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Ken's TLG-500 Wind Farm in
Wisconsin
Check out the average output from
each unit that Ken
reports from months of monitoring.
Ken started with 4
units, then went to 6 units, then 8 units, and he now has 10 units.
The Wind Farm shown
below puts out
82 amps in a 16 mph wind!
Comments below the image.
NOTE: Update by date of entry from Ken below.
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5 of his 10 units shown |
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all in a row |
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Note the logo on the blades |
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Cooked 30 Amp Breaker |
Control center |
Comments from Ken about his
impressive wind farm
Above 16 mph wind average output to come.
Hi Terry.
These are the last ones I'm
sending for now.( about 26 total) Hope they transferred ok.
These TLG 500 generators perform
better than you advertise and they are beautiful to watch with
the sunlight or moonlight reflecting off the spinning blades and
tail. With a stainless steel rotor shaft with a diameter of
about 2 3/8" , the aluminum alloy case, aluminum blades and
aluminum tail, all put together with stainless steel bolts, it
should work well for many years. It looks over built, like
something we would build here on the farm. It starts charging 1
amp at about 5 mph, keeps charging a little down to about 2-3
mph and has no noticeable cogging.
I have been keeping track of the
output amps for about a month now. Long term averages should be
close to this. I have a stationary and handheld anemometer.
there is also a 24 hour internet accessible real time wind
speed indicator located 2 miles from here which is always on my
desktop screen.
So far the average output
readings for each generator in unobstructed wind are as
follows;
1 amp at 5 mph,
2 amps at 7 mph,
3 amps at 9 mph,
4 amps at 11 mph,
5 amps at 12 mph,
6 amps at 13 mph,
7.5 amps at 15 mph,
8 amps at 16 mph,
Most of the winds in our area are
in the 2 to 16 mph range. One evening we had sustained winds of
25 to 35 mph for about 4 hours and the generators were putting
out 18 to 25 amps each.
With six units that's 108 to 150 amps of power into a 12 volt
battery bank.
The six TLG-500 generators put out a total of about 50 amps in a 16 mph wind! Very
impressive for small wind generators and a lot better than I had
hoped for!!
I'll send amperage readings for
winds above 16 mph when I gather enough data to get accurate
averages.
Thanks, Ken
Below is what Ken did to his
units to seal them up far and beyond the stock bearing seals.
Like I told Ken, over kill on protections can never be a bad
thing.
No doubt Ken is a thinker!
His comments about
the seals are below the images.
The seals Ken bought
from the auto parts store
to install in the front |
The front seal installed |
A solo plastic cup was used to
seal the back of the unit |
straight on view of the cup
with silicone holding it in place |
The silicone grease Ken used
to lube the front seal |
I didn't take any pics of
grinding off the inner lip of the seals with my die grinder--
just enough so the rear lip barely touched the shaft. I left
the front lip as it was. On the front of the generators, I only
ground the slot through the first ridge ( about 1/8" ) so it
shouldn't hurt the strength of the outer case, but will still
drain any moisture away. Before installing the seal, I put a
little silicone around the bottom third of the seam where
the bearing meets the case so if any moisture ever got that far
it could not seep down where the bearing meets the case. It
would drain out the front through the hole in the bottom of the
seal.
Don't know if any of this was necessary but it gives me peace of
mind.
The silicone grease ( Dow
Corning 33 ) that I sent you a picture of is the grease that
I put on the lip of the seals when I installed them over the
shaft. It is low temp grease and stays soft in cold weather
Less friction, I think.
For the rear cover and the
Jell-O mold to protect the yaw bearing, I used regular 100%
silicone caulk in a caulking gun, the type used for caulking
windows etc. More info added 3-18-07
Winds 10 to 15 mph for most
of today. meter reads 25 to 45 amps. The generators
are doing great!!
Today we are keeping the battery bank at full charge,
having a few house lights on, running the garage door
opener and a couple of other circuits. In addition, the
dump circuit keeps a small 500 watt milk house heater
running about 1/2 to 3/4 of the time in the house.
I only have 1,100 amp hours of battery storage at this
time. I need at least 3 times that amount for these
generators. I should be charging the batteries to get
through the low wind days instead of dumping good juice
all day long.
