I recently started playing around with the concept of building a simple wind generator. So, I slapped togather a 6 blade prototype, out of coragated plastic, pop-rivits and some PVC tubing. While winding my coils, I had this thought. Why couldn't you use off the shelf transformers, instead of winding coils? I mean, it's ready made coils, with iron core laminant, (normally with a 6-12-18 or 24 & a 120 volt primary winding) that now becomes output. I realize you wouldn't get those voltages to output, unless you increased the magnetic flux and moved them very very fast, but, it should yield some usable voltage, shouldn't it? thanks chazim
when you turn the shaft of the generator it will have spots that the magnets will attract to the steel. causing it to be hard to turn the shaft instead of free spinning. from a start up wind turbine blades have a hard time breaking free of the magnet attraction.
I hope this makes sense.
Bryan Wind Turbines are a lot funner to watch than solar panels
Yea, I see what your saying. Your design is using air wound coils. The magnetic flux on a transformers iron core coil, could indeed cause the magnets to tend to come to rest, on the center point of the core. However, to counter this, how about floating a slotted plate, at the same height as the transformers exposure to the magnet flux, to dampen the effect? That should tend to equalize the null point flux (cog) problem, seen with iron core coils. I'm looking at ways to get better flux radiating dispersal throughout to the coils, to bring the yield up. thanks chazim
It is true, iron cores will make for a cogging issue. They are made of thin strips high silicon content steel. each strip is insulated from each other. This is the expensive way of doing things. Air wound does not creat the cogging problem. It is, however very inefficient. Commercial wind turbines use iron core wound coils, They have some cogging, it is minimized by a sizeable gap to the magnets. This makes them less efficient as well. everything is a trade-off. If your blades are large enough, and are the correct airfoil shape, and they have the correct angle of attack into the wind, some cogging can be acceptable.
