Car alternator wind mill generator?

[MooseFET]

in message



even the vw generators were shunt wound motors, no magnets.

You don't need magnets. You "flash" the field once by hooking it onto
the battery (*THE RIGHT WAY AROUND DAMIT*) and from then on the
generator will build up in the right direction.

 

[daestrom]

Frogwatch wrote:



I am presently working for an NGO in Afghanistan and some of our
feild
offices are waaaaaay out in the boonies (no electricity, no
running
water, nada). At the moment they have a cr*ppy chinese generator and
funding is apparently so tight that we can't afford another generator
(since the chinese generators have proven to have a life of about
a
year and the higher ups don't seem to have a concept of spending more
money for a better generator [like a Honda generator]).
Anyway, the point is that three of our offices are on the sides of
mountains or very tall hills where 3/4th of the day it is *really*
windy. Since we have very little funding i was trying to think of
a
cheap means of power and thought about putting together a "cheap"
wind/
generator from a truck/car alternator and fan and a few car
batteries.
The problem is, my background is agricultural development so i
have
little concept of if the afore mentioned setup would even work or how
much it would power or how much it would cost. The most power our
offices use is to power a TV or Computer plus flourecnet lights
and
thats it. I have looked around on the internet for plans for cheap
solar or wind power setups but haven't found many (I am told they are
there, but the ones i have found seem to be insanely complicated
or
way too expensive).
So if anyone out there knows of such plans or NGOs that deal with
such
things (I tried geek corps but it appears that was a bit low tech for
them) please let me know!
Cheers
-Gaiko
Car alternators are all but useless. You need a permanent magnet
motor.
I disagree. If the bits of cars are what he can get then that is what
he has to work with.

The alternator from a car needs to be turned at a few thousand RPM
to
make useful power. This is the point that causes the trouble.

He needs to list out what he can get his hands on. Can he get all
of
the parts from the electrical system of a car? Does he have lumber
and tools? Does he have pulleys? What are the locals able to
improvise?

Heres sort of the idea I had:

Take a oil drum and split it along its length.

Make some sort of verticle shaft that is well supported.

Run a couple of 2x4s crosswise and attach them firmly to the shaft.

Attach the drum halves near the ends of the crossbars.

Use something like a bicycle wheel as a pulley on the shaft to take to
power off. Or perhaps take a bicyle chain etc to do it.

Bicycle parts will give you about an x10 step up in speed. He will
need more than that. Perhaps two x10 step ups could work.
I like MooseFET's idea. However, getting an old truck generator
should not be hard. Third world countries always have lots of old
junk trucks. The bigger the better. He can use one of the old style
mechanical voltage regulators.
Or, seeing on how this is America and everything, we could apply our
considerable scientific and engineering expertise to the problem of
small wind generators. Wouldn't that be something? But it ain't gonna
happen because American for some reason are the dumbest fucks around.

It seems like I should say something clever or witty here but all I can
think of is yea, you're right.

Small wind generators is a glaring example of American blindness.

At least I see people now discussing the subtle nuances of it here.

C'mon people, this is not a difficult problem to solve. I've already got
an excellent set of aluminum airfoil blades you can use for the motors
and electronics, if you ever get around to doing some real engineering.

I was just agreeing with American dumbfucks in general. There are some
very
smart people in the USA and a lot of them in this NG. However, whenever I
go to get something repaired I more often than not discover that I know
more
about it than they do which usually is not saying much. The same thing
happens when I go to buy auto parts etc.--the people behind the counter
don't know anything about what they are selling. Then you have the
government. Recently Congress passed a law requiring minimum credit card
payments to double from 2% to 4% of the balance. The result is an
enormous
increase in credit card deliquencies, foreclosures, bankrupcies, and
mortgage companies going out of business. How dumb is that?

A short term aberation in the credit system. And one could argue that the
rise in delinquencies has more to do with rising interest rates than the
legislation you cite. And credit card law has nothing to do with home
mortgage defaults/ foreclosures.

But in the long run, how much does raising the minimum CC payment save the
consumer? Literally thousands of dollars. Why? Because many consumers
don't realize that paying the 'minimum' is a sure fire way to make the
credit card company rich and themselves poor.

daestrom

 

[Vaughn Simon]

And credit card law has nothing to do with home mortgage defaults/
foreclosures.

