Making a DC motor powered wind generator?
this is for a project i have for my Energy and powers class, i need information on how to make a wind generator but it has to be able to work on a DC motor. The thing is what makes this hard for me is that it can only be 28 inches tall. Please help, I forgot about it and it's due this week!
it would help to if there was a diagram for it too.
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A wind generator is a fancy name for a dc fan
Now to generate dc current with wind power using a dc motor as the generator that is an other story. You can do it with a permanent magnet motor a fan blade pulleys and a fan belt but this would be so inefficient as to be barely able to measure the output voltage. And yes if you spin a permanent magnet dc motor it will generate volts try it just chuck the shaft of one up in a drill and hook up a voltmeter to the motor leads not much output but it’s measurable
Look at boat magazines,adverts section,Forgen wind generators.the wind vanes positioned diferently ,thus reducing size.The picture will show it clearly. Good Luck.
I own and install smaller wind generators.
I assume this is a model?
A small, 360 or 540 can electric motor from any hobby shop will be a good size to use, and only a few dollars.
The same hobby shop if it is at all useful will have various pulleys and propellors that can be fixed to the shaft. If you mount a very large (say 14 or 16″) diameter coarse pitch (8″ or more would be good) prop the motor will not require a lot of air flow in order to over come the ‘camming’ effect of a permanent magnet motor and start to turn it, it won’t go fast but if you set a finer pitch prop on it it will take heaps of wind just to get it turning, or might not produce any useful power at all.
The problem with the standard air screw is that it will have to be used backwards, but if you only have a few days left you can’t be choosy.
If you get a piece of wood about 14″ long, about 2″ x 2″ you could screw it standing up vertically to a large piece of ply, and having cut a 1/2″ groove across the top 2×2 face you can secure the motor to this by putting a nail or screw each side down about an inch and stretching a few ruber band across the motor, as many as needed – it will be rock solid if done right.
Then you can solder or plug on the two wires to the terminals of the motor and lead them to your multimeter and load (bulb, little motor whatever) and go and find some wind.
If the point of the project is to make a wind generator, i.e. blow wind then the same thing will work, just apply a small current (say 6v one or two amps) to the motor and off it will go. You would be better off in that case by fitting a smaller prop, say 7×4 and see how that goes – it will rev so watch your fingers.
Again the hobby shop should have all you need.
Just type in wind generator to google and you will get about three years of info and reading. There is some really dodgy stuff out there – at the moment there are lots of scams from the look of it that even claim people are making 200 watt solar panels at home from scrap and a few dollars worth of stuff – yeah right………..
Good luck.
Start here:-http://www.otherpower.com/toymill.html
http://www.hydro.com.au/education/discovery/model/wtmodel.htm