Windbelt

[sapphire]

Wondering of an array of these could be used to power a heater for a chicken waterer for wintertime?

All of you techie types, can you help me out with this?

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science ... nd/4224763

[Uncle Al]

Interesting concept even if it was published 5 years ago.
Typical media - No 'bling' - no air time.

I would construct a mounting so it was on a weather vane.
Then it would continually be "catching wind".

Uncle Al

[Taj]

I'm doubting the device would produce enough wattage to be useful, given its size, necessary to keep water from freezing. You would be better off with a solar panel / battery set- up. If you want to invest in wind you first need to evaluate the wind resource in your location. Even if you live in a windy area is your realestate in a clear path to take advantage of it. I'm going to try and attach a link for much info on wind. http://www.nrel.gov/wind/ Good, it pasted. You will get lots of answers here and will also have many more questions. Talk to a agricultural solar and renewables supplier in your area for good details regarding your specific wind and solar potential.

[Taj]

Dang, I hate typing on a phone. Editing and making text sound literate is at best a challenge.

[sapphire]

Taj,
Thanks for the link.

A solar panel and battery would probably be more user friendly in this area. Do you have any resources for me to check out? The Araucana yard is (mostly) south facing, so something could be contrapted there. (Contrapted? Did I really write that?!

[straightfairy]

(Contrapted? Did I really write that?!

yes, and I've quoted it for posterity.

Perhaps you meant contrived and your fingers slipped on the keyboard....

[Uncle Al]

Contrapted

The words Construct plus adapted = Contrapted
The Construction of an item which is Adapted to/for a given function.

Or is this similar to a Contraption Noooo, a Contraption is what
you get when you're not sure what you're building or creating
(Or is that a Thingamajig )


Uncle Al

[Taj]

I love "contrapted." Definitely adding that to my bag of phrases. Check out a place called New England Solar. They have a very comprehensive stock and are full of advice in your area. I placed an order for some DC switches with them and had no trouble.

[sapphire]

Contrapted: past tense form of the verb to contrapt, meaning to build a contraption

[crfriend]

I would construct a mounting so it was on a weather vane.
Then it would continually be "catching wind".

I, too, thought of that, but if that was to be done one would need to add rings and brushes to allow for an unrestricted 360-degree spin thereby increasing the complexity and simultaneously reducing the reliability. I'd focus on putting another generator at the other end. That said, you'd need a musician to tune the thing as it's incredibly reliant on the fundamental harmonic of the "belt" to be anywhere near efficient (read, "with the magnets making maximum excursion with each oscillation inside the coils" which will of necessity disturb the oscillation depending on the electrical load), and once secondary or tertiary harmonics build up the efficiency goes out the window.

I notice that Tacoma Narrows was cited. The (spectacular, and filmed in motion) failure of that bridge has become a textbook study in harmonic analysis and how one learns to either suppress or harness the effect. In this application harnessing the fundamental and mercilessly suppressing higher-order harmonics is a must.

There's also this: "Prototypes have generated 40 milliwatts [...]". This may be alright, along with storage batteries for powering highly-efficient LEDs for illumination, but recall that resistive heating is among the most inefficient ways of converting electricity to heat going. Just ask anybody who has electric heat in their house what it does to the budget during the winter.

My rough guess is that one would need 10 to 15 watts to keep a water-bowl from freezing here during the winter, even shielded from wind (as wind-chill would be in play in this application), and it'd take an array of 25 of these device to generate a single watt under optimum conditions.

[Uncle Al]

For a modern rotory connector look HERE.

These have been used in the Leslie Rotating Speaker system for over
50 years. Granted the link I posted is for an updated version which
seems to be an improvement over the ones Leslie used.
(Their home page has info about Wind Turbines too.)

if all else fails you could mount an old car generator with a large
fan on the front, instead of a pulley wheel, on top of a 8' tall "Windmill".
The Mercotac would transfer the DC current from the generator to a
battery storage facility. You didn't say either AC/DC current was required,
so a DC heater should work for the chicken house. All you need is enough
"juice" to keep the water from freezing.

Hope my $.02 worth helps a bit

Uncle Al

[crfriend]

For a modern rotory connector look HERE.

These have been used in the Leslie Rotating Speaker system for over 50 years.

Oh, my! A strange marriage of technologies, indeed! I love things like that.

Having had a look at the Mercotac ("MERcury COnTACt"?) website, I wonder whether the technology would be a good fit for the "windbelt". Most of the specs given tend towards moderate- to high- power applications; in the "windbelt" application one is dealing with low-voltage low-current -- micropower -- that's more in the range of instrumentation than transmission. Given the mercury-wetted contacts and the low resistance of the devices they'd probably work but would likely increase the cost of anything resembling an array. I rather suspect that the windbelt device is low-enough in cost that it'd be cheaper to have two of 'em at 90-degree angles to one another and be done with -- the fewer moving parts the better.

if all else fails you could mount an old car generator with a large fan on the front, instead of a pulley wheel, on top of a 8' tall "Windmill". The