Perhaps not the laws themselves, but the credit card habits of consumers
could have something to do with defaults because free-spending folks wrap their
credit card debt into their mortgages and/or get home equity loans at floating
rates. All this is great when a rising housing market is creating "free" equity
for them to tap, but when the market goes the other way...

But in the long run, how much does raising the minimum CC payment save the
consumer? Literally thousands of dollars. Why? Because many consumers don't
realize that paying the 'minimum' is a sure fire way to make the credit card
company rich and themselves poor.

True. Better yet is to have no CC debt at all. Over the long run, that
will give you far more spending power because you get to actually buy goods with
your income rather than using it to pay interest and fees to some fat-cat. For
my family, credit is for the occasional purchase of transportation and for a
mortgage. Credit cards are for monthly convenience, emergencies, travel and
making payments; not for long-term credit.

Vaughn

 

[daestrom]

news:[email protected]...

[....]
The problem it that car alternators do not have magnets.

Any alternator that has been installed and used on a car will "build
up" if you wire it up and give it a spin. There is enough
magnetization left to overcome the rectifier's forward drop.

Not without the field coils energized. I saw a circuit once for self
energizing the coils. It's still a parasitic load.

Perhaps give the field a split second jolt from a battery, when an rpm
sensor
indicates adequate speed. Use a diode, resistor, capacitor to have the
output
latch it into operation. The generator would engage and drop out
automatically. Crude functioning circuitry would be cake, with lots of
room to expand sophistication.

Actually more than a few large Utility generators use exciters on their
generator head.
So you have something like a 50Mw generator kicking 3 phrase 58000KVA with
something like 13800VDC kicking the exciters.

It's not that high. A large 1000 MW generator has an exciter who's output
is only about 550VDC. But it runs about 3000 amps, so it 1.5MW (that's
about 0.15% of output). The actual *generator* output voltage of large
machines can run from 13.8kV to 25kV.

Kill the excitors and the generator drops off line.
Cars used to have permanenet magnet generators ,but alternators are
cheaper and last longer.
And smaller for a given power output, look at some of the 1950's and
before..... auto generators.

Nope. Older cars did use DC generators, but they did *not* work on
permanent magnets. You can't regulate the voltage/current output of a PMG.
They used a DC current in the field windings (the non-rotating winding) of
the generator. This meant that the voltage regulator had to have a 'cut-in'
relay (they typically had two or three relays, a 'cut-in' relay, a vibrating
'regulator' relay and sometimes an 'overcurrent' relay). Field winding was
supplied from the generator's output (via the vibrating 'regulator' relay).
So as RPM rose during startup, the small residual magnetism in the iron
would build a small voltage that would feed the field winding and build up
voltage. When the voltage was high enough, the 'cut-in' would pick up and
connect the generator output to the battery.

One common failure of these old regulators was the 'cut-in' relay would stay
picked up when you shut off the engine. So the battery would feed the field
coil constantly while shutdown and drain the battery.

The output voltage/current of these older DC generators was not as good as
modern alternators at low speeds. If you ever drove one of these older
cars, you probably remember seeing the 'battery meter' move from 'charge' to
zero or even slightly 'discharge' when idling at a stop light (especially at
night with headlights on, you could see them get dimmer at idle). The
vibrating 'regulating' relay would be completely dropped out and the field
winding connected continuously to the output terminal but at low speed
couldn't develop enough to maintain battery charging current.

daestrom

 

[daestrom]

Or they have the mechical ability to know what a jack shaft is using
pillar bearings.
And maybe a flywheel ringgear in a wet sump for a drive off the shaft.to
the alternator(s).
Maybe a excitor control to load the the blades when it overspeeds.
So the blades can start with little load ,then at a given voltage adjusts
the exciter to maintain constant speed with varying torque.
Given that alternators replaced generators ...not even the Honda you
mentioned is a "true"generator.(It an alternator....)
One wonders at how bad those R losses are in the net result.

As to the cars with permenent magnets ,the first cars had a magneto,
including the first GM trucks and Harleys.
The perment magnets where phrased out as stated in the 50's roughly with
alternators.

No. Cars going back to the Model T did not use PMG. They used DC
generators with an electro-mechanical regulating relay box. The DC
generators had field windings to develop the magnetic field and the current
through it was controlled by the regulator. The systems were typically 6V
but were not permanent magnet units.

Since generators could not charge at idle and the alternators could.

