Ontario man turns a bulldozer into a wind turbine

[rcavictim]

Bump.  See many more pictures on page one!  Added today with explanational text.

[mkdutchman]

wow rca,

what an accomplishment. To be honest with you I thought you would never get it done. Way to go, and I'm sure the satisfaction of giving the power co the boot and having all that free power makes it all worthwhile

Congrats

[rcavictim]

wow rca,

what an accomplishment. To be honest with you I thought you would never get it done. Way to go, and I'm sure the satisfaction of giving the power co the boot and having all that free power makes it all worthwhile

Congrats

Thank you for the compliment.  I see the light at the end of the tunnel on this project now, powered by clean renewable energy of course!    I still have some criss-crosses to install in the tower and strengthening gusset plates in a few places.  I need a brake actuator mechanism and of course the four DIY airfoil blades.  Then there is a on-board monitoring/control system and a complete electrical system starting with the big generating alternator head.

As for giving the power company the boot........priceless! 

[mike90045]

I need to make up a DC , battery powered starter motor for my non-self starting darrius turbine.  I guestimate that I'll require an intermittent 10-15 HP at about 1800 RPM or a bit less. 

Looking at your photos for your blade mounts, I'm thinking, you do NOT have a Darrieus design, and therefor, it should self-start.

I've seeing attachment points for 4 blades in the photo, behind your head, Darrieus generally only have 2, and don't easily start.

Look at the Cycloturbine variation .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrieus_wind_turbine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrieus_wind_turbine#Cycloturbines

[rcavictim]

I need to make up a DC , battery powered starter motor for my non-self starting darrius turbine.  I guestimate that I'll require an intermittent 10-15 HP at about 1800 RPM or a bit less. 

Looking at your photos for your blade mounts, I'm thinking, you do NOT have a Darrieus design, and therefor, it should self-start.

I've seeing attachment points for 4 blades in the photo, behind your head, Darrieus generally only have 2, and don't easily start.

Look at the Cycloturbine variation .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrieus_wind_turbine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrieus_wind_turbine#Cycloturbines

Sorry Mike but you are mistaken. The number of blades matters not whether the design is a Darrius or a Savonius.  The determination is whether the system operates in drag mode (Savonius) or lift mode (Darrius).  If I put drag blades on this I will have totally wasted my time as the max power would only be around 2.5 kW in the highest winds because of the slow turbine speed which is always much less than the windspeed.  In a two blade Darrius the blades want to run between 3 and 5+ times windspeed but the more blades, or the wider (greater solidity) the slower it will spin .  Fast two blade designs (eggbeater) as pretty much all the early ones were tended to tear themselves apart in the blades due to the high stresses and flexure per rotation. Three and five blade designs are now popular.  Four blade designs are susceptible to certain resonant vibration modes that can be troublesome but I went with four because of the materials I had to work with and because I wanted a slower speed turbine than a three blade. I considered five blades just too darned much work and also too much rotating mass upstairs.  As it is now even without any blades this system stores a lot of energy. I can even feel the twist in my long driveshaft just turning the system by hand.  That will absorb peak shock loads and protect the drivetrain.  I'll be far less likely to shear keyways in the various couplers.

Now, if I were to add pitch control to my blades so I could change the attack angle on the fly to each blade depending on where it was in the rotation I could make a "Cycloturbine" that was self starting with lift blades and also optimize power production for every useful windspeed.  I am not prepared to attempt that at this early stage due to the greater degree of complexity and significant cost increase.  I'm barely able to put this together on a near zero budget as it is.

My big challenge now is to make these rather large blades 24" wide x 21 feet long, as light as possible.  That means I have to pay trade prices on new exotic materials like fiberglass, aluminum skin and foam.

Imagine two cast iron small block Chevy V-8 engines spinning around a rotating shaft at 100 RPM while tied by 12 foot long steel cables. The centrifugal forces on those cables would be huge. This was what I was looking at if I built my blades out of all steel.  I have the necessary materials at hand to do this but don't want to invite disaster.  I need to get the weight per blade down to 100 lbs.  Even less if at all possible.

This is not a small machine and the engineering challenges are perhaps even more difficult because all along I have had to make use of re-purposed, salvaged materials.  This is how I have always made my projects however so my brain is totally programmed to design in this manner.

[rcavictim]

Just in case anyone is not quite sure what sort of airfoil blades I shall be putting on the ends of those eight radial arms have a look at this system in the photograph.  These are lift blades shaped like an airplane wing.

My blades will be 21 feet long.  The radial arms are 7 feet apart.  That allows me to attach the blades at the 1/3rd and 2/3rd points.  They will rotate around a 24 foot diameter circle on a vertical axis.

[mike90045]

That's going to be one mean green machine

[rbodell]

Here is that little 6-1/2 HP engine that would normally power a push lawn mower.  Ha ha!

MMMMM if a lawn mower engine can move it, I bet the wind mill could too. I can just see the newspapers now "Wind powered bulldozer". now that would be very cool.

[veggie]

Wow,
That's a mammoth project.!
Congrats thus far.
Looking forward to seeing the YouTube video of it spinning in the wind.
I can see it now......a little "Ontario Hydro" residential power meter spinning backwards at 36,000 rpm (and smoking).

veggie

[rcavictim]

Been toiling away at my personal mega-project and am pleased to announce that the generator head is now installed.  This completes the entire drivetrain from end to end except that I still have no airfoils bolted upstairs to the radial arm system.. If I did I could make electricity as soon as I find a box to place the STC voltage regulator and 3-phase exciter rectifier into which had to be remoted for this install. There was not enough room for the original doghouse on the STC head.  I wouldn't let this spin up yet though as there is no brake actvation device installed yet and I still have more heavy steel welding to do in the base for strength and more ballast weight to add downstairs.  I have gotten quite a bit accomplished already this year.  Not yet certain if I will have it doing test runs under wind power this year but I sure am gonna try. I have gotten it pretty darned close.  This is year four in the actual contruction.  There are so many details and each detail is like a major fabrication project in itself.  Much for one working alone to do.

Pics attached.  I have two weather covers now fabricated.  One covers the genhead and driving gearbox which can be seen in the first picture.  The other cover keeps rain out of the upper pancake gearbox.  Every time it rained the rain would run down the long vertical driveshaft and get into the upper gearbox.  I have drained and changed the 2 gallons of gear oil in that box three times now for want of a cover system.  That is now done.

I had the STC head apart and put a generous coating of varathane on the windings inside.  I also balanced the badly out of balance armature.  The interconnecting leads flying exposed between the four field coils on the armature were tied back with lacing twine and coated with epoxy.  Everything got a good bakeout after the work.  I am installing 1/4" mesh in the vent holes to hopefully keep critters out.  I was pleased to learn that my head uses all copper windings and the sealed bearings.  I did not upgrade them as they are OK right now (should be they are brand new!) and I just don't have a spare $100 to do things twice at this stage.

More as it accumulates. 

[rl71459]

Looks Great!

Keep up the good work

Rob

[Jedon]

Very Very nice!! 

[mobile_bob]

RCA:

i swear to all that is holy, you have to have some egyptian ancestery!

hats off to ya man!

good work, hope to see it turning soon.

bob g

[AdeV]

Brilliant work RCA. You are an inspiration to those of us who toil away single-handedly, and I'm well looking forward to seeing this project trundle into its home.

Speaking of which.... I presume you have mounted electric motors in the treads, so it's self propelled? 

[LowGear]

Is it WOW! or Oh My God!  Far Out fershure.