde, and old, and well,... ignorant, I have a question of those with more knowledge of the subject.

The turbines' output (wild AC voltage)comes down the tower as three conductors which are then wired to the charge controler.

In my understanding there should be no continuity between any of these three conductors. The manufacturor recomends shorting these three conductors together to lock the turbine prior to a possibly damaging wind storm (to force the mechanical brake to take the turbine out of the wind without damaging the turbine).

All that being said I diassembled the whole thing this morning, checking for continuity along the way. The end result is a completely dismantled turbine with the three wires 2 inches long protruding from the connection to the (stator???)windings.

My multimeter set on the 200 ohm scale reads form 1.3 ohm to 1.8 ohms between any combination of pairs of wires.Do I have a short in my stator windings?

These results are typical for the three turbines we tested out of the original group of four.

Am I barking up the wrong tree, completely deluded, or overwhelmed by cheap chinese junk?

Thanks in advance for any light you might wish to shed upon this dark dark situation.


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## idahodave (Jan 20, 2005)

I don't have first hand knowledge of your alternator, but 1.8 ohms is not an unreasonable value for a set of windings that will provide 500 watts at a low voltage. Might be a little high if anything.

I assume the three wires are the ends of three windings that have a common connection, and are three phases from the alternator. I would then expect to see a three phase full wave bridge made of six diodes in the charge controller to convert the AC voltage from the alternator to a DC voltage to charge a battery bank.

My neighbor just put up a 2kw Chinese made turbine and it works good so far. But we are in a zone 3-4 wind area, and he is at the top of a hill without obstructions (only grass land) for a few miles and has a 30 foot tower.

A schematic of the alternator and controller would help, do you have one?

Can you turn this by hand and is the wind strong enough where the turbine is mounted?


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## Jim-mi (May 15, 2002)

Maybe you never had enough wind at your site to get it going . . ?!?!


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## WisJim (Jan 14, 2004)

Ultra said:


> I own a cheap chinese made 500 watt wind turbine which I traded for last spring.
> 
> My multimeter set on the 200 ohm scale reads form 1.3 ohm to 1.8 ohms between any combination of pairs of wires.Do I have a short in my stator windings?
> 
> Am I barking up the wrong tree, completely deluded, or overwhelmed by cheap chinese junk?


I would guess that the 1.3 to 1.8 ohms is the coil resistance and is probably okay. How tall of a tower did you install it on? Did you meet the basic requirement of 30 feet above anything within 500 feet of the tower? Does the genrator turn easily by hand when properly assembled?


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## wy_white_wolf (Oct 14, 2004)

Ultra

If you have had the wind to produce decient power (really big if for Tn) then I'd really look ito the type of power regulation they have. There is an article out on the AirX (and I also assume it's clones) that claims while they are rated at 400 watts that is peak power and has nothing to do with actual production. It claims because of there internal regulation they are only capable of about 150 watt-hours in an hour.

I did post a link to the article when I found it but am unable to locate that thread now.

WWW


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