The inability to charge at idle was not due to permanent magnets, it was
because of the type of regulator used (vibrating relay) and the DC
resistance of the field windings. At low speeds the DC generator couldn't
develop rated voltage even with the vibrating relay dropped out completely
(which put the field winding directly across the generator output). Just
watch the 'battery meter' in one of those older cars. At idle it is zero or
even slightly 'discharge' but rev the engine and it jumps over to 'charge'.
BUT, notice that it only moves over to 'charge' some distance and then
doesn't move further, no matter how much higher you rev the engine? That's
because the *regulator* is now working to control things. And the only way
to *regulate* a DC generator is to have a field winding with DC current, not
permanent magnets.

DC generators also had a problem with over-current. If the vibrating relay
contacts welded shut, the generator output would over-charge the battery
when driving down the highway. Many relay regulators also had an
over-current relay that would pick up and start to reduce field current when
the generator output current became excessive. But many a battery were
'boiled dry' by a faulty regulator relay.

The main advantages of the alternator is the cost/watt output. Because the
unit is actually a three-phase AC generator with a rectifier output, the
copper is used much more effectively and you can get a similar output with
less copper costs. It also has a unique advantage in that you can't really
overload them if you limit their output to rated voltage. Once shorted, the
only way to increase current is to raise RPM and raising RPM increases the
internal frequency and inductive reactance limits the machine output
current. Not to mention that you very rarely have to change brushes on the
slip-rings as opposed to rebrushing the DC generators used before them.

daestrom

 

[Rich Grise]

sure.
And how does this help a guy in afganistan who just wants to watch tv?

If all he wants is to watch TV, he should connect a generator to a bike
wheel. ;-)

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Tater]

In north america virtually NO automotive DC generators had permanent
magnets Up untill only a few years ago, not even automotive STARTERS

odd, I could have sworn that we would store screwdrivers and wrenches
on the generators while working on cars. must have been magic pixie
dust that let them stick

also remember trying to pull them apart to clean commutators. the
shafts seemed to have an unexplicable attraction to the blocks of
metal on the motor casings, you know, where the feild coils would be
in an alternator.

you are talking about the north america on earth, right? fords,
chevys, and such from the 60s and 70s? generators that were about 3
times as long as delco alternators and maybe 2/3s the diameter?

 

[gearhead]

As to the cars with permenent magnets ,the first cars had a magneto,

Can't argue with that! LOL

 

[gearhead]

your experience needs to be corrected. yes they had commutators,
because the magnets were in the case, not the armature.

I don't know how read "magnets in the armature" into my post.
Do I write so badly?
I've only encountered iron pole shoes -- in my limited experience.
They're basically big slugs of iron bolted to the generator case.
Separate coils fit around the pole shoes.
I'm going to do a little research to find out which manufacturers used
magnets
in the generators (and how they regulated them).

 

[clare at snyder.on.ca]

odd, I could have sworn that we would store screwdrivers and wrenches
on the generators while working on cars. must have been magic pixie
dust that let them stick

also remember trying to pull them apart to clean commutators. the
shafts seemed to have an unexplicable attraction to the blocks of
metal on the motor casings, you know, where the feild coils would be
in an alternator.

you are talking about the north america on earth, right? fords,
chevys, and such from the 60s and 70s? generators that were about 3
times as long as delco alternators and maybe 2/3s the diameter?

Yup - talking the same item - and as a mechanic in the sixties I
worked ona ton of them. As a "car nut" I worked on them from the early
teens rifht up to the end of the DC Generator, and on alternators from
the word go. Only some small engine apps and things like motorcycles
used PM devices back then - and they wer "alternators", not DC
generators. I've worked on a lot of odd-ball stuff too - even things
like (gasp!!!) Moscovitches and Lada and Fiats and Austins and
Vauxhauls - never saw what you speak of.

 

[clare at snyder.on.ca]

Can't argue with that! LOL

Actually battery operated and hot tube ignition predates the Magneto
in automotive use.Magneto automotive ignition was, in fact, something
of a rarity.(comparatively speaking)

 

[Bill Shymanski]

I am presently working for an NGO in Afghanistan and some of our feild
offices are waaaaaay out in the boonies (no electricity, no running
water, nada). At the moment they have a cr*ppy chinese generator and
funding is apparently so tight that we can't afford another generator
(since the chinese generators have proven to have a life of about a
year and the higher ups don't seem to have a concept of spending more
money for a better generator [like a Honda generator]).