Talk to you
later, ken
Update added 1-2-08
Hi Terry:
Sorry it
took a while to get back to you. It's been dark and
cloudy for most of the last few weeks and the sun
finally came out for a few minutes today so I could
take some pics of all 10 gens. The cooked auto-reset
breaker is a 30 amp. I have been replacing
them with 40 amp breakers. I am in the process of
re doing the whole setup so each gen will have a
heavy duty shutoff box and it's own amp meter ( 0-50
amp, class 1.5 meter )) and a separate meter to
keep a running total of amp hours produced by the
system. It's cold out so it's slow going. Also, I
have had to get larger wire to go from the
rectifier of each gen. to the batteries.( about 2-3
feet ). I was using red #10 wire for this but some
of the wires have turned into a brownish-dark red
color. I'm thinking they were too hot, so I'm
switching to #8 wire.
On one
windy day a while back when I only had 8 gens on
line, the winds were 25-30 mph with 35 + mph gusts
and two of my meters ( accuracy: 1.5 class) were
reading 356 amps to the batteries during the gusts.
Even if the meters were reading 4% high, it would
still be 341 amps for 8 gens or 42.6 amps ( 511
watts ) per gen during the gusts. It may be more
than that because I do not know if the amp meters
were actually reading high ( they were only a couple
of months old ) and I do not have any input
controllers on my system so the input voltage is
whatever the 20 deep cycle and 2 regular batteries
and the diversion circuits can hold it down to. This
is usually not more than 15-16 volts because the
diversion loads kick in at 15 volts.
I currently
have two 5,000/10,000 watt inverters. One for
regular power and one for diversion loads. I had
two 1,500/3,000 watt inverters for diversion loads
but they both overloaded and died ( at the same time
) on a recent windy day with all 10 gens on line. I
do have back up diversion loads that kick in so the
batteries do not totally fry if the diversion
inverter dies.
We do not have many
windy days here, but the winds are pretty decent
when they do come. So far it looks like all of the
gens perform about the same no matter where they are
located. Some do better one day and others do better
when the wind comes from a different direction. The
individual amp meters should help show output
differences with different wind directions.
When I get the whole
system redone I hope to get more accurate
performance data for you.
Later, ken
Update added 2-26-08
Complete Power Center with Brake Controls |
59.4 Amps in a 10 to 12 mph wind |
Have not had much good wind lately ( I believe
around 10 to 12 mph when these pics were taken)
but here are a couple of pics of my setup with
the meters and the turbine brakes. One pic is of
the inside of one of the brake switch boxes with
3/8 " copper tubing in place of fuses One
TriMetric meter measures total input amp hours
from the turbines and the other measures total
amp hours used by me. In these pics, one meter
is set to measure amps in and the other is set
to read volts. As you can see, even the turbines
in the field in clear air vary quite a bit. Wind
is from the west so all 3 turbines in the
field should be getting the same air, but
apparently not.
Later, ken
Update added 2-29-08
232 Amps @ 13.1 volts = 3039.2 Watts in 20 to
25 mph wind.
That's 3 Kw average output!
Click image for larger view
Hi Terry.
Here is a pic of meters with a little better
wind showing 232 amps.
The voltage at the
2500 amp-hour battery bank reads over 18
volts if I shut off the dump load for a few
seconds.
The meters show the output of the three turbines
on 35 foot towers in the field. The wind varies
a lot even between these three and more so
between all ten, so it's hard to tell exactly
what the average wind speed was. Anemometer was
showing 20-25 mph.
At the time the pic
was taken, most of the house was running
on battery power PLUS the 2,800 watt dump load
was ON.
Ken
Update added
11-30-08
370 Amps @ 14.5 volts = 5365 Watts in a 30 mph wind.
That's over 5 Kw average output proving there is
nothing out there up to 2 Kw that can hold a
candle to our 500
watt unit.
Click image for larger view
Hi Terry;
I sent you this
picture on Saturday, April 26th, 2008 but
didn't see it on your website. I may have
just missed it or maybe it did not go
through to you. It shows 370 amps at 14.5
volts. Well over 5 KW. The wind was around
30 mph or a little more.
Later, ken
Ken
now has 12 TLG-500 units in his wind farm (see top
image)
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