split the power

hi everyone, two of my small mills are on the end of the dock, one low and one high. the low one is at the same height as the high dive and would be a problem for swimmers. for these reasons it is removed for the summer from the pole. the other is at 21ft up and dosn,t  pose any problems. after removing the low mill the higher mill is rewired to dump from its main battery bank to the bank from the lower mill. the higher mills dump load is disconnected and the dump power now feeds the second battery bank, this helps to keep the batteries fresh and dosn,t waist any power to the dumps until both banks are up to charge, at that point the second bank will dump as allways. I only use my small system for l.e.d. lighting in the summer , this works vary well for my usage and duration used. this is a thought for anyone with the need to remove one of there mills for any reason, this also lowers the battery maintenance over the summer months on the second battery bank. food for thought.

pma assembly tips

hi everyone, these are some tips to help with the assembly of a pma for long term use. these tips are what works for me and has proved true time and time again. after all work and testing is done , this means any and all work is complete and is ready for install. at this point you need to completely dismantle the unit, the bearing need the grease removed and new extreme low temp grease installed, one vary small drop at each ball on one side and 3-4 drops of lucas stabilizer on the other side. if your rear bearing is a needle bearing, use the same extreme low temp grease and about 1/4 fill the bearing cup with lucas, at assembly you will use one strand of wire from a 14 wire placed in the seal while installing the rotor to allow any extra oil to leave the bearing. the inside of the casing needs to be painted to stop any corrosion . the rotor needs to be painted also for corrosion . if the pma is a 3 phase any conections must get a piece of shrink tube before being secured down, the wires from each phase needs to be long enough to reach the first connection at the slip ring without any splices. these wires also need to be secured to the pma rear housing after the stator is installed. if the pma is a dc type you also need to use dielectric grease on all bolts and electrical connections for the rectifier . the stator should already have a coating on it to protect the windings, if not you MUST coat the windings with something to protect them from vibration in the wire from the eddie currents and frequencies , these cause the wire to try to move around and rub together and cause shorts over time. I use 5 minute apoxy on the units with no coatings, let the stator warm in the sun or nere a heater before applying the apoxy and it will be drawn into the center of the stator core by the heat, no extreme heat only good and warm to the touch. try not to be messy because you will be cleaning a lot to get it to assemble again. now when your assembling the pma you need to coat all bearing surfaces with grease on the rotor, there is usually two types of casings used, two front covers, one front and one back, this is the better in my opinion because of the larger bearings on both ends , this type can only be used on the three phase because you cant install the rectifier in this configuration . the standard rear casing must be installed in the proper way because there is drain holes at the bottom and the wires should exit also at the bottom , look at the casing and you will see the holes I'm talking about. the wires need to be secured to the rear pma housing before the rotor is installed and checked for clearance of any rotating parts of the rotor. the screws for assembling the cases need to be greased with dielectric grease for corrosion and will fuse to aluminum from the field currents being absorbed through the cases when in service over time. after assembly everything should be checked for clearance and smooth operation, once everything is good you can paint the outer casing if you have not already. once complete the unit should be tested on a test bench for all the needed install data , these numbers will let you use the right parts for the install the first time and save any extra work and time. the blades need to be balanced, this is done with a string and a thimble, most thimbles have one dimple in the center on the top, drill this dimple to the string size and install the string, insert the thimble through the hub and to the ceiling, this should be done inside so any wind wont be a problem. take a measurement from the tip of each blade to the floor and add any weight to the tips as needed, flat washers work good, if you need any more than two washers for any one blade you should move blades around as needed to achieve the balance, this can be time consuming if your using home made blades, each blade should be balanced before assembly to help speed this assembly up.  this is the process I use and has given vary good results every time. I hope this helps anyone with the assembly of a pma, if any help is needed just ask. thanks for reading.

