| Lakota Turbine is Flying! |
| Written by Daniel A. Bergamini | |
| Thursday, 28 June 2007 | |
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This turbine is rated at 900 watts but in extreme wind, wired properly people have seen spikes over 1500 watts! We don't have any wind measuring equipment at the top of the tower so we can't give quantitative analysis but we see a few amps (under 100 watts) in a light wind and have seen over 10 amps (over 250 watts) in a moderate wind. I believe the major limiting factor at this point is the fact that we purchased a 48 volt turbine because we planned to eventually upgrade to a 48 volt system. What is happening now is the turbine spins up to the point where the 24 volt battery bank provides resistance and that stalls the blades at about half the speed (RPM) it generates power most effectively. Just like a car alternator, power generation is very poor at lower than designed RPM. Hopefully we'll see a 2x increase in power from the same wind at the new battery voltage and I don't think it's unrealistic to hope for 4x. Now that we have the turbine up and running, we've prioritized the purchase of the new equipment to get us to 48 volt! Stay tuned for the pictures and review of the new equipment. |
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 18 July 2007 ) |