Anyway, the point is that three of our offices are on the sides of
mountains or very tall hills where 3/4th of the day it is *really*
windy. Since we have very little funding i was trying to think of a
cheap means of power and thought about putting together a "cheap" wind/
generator from a truck/car alternator and fan and a few car batteries.
The problem is, my background is agricultural development so i have
little concept of if the afore mentioned setup would even work or how
much it would power or how much it would cost. The most power our
offices use is to power a TV or Computer plus flourecnet lights and
thats it. I have looked around on the internet for plans for cheap
solar or wind power setups but haven't found many (I am told they are
there, but the ones i have found seem to be insanely complicated or
way too expensive).

So if anyone out there knows of such plans or NGOs that deal with such
things (I tried geek corps but it appears that was a bit low tech for
them) please let me know!

-Gaiko

Car alternators are all but useless. You need a permanent magnet
motor.

I disagree. If the bits of cars are what he can get then that is what
he has to work with.

The alternator from a car needs to be turned at a few thousand RPM to
make useful power. This is the point that causes the trouble.

He needs to list out what he can get his hands on. Can he get all of
the parts from the electrical system of a car? Does he have lumber
and tools? Does he have pulleys? What are the locals able to
improvise?

Heres sort of the idea I had:

Take a oil drum and split it along its length.

Make some sort of verticle shaft that is well supported.

....

Truthfullly, if they need electric power, they're spending a lot on
keeping people in the field - a few hundred dollars spent on a
store-bought windmill ( even Canadian Tire has these things now...) is
probably a much more reliable way of keeping cellphones and laptops
charged than some Mother Earth Almanac project. Some times you've just
gotta spend a buck. Afghanistan is out back of beyond, though - one of
our guys did a project at a hydro plant at Kajakai a couple of years
ago.

Bill

 

[Frithiof Andreas Jensen]

"Vaughn Simon" <[email protected]> skrev i en meddelelse

rates. All this is great when a rising housing market is creating "free"
equity for them to tap, but when the market goes the other way...

Like: "Bonnie bought stock on margin. Now her ass is a bargin" ;-)

True. Better yet is to have no CC debt at all. Over the long run,
that will give you far more spending power because you get to actually buy
goods with your income rather than using it to pay interest and fees to
some fat-cat.

The majority of all people will be arseholes, always: Apparently it gives
certainty and structure in their life to hold down two jobs to service The
Man with 25% interest on loans spent on the same consumer shite everyone
else has. The slaves make their own chains and even buy the iron for them
too. If it was not credit card debts then it would be some retarded religion
or totalitarian political system. A-ny-thing to take away the pain of being
responsible for oneself, the good and the bad outcomes!

Excess Credit is Good - At least this slavery is voluntary, unlike
subservience to "God" or "The Party".

 

[gearhead]

I don't know how read "magnets in the armature" into my post.
Do I write so badly?
I've only encountered iron pole shoes -- in my limited experience.
They're basically big slugs of iron bolted to the generator case.
Separate coils fit around the pole shoes.
I'm going to do a little research to find out which manufacturers used
magnets
in the generators (and how they regulated them).






- Show quoted text -

Okay, I know this is off the subject of the original post, which is
about windpower in Afghanistan; but I just felt like I wanted to
respond to the guys who told me I was all wet about automotive
generators. At this point I'm convinced that very few or more likely
no car manufacturers used permanent magnets in their generators. GM
and Ford, back to the 1920's used field coils. And here's a cut-and-
paste from ebay:
GENERATOR FIELD COILS
#F-124 Preferred
Chevrolet - 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936
Chrysler - 1928, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933
Dodge - 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934
Plymouth - 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934
Pontiac - 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934
Studebaker - 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934

So I don't know of permanent magnets used in this context except in
some alternators, and the only cases I'm aware of are motorcycles in
the era after diodes became available.
Of course magnetos have no relevance to a discussion of charging
systems.
<descends from soapbox>
Hey Afghanistan guy, good luck! You might want to try other forums,
like www.fieldlines.com which has some real experts with heavy-duty
practical experience in alternative energy, no kidding.
This ng we're on now has a few high-level EE's hanging around, but I
don't think they are living on a mountaintop, off the grid, using a
home-built wind turbine and axial flux pm generator to charge their
battery bank so they can use satellite-based internet service to post
photos of their latest project. Know what I'm saying?

