Wind turbines.

[BigClive]

Wind turbines. They're the future of ecological power....

Well except this one with the duff brakes/feathering system....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbCs7ZQDKoM

:eek:

[JAKE]

there a big waste of money round where i live i saw one go down in palm desert in so california that one stayed intact the whole concrete base dumped over.

there building a crap ton of them around here and the way the wind blows there just not a reliable solution. its either still or howling. and in the summer we dont have much wind when ya think we would need the power the most.

[Squizzy]

The Government and the local utility are looking at putting heaps more "wind farms" in around here as several existing wind farms have been very successful. I did a heap of cabling at the wind farm at Albany which was interesting only problem was the tiger snakes that had to be removed each morning and afternoon:eek:

http://www.eneabba.net/Wa/Albany-2.html

[BigClive]

Here in Scotland they're also looking at wind farms. They're also looking at solar power which is about the most useless option imaginable here given our long overcast winter months. The jewel in the crown of this incompetence is the trial of solar powered LED streetlights. These have an amazing ability to put out very little light for a very short period of time!

There's also a scam going where homeowners are being encouraged to mount wind turbines on their houses and feed "excess" power back into the grid where the power companies are being forced to pay for it.

A lot of this is down to technical ignorance and very dubious sales tactics. Someone somewhere is making a lot of money by blinding the gullible (the government) with science.

Personally I'd say that the output from a home turbine should be monitored and payment should only be made if it puts out sustained power without interruption for more than four hours. That way payment would only be made if the unit produced a sustained and useful amount of energy.

I mean, are we supposed to turn off a power station every time there's a puff of wind?

[loodvig]

Yes the power companys are being forced to buy the power. But the government didn't tell them what to pay! So the home owner is being payed pennies on the dollar!

[PA BEN]

In 2006 the Voters here passed a bill that mandated Utilities to buy clean power sources. What the voters forgot is that the tax payer not the utility will pay for this.:eek:

[BigClive]

Another thing about the home power generation is that it greatly increases the risk of back fed lines through mis-wired or faulty controllers. You can bet they have the cheapest circuitry possible.

Worse still, they would only back feed when the wind reached a high enough level.

[Hemingray Insulators]

anyone know how a wind turbine works? i've always been curious, cuz for 60hz it have to be kept at a constant 3600rpm by some sort of gears or something. or do they generate it DC and convert it into AC 60hz with thyristors or something?

[BigClive]

Most do as you say. They convert to DC then regenerate to AC using MOSFET or IGBT drives.

[Hemingray Insulators]

whats IGBT clive?

[BigClive]

Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor. It's a hybrid device that combines the sensitivity of a MOSFET with the ruggedness of a traditional bipolar transistor. Very popular for the more arduous electrical environments found in electric transport and other high voltage/current applications.

[JAKE]

i saw one a few years ago that was a prototype that they were using basically a reverse variable frequency drive to keep the freq at 60hz even when the speed is changing and variable pitch blades to keep it as close to a certain speed as they could. i dont think they ever got it worked out though since all the ones ive seen lately have been igbt like BC said.

you can have a generator turn at any speed you just have to have the amount of poles in the generator relative to the speed of the motor to make the 60hz. alot of the larger diesel gen sets run at 1800rpm's ad alot of the micro turbines run a whole lot faster