Wind Generator

Manufacture a Wind Generator using a Stepper Motor

Pictures of the wind generator as they become available


Start with a 3 inch diameter pipe	Mark with engineers blue and clamp	Cut using bodged hacksaw blade

Cut again to form two half's	Then cut the two half's again	into quarters	like so

cut the other half	blue the four quarters and scribe new	cutting lines and cut	Voila! We only need three blades

Pete fitting the new blades	to the stepper motor		Ready for first wind test

The start of the brush system	and the screw bit goes in here	when the thread has been cut	like this

Voila !	Now part off one slip ring	then the other	and here we have two slip rings

that fit on to the screw thread	Start of making 2 bearing mounts

	The slip ring assembly, bearing mounts, brushes, blades and stepper motor	Enclosure for bearings and ring gear	Enclosure with bearings fitted
			video of first wind test
and slip ring and brush gear with mounting pillars	Old motor on the left and the new one	Head housing for the motor with motor fixing holes drilled	Mobile phone video of first wind test of the blades with a motor attached

Stepper Motor mounted in box with rectifier pack	Wind vane	and wind vane mounting bar	Modified castor wheel with nylon insert
			Generating Power
All mounted onto my camouflaged pole	Ready for erecting	Up in the air ready to generate	Video of generator running

OK - It's now May 2010. The prototype generator works but not really as I would have liked. It needs to rotate at about 300 rpm before the stepper motor generates enough voltage to charge a battery and then, because I have all four windings in series to generate the voltage, the charge current seems to be limited to about 0.5 amp due to the resistance of the windings. Effectively the blades spend most of their life turning but generating no power. As I used a castor wheel for the rotating part of this small generator, which worked extremely well, I have decided to use the slip ring box for a much larger generator and continue to work on the stepper motor design to see if it is possible to generate useful power in low wind speeds. The continued construction of the slip ring box and the larger generator is contained in the "Blade II" section accessed from the top of the page. The stepper motor generator development will continue on this page.

This generator now produces 1 amp of charge into the battery system. The home made blades snapped in early June when we had some strong winds. I rehashed the fixing points and shortened the blades by 3 inches. This seems to result in a higher rpm for the same wind speed as it is now contributing to the battery charge on a daily basis albeit only 1 amp.

January 2011 France. On a 9ft pole On a 12ft pole and on a 20ft pole