 

[daestrom]

odd, I could have sworn that we would store screwdrivers and wrenches
on the generators while working on cars. must have been magic pixie
dust that let them stick

There was residual magnetism in the iron, but there was still a field
winding around the poles.

also remember trying to pull them apart to clean commutators. the
shafts seemed to have an unexplicable attraction to the blocks of
metal on the motor casings, you know, where the feild coils would be
in an alternator.

Field coils for *alternators* are on the rotor, not the casing. 'Field'
coils on the casing iron is proof that the field was an electromagnet and
not just a permanent magnet.

you are talking about the north america on earth, right? fords,
chevys, and such from the 60s and 70s? generators that were about 3
times as long as delco alternators and maybe 2/3s the diameter?

Yep. Going as far back as the '20s, DC generators used field windings so
the output could be regulated. Same engines were also put in many small
boats such as Chris-Crafts and others.

daestrom

 

[philkryder]

Okay, I know this is off the subject of the original post, which is
about windpower in Afghanistan; but I just felt like I wanted to
respond to the guys who told me I was all wet about automotive
generators. At this point I'm convinced that very few or more likely
no car manufacturers used permanent magnets in their generators. GM
and Ford, back to the 1920's used field coils. And here's a cut-and-
paste from ebay:
GENERATOR FIELD COILS
#F-124 Preferred
Chevrolet - 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936
Chrysler - 1928, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933
Dodge - 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934
Plymouth - 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934
Pontiac - 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934
Studebaker - 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934

So I don't know of permanent magnets used in this context except in
some alternators, and the only cases I'm aware of are motorcycles in
the era after diodes became available.
Of course magnetos have no relevance to a discussion of charging
systems.
<descends from soapbox>
Hey Afghanistan guy, good luck! You might want to try other forums,
likewww.fieldlines.comwhich has some real experts with heavy-duty
practical experience in alternative energy, no kidding.
This ng we're on now has a few high-level EE's hanging around, but I
don't think they are living on a mountaintop, off the grid, using a
home-built wind turbine and axial flux pm generator to charge their
battery bank so they can use satellite-based internet service to post
photos of their latest project. Know what I'm saying?

hmm -
wasn't there some kind of soft iron in the fields of those generators
that would be "flashed" by momentarily connecting the field to a
battery?
Didn't that process make the soft iron a "permanent" magnet?
I seem to remember that if you flashed them the wrong way that they
would discharge instead of charge?

 

[JosephKK]

Vaughn Simon [email protected] posted to
sci.electronics.design:

Perhaps not the laws themselves, but the credit card habits of
consumers
could have something to do with defaults because free-spending folks
wrap their credit card debt into their mortgages and/or get home
equity loans at floating
rates. All this is great when a rising housing market is creating
"free" equity for them to tap, but when the market goes the other
way...



True. Better yet is to have no CC debt at all. Over the long
run, that
will give you far more spending power because you get to actually
buy goods with
your income rather than using it to pay interest and fees to some
fat-cat. For my family, credit is for the occasional purchase of
transportation and for a
mortgage. Credit cards are for monthly convenience, emergencies,
travel and making payments; not for long-term credit.

Vaughn

Good work. I normally can pay them all off each month. Some lumps
are more than i can digest in a single month though. It may take me
three months sometimes. Just the same, there is no doubt that i live
more abundantly on a primarily cash basis.

 

[JosephKK]

Tater [email protected] posted to sci.electronics.design:

odd, I could have sworn that we would store screwdrivers and
wrenches on the generators while working on cars. must have been
magic pixie dust that let them stick

also remember trying to pull them apart to clean commutators. the
shafts seemed to have an unexplicable attraction to the blocks of
metal on the motor casings, you know, where the feild coils would be
in an alternator.

you are talking about the north america on earth, right? fords,
chevys, and such from the 60s and 70s? generators that were about 3
times as long as delco alternators and maybe 2/3s the diameter?

See also MoosFET's post. Typically the old commutator DC generators
had a softly magnetizable core. It would hold about 10% of normal
field. This was useful when push starting older automobiles with
drained batteries.

 

[Rich the Philosophizer]

Excess Credit is Good - At least this slavery is voluntary, unlike
subservience to "God" or "The Party".

Any god that wants obedience is far from the real God.

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Bob F]

Americans are fucking idiots, they should have put a stop to this long ago,
but they are such fucking *PUSSIES* they voted for Bush - twice!

Or so they would like us to believe.

Bob