Wind Turbine vertical axis

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acmotor
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Wind Turbine vertical axis

Post by acmotor »

I have been asked by a local to check his off grid power system as it is not performing as expected.

He has 6kW of ground mounted 265W mono PVs in two stings around 500V MPV connected to an SMA 4.6kW GCI to house main and a 12.8kW 48V LG CHEM resu (6.4 + 3.2 + 3.2 expansion battery) Lithium battery set connected to an SMA sunny boy island inverter of 4.6kW with 6kVA gen set backup. There is also a Verical axis wind turbine in clear ground atop a hill (good wind).
The Sunny Island wakes up the GCI and GCI back feeds through the the island inverter to charge the battery pack.
The LG CHEM expansion batteries ( built in BMS in each ) are not going online so battery capacity is half of expected. I will follow this up.

The thing that I am seeking comment on is the VA WT. I have no experience with these as my WT is horizontal axis and works well.
The WT is a NRGplus '1.5kW' unit.
http://nrgplus.com.au/wp-content/upload ... ndmill.pdf

Does anyone have experience with these unit ? Do they have real output or are the manufacturer claims fantasy ?
I see no kW vs wind speed graph of logged performance.
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rhills
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Re: Wind Turbine vertical axis

Post by rhills »

Hi acmotor,

I've looked into Wind Turbines quite a bit, though primarily for marine, small power plant operations. My experience is that real-life, 24/7 output from them rarely lives up to promises, though I can certainly relate the occasional personal experience of sitting on a mooring in 25-30kt of wind with my house batteries overflowing!

In my experience exploring specs, VAWTs seem either to be honest about their output and rate relatively poorly against their HAWT counterparts, or less honest. I looked at the PDF you linked and noted the reference to the "1.5kw" generator and my first thought was "1.5kw at what RPM?". It may be capable of putting out 1.5kw, but possibly only in hurricane strengths. Trustworthy Wind Turbine manufacturers publish output vs wind velocity graphs (though these are usually produced in a wind tunnel and hence bear only a loose relationship with real life output). We currently have an Ampair Pacific 300 which is rated at 300W and looks like it will actually put that out if it's blowing hard enough: I've seen up to 20A at 12V in 30 knots.

IIRC, the ATA did a survey of a number of potential urban Wind Turbine sites around Melbourne and concluded that in an Urban situation it is difficult for a Wind Turbine to pay for itself. A very visual demonstration of why this would be can be seen by looking at the windytv site for our area and compare the wind velocities on the open water with those over land under almost any conditions.

My guess is that if you put a Turnigy meter on it for a while you'll find it doesn't put out anywhere near 1.5kw in real-life conditions on land.

HTH,
Rob Hills
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Re: Wind Turbine vertical axis

Post by Paul9 »

I have a weekender in the mountains west of Sydney which is totally off-grid. 0.5kw of solar panels and an Ampair 400w wind turbine. My experience with the turbine appears to be similar to Rob's above comments.

My turbine never produces any where near the power that the solar panels do. For starters the wind needs to be howling before the turbine produces a voltage high enough to charge the batteries. It reads the battery voltage and assumes any voltage above 13.2v (for my 12v system) means the batteries are full and therefore automatically engages a brake preventing the turbine from spinning. Of course, even if the batteries are only 50% full, they read greater than 13.2v because the solar panels are feeding them a voltage greater than 13.2v. This means that the opportunity to receive extra power is lost.

I also see that even small changes in wind direction briefly, but greatly, reduce the power coming from my turbine. This however may not be a problem with vertical axis turbines.

The plus is that in winter, when the weather is mainly overcast and windy, the turbine partially makes up for the reduced power coming from the panels.

I suggest that Rob's idea about testing with a meter is a good idea.

Cheers
Paul
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Adverse Effects
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Re: Wind Turbine vertical axis

Post by Adverse Effects »

i dont know about the WT's but that website looks doge as all get out


http://nrgplus.com.au/
*************************
Liberty Energy Limited.
1508 SPA Centre, 55 Lockhart St, Wanchai, Hong Kong.
Email: davett@bigpond.com
*************************

a Hong Kong company with a telstra/bigpond email address??
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Re: Wind Turbine vertical axis

Post by rhills »

Hi Paul,
Paul9 wrote: Sat, 19 Aug 2017, 07:44I have a weekender in the mountains west of Sydney which is totally off-grid. 0.5kw of solar panels and an Ampair 400w wind turbine. My experience with the turbine appears to be similar to Rob's above comments.
Are you sure yours is an Ampair? I wasn't aware they made a 400w model. Also, see below...
Paul9 wrote: Sat, 19 Aug 2017, 07:44My turbine never produces any where near the power that the solar panels do. For starters the wind needs to be howling before the turbine produces a voltage high enough to charge the batteries. It reads the battery voltage and assumes any voltage above 13.2v (for my 12v system) means the batteries are full and therefore automatically engages a brake preventing the turbine from spinning.
Paul9 wrote: Sat, 19 Aug 2017, 07:44Of course, even if the batteries are only 50% full, they read greater than 13.2v because the solar panels are feeding them a voltage greater than 13.2v. This means that the opportunity to receive extra power is lost.
In my setup, I installed Ampair's own regulator which gets around this problem completely. My Ampair actually runs AC to the regulator where it is rectified and fed on to the batteries. The regulator also allows me to adjust the battery voltage cutoff. As my house batteries are Lithiums with their own BMS, I've set the cutoff voltage at about 14.5V and rely on the BMS to sort it out. As my house batteries are now over 5 years old and still going strong, I'm assuming this strategy is working.
Paul9 wrote: Sat, 19 Aug 2017, 07:44I also see that even small changes in wind direction briefly, but greatly, reduce the power coming from my turbine. This however may not be a problem with vertical axis turbines.
HAWTs are notoriously susceptible to turbulence, a point highlighted in the ATA Survey and while VAWTs are less susceptible, all wind turbines work much more effectively in the mythical non-turbulent wind flow provided by the wind tunnels they're tested in to produce their advertised ratings.

That said, like Paul9, I get enough power from my wind turbine at nights and on overcast days to justify having it. It would be nice if they advertised realistic output figures.
Cheers,
Rob Hills
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Re: Wind Turbine vertical axis

Post by Paul9 »

Hi Rob,

I am going by memory when I say it is a 400watt turbine. Next time I am up there I will hunt around for the manual and check.

Cheers
Paul
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acmotor
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Re: Wind Turbine vertical axis

Post by acmotor »

Thanks for the comments guys.

I don't see any positive feedback on VAWTs on the net.
I would say that my '1kW' 400RPM 3 blade 2.4m dia HAWT atop a hill in the country can deliver no useable power for 3 weeks and then an average 800W for a week 24/7 with peaks of 1.2kW when braking cuts in.
So in a good month 30kWh but only 300kWh per year is logged on energy meter.
I had to replace Chinese bearings at 12 months, 5 years ago. It has been reliable since.
In all, I would not bother with a WT again except that it does give power in bad weather when PV output is down.

On the other topic in my first post, I recorded some data from the friend's system and clearly established that the LG CHEM 12.8kWh lithium battery is only working at half capacity. I supplied the data to the battery supplier and LG has agreed to replace the whole 12 month old battery.
I will report back when this is actually done.

I did point out to the battery system installer that there should have been a commissing report with checklist done at the time of installation. They had done no such documentation.
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Re: Wind Turbine vertical axis

Post by rhills »

Well done acmotor! I personally like wind turbines, but the domestic-sized ones all share the problem that they really only produce decent output in very unpleasant conditions. As you say, it probably makes one feel a little more cosy in bed on a stormy night to think that lots of power is going in to the system.

Basic physics tells us that the pressure/force exerted by the wind (and therefore the energy available from it) varies with the square of the velocity which flips to say that you get the square root of not much at all if it's blowing a gentle breeze!
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Re: Wind Turbine vertical axis

Post by jonescg »

Rainbow Power Company once told us "If it's windy enough to justify a wind turbine, it's probably too windy a place to want to live there".
AEVA National President, WA branch director.
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acmotor
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Re: Wind Turbine vertical axis

Post by acmotor »

Close to true.
Rottnest Island, Albany, Geraldton, Badgingarra etc etc are places you don't want to live ! ;) I get the point though.

Bucketing rain and dark sky here ATM.
PVs at 4% capacity, WT at 31% so lets call it bad weather power.
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acmotor
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Re: Wind Turbine vertical axis

Post by acmotor »

acmotor wrote: Sun, 10 Sep 2017, 19:14 "
On the other topic in my first post, I recorded some data from the friend's system and clearly established that the LG CHEM 12.8kWh lithium battery is only working at half capacity. I supplied the data to the battery supplier and LG has agreed to replace the whole 12 month old battery.
I will report back when this is actually done.

I did point out to the battery system installer that there should have been a commissing report with checklist done at the time of installation. They had done no such documentation. "
Good news update on this warranty claim....

LG Chem agreed to replace the battery modules. At first they only sent the main 6.4kWh module and not the two 3.2kWh expansion modules. When installed this showed that the main module alone worked correctly. LG Chem then sent the expansion modules.
With all new modules installed, the two expansion modules refused to go online until we discharged the main module (now fully charged) to match the 'shipping' SOC of the expansion modules. (around 30%). Definte strange feeling going through an eco home and turning everything on to discharge the battery module !
An overnight test predicted the 100% DC capacity to be 12.3kWh compared to 6.2kWh before the battery replacement.
Big smiles from the customer !
converted RedSuzi, the first industrial AC induction motor conversion
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Re: Wind Turbine vertical axis

Post by Adverse Effects »

good to hear
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