adding 2 blades

hi everyone, today I decided to add 2 blades to a small test mill I have. it had 3 hemi blades and is 14 ft above the lake at the end of the dock. I'm in a low wind area and on a average day it seldom will use the dump system, now I added 2 blades for a total of 5 blades, the dump system was seldom used on a average day prior to adding 2 more blades, now it uses the dump system most of the time. in low wind the blade count and type are critical for success . I use hemi blades for all my smaller mills in low wind. plane and simple , they work and vary good for lowwind. one of the easiest ways to check your systems output is with the use of a watt hour meter, the average over time is the best way to test and make any adjustments with. pick a time frame of about 8 hours and a start time and check it every 8 hours for several days and you will find when you best power times are and also record the wind speeds as often as possible. the time spent will give the info to make any changes needed quickly and accurately. the smallest change to the right parts can give big changes to the output. food for thought. thanks for reading. you will also find with a watt hour meter that the wattage for your pma is not the advertised wattage.

l.e.d,s and wind mills

hi everyone, I was talking to a guy with a vary large l.e.d system for his property , it was wired directly to a battery system and a battery charger. he recently installed a wind mill and most of the l.e.d,s are now burnt. most l.e.d systems cannot be wired directly to a wind system because the voltages seen by the l.e.d. system will be the dc charge voltage , this is most often way higher than the battery voltage. a battery charge voltage at the battery might be say 13.9 or so but the in coming voltage to the battery can be as high as 60 volts , the l.e.d. system wired direct will see the 60 volts. these systems need a driver to regulate the voltage and amperage for the system when a wind mill is used. the charger system he was using will adjust the voltage to about 13.9-14.2 volts and never have caused a problem until the wind mill started to charge and the lights when out. if your using any l.e.d,s in your system make sure there on a driver circuit rated for the size of system your using to be problem free. most other components of a wind system like inverters are made to take full voltage and amperage and the unit will deal with any needed changes to the supply power as needed, the l.e.d,s will not and require a driver to do this adjustment to protect the systems as required. this is the largest l.e.d. system iv ever seen , it draws 23.5 amps continues and light most all of his property. food for thought. thanks for reading.

watch for the hologram effect

hi everyone, the hologram effect is alive and well, there are several sellers that over rate the ability of there parts and units for sale, if they told the truth you wouldn't buy them. in the blogs below several lies are uncovered, most of the sellers lie because if they don't they wouldn't sell anything , the experienced guy wouldn't buy because they know the lies and what to expect in the real world and also how easy it is to make there own parts and where to buy when they need to purchase anything. if I told you I have a chevy type pma for sale that putout 250w in 20mph wind you would think im crazy and would never sell that unit. BUT you didn't ask the right questions, because this pma,s rating is power production into the battery bank and is one of the best real world number you will see from a alt type pma. this pma has a sales pitch rating of 1400w, and would be bull shit to advertise this number because you could never reach this number in service in the real world, the facts are simple, its a 250w pma  and nothing more, any other numbers are lies and used for sales to make it sound way better than it realy is. I cant stress enough the importance of the home work and asking questions if you don't know or are having troubles. the rectifier is a simple piece and most are saying 90-100amp, if you go outside and look at the power line feeding a older home it would be 100 amp service, look at the size of wire, the RMS factor is .707 to get the dc power equivalent , then look at the little wires at the rectifier  and ask who is bull shitting who, these are the people selling the parts ? . I here every single day of people getting ripped off and would like to see this stopped. the blades is the area I see the biggest lies, people just don't know that much about blades when they start out in wind generators. its one of the easiest scams for the sellers, most will tell you they have the best blades on the market and not knowing much about blades many will agree with the sellers from lack of knowledge. this could be the area that needs one of the most study time if you don't want to be screwed, warlock.com has a good blade calculator and try to find as much info on any blades your thinking about before buying and ask a lot of questions with many different people and sites, low wind blades is the hardest because nothing is forgiving, with little wind it will work or not, there,s not much in between. try your hardest to not get a cogging mill for low wind, you will spend more to get it to work right and will still be down on watt hour numbers over time, a small amount of cogging could be acceptable but is not wanted. any mill that has cogging to the point that it feels like a steel gear with a bad bearing should not be used at all. I could go forever on things to watch for but the buyer needs to ask the rite questions and do the home work, help is never far away, your here now, if I can help just ask. thanks for reading.

alt type pma ?

hi everyone. I was asked witch type of alternator to use to build a pma. these are my thoughts. most people use the chevy alts because the parts are every where, almost any alt can be used, my thoughts are to use the biggest one you can get your hands on, it will have a larger stator winding and a higher surface speed resulting in higher output most often .keep in mine in most cases you will be rewinding the stator, most all alts use way to heavy of a wire for wind use. your looking for the biggest diameter across the stator you can find and the most slots in the stator you can find. if your lucky , you might find a skewered stator, this is when the wire windings are on a angle across the stator, this would be a awesome find, this saves the headache of angling the magnets. the magnets should be the strongest ones you can get for your application , the stronger the magnet the higher the output will be. there are several pics on the net for rotor design, there is a million ideas on this topic, just use as many magnets as you can fit into the rotor and as strong a magnet as you can get. most are using ether 7 or 14 magnets in there designs, I have seen as low as 5 and as high as 18 in a alt type pma, you will need to figure out the amount of magnets for the room your rotor has. so the chevy has the most available parts but is a smaller alt, the diesel transports and equipment have a lot larger alts to use and will net more power at the end of your efforts , these are my thoughts. thanks for reading.

info on low wind blades 5-15 mph

hi everyone, I was talking to a guy today about blades for low wind. he was under the idea that he would need 3 blade raptor setup because he needs speed and the lower the blade count the higher the prm would be, raptor blades ARE ONLY HIGH WIND BLADES and will not work in low wind areas. in a LOW WIND area most of the blade count and type rules DO NOT APPLY, wind power is not proportional to wind speed, its better than proportional. the amount of power in the wind at 20mph is about 8-10 times the power in the wind at 10mph. for low wind the blade count and type are critical for success. I have found the hemi blades to be the best blades by far in low wind, also a count of 5 blades minimum for the best results. 3 blades work but will be lacking some speed and torque dependant on the gen used. it is also important to have the gen on a 5 deg angle upwards, I have tried three deg but find a better start up at five deg, cogging can be a BIG problem in low wind areas, the start up is so much higher that your watt hours will be down a great amount over time, 7 blade hemi system can help a lot but costs more and no one to my knowledge no one makes a 7 blade hub, you will have to make your own. 2 three blade hubs can be put together to make a six blade if needed. im trying to make a vary good set of pvc blades for low wind but my design still needs some work at this point, the start up is almost perfect but the speed is lacking at this point, work will continue. when it comes to low wind and if your purchasing your blades you must get the hemi blades to have any chance from my 4 years and 8 sets of blades experience with the small mills. there is only so much power in the wind so you need to use as much as possible or all if possible, the blade type and count are critical to success in any low wind area. I use 3 and 5 blade hemi blades, the 3 blade system is used mostly for testing and the in use mills all have 5 blade hemi systems. I had a 11 blade raptor system I was sucked into buying and it didn't work half as good as the 5 blade hemi system. I don't care witch pma / pmg or gen you have the blades is the only chance you have to make it work properly, home work home work home work. remember that low wind is its own beast and needs to be treated as such, a hole separate type of wind mill. the most amount of lies are in the low wind end of things so use caution when you here the term LOW WIND. see the next post. thanks for reading. the hemi blades can be found at prestowind.com.

1000w worth of lies

hi everyone, today I was able to test a 1000w pma , brand new and out of the box. this was sold as a 1000w 3 phase ac low wind pma. so lets see what the test bench has to say. first we checked the open circuit voltage, this is how they sell them. we got 88.6 volts at 800rpm, next we checked the dead short amperage, we got 14.81amp and it was stalling the test bench motor at 325rpm. so far the numbers were not what was advertised but the use of these numbers gives a wattage of 1312watts. so lets see the real word numbers. we installed the pma onto the test bench, the controller was set for a dump of 13.9 volts into two 1000cca auto batteries, the batteries were at 12.81 volts at the start of the test, the dumps used were 2 200watt waist resistors. so lets see the real world at work. first we tested for cut in rpm, the batteries started to charge at 290 rpm, just a little high for low wind, next at 500 rpm we were seeing 3 amp =41.7 watts, next at 700 rpm we were seeing 5.5 amp = 69.5 watts, next at 850 rpm we were seeing 7.6 amp = 105.64 watts, next at 1000 rpm we were seeing 9.7 amp = 134.83 watts, next was all out for the test bench with this pma and direct drive gearing, 1565rpm and we were seeing 11.4 amp = 158.46 watts. so after looking at the wattage the pma owner asked , where the hell is my wattage that I payed for, like I said at the beginning of the test, this will show the REAL WORLD USABLE WATTAGES. the advertised wattage is almost allways derived from the open circuit and dead short numbers and do not mean any thing at all, JUST A SALES PITCH. this is a reasonable pma and has cogging witch will cost more for blades to make it run properly in low wind like it was sold as, a low wind pma ? . from experience you could expect to see a average of about 4-8 amp from this unit, a far cry from the sales pitch of a 1000 watts they made it look like. it all comes back to home work, the scammers are everywhere, this type of wattage calculation is almost a standard and is a flat out lie and deceiving to the buyers. the only numbers that matter are the numbers that are going into the battery bank and are useable, the rest is all bs. add the numbers and do the math, you will find so many lies so fast it will make your head spin. this pma was from the southern states but all most all the sellers calculate the same way, food for thought. thanks for reading.--------------------------------------------------------------- a update, this pma has been in service for only one week and has failed , it has one burnt phase and seems to have burnt in the center of the windings in one phase. this would be a manufacturing problem. not shure if this type of problem can be found but buying quality parts will help. try your best to get quality parts, there not always from the biggest sellers.

wind mill crazy things that work

hi everyone, just looking through some old notes. heres a couple crazy things iv tried that work or improved the wind mills. using a standard 1/4 hp electric motor, I drilled 3/4" holes x 2 wide and in 4 places around the rotor, { each quarter turn } pressed in some magnets and reassembled the motor. it made 220w on a test bench. no other specs were recorded, sorry. when rewiring a stator I goofed and made a 2 phase, so I wired each coil to its own rectifier and they wern,t evenly spaced in the stator, it still made 190w at 1100rpm. I converted a dc unit for a guy with no parts, removed the rec and used extension cord and used the rec that was removed from the mill at the other end, the rectifier ran hot but worked for over two years in the rain and snow and sun, he sat the unit on the porch roof ? . I had no controller for a small mill at the camp and used a voltage sensing relay and a burnt heater coil, the batteries never over charged for 5 months till it was fixed properly. one mill I was given had a burnt phase, just cut the wire out of the star connection and deleted that phase and it used to output about 12 amp and now put out 7.5 amp but at 200 rpm higher . just added 2 caps across the three phase rec poles ac side { 50v 2200uf } and amps when up 10%, not bad for 2$. hub spacers are expensive to buy, just use thick washers, one on each side. any nut and bolt company will have these and I get 10 for 5$ and don't own even one purchased hub spacer, I only use the thick washers. if your mill puts out 10amp or less don't buy a controller just use a motorcycle reg/rec from a 600cc or larger bike, no dump needed and will work for ever at 10amp or under but you need to run a ground wire from the reg/rec housing to the battery ground. a 1/4" stainless rod 36" long has 4000w dump load ability and cost 7.89$ at lowes, just a little food for thought. thanks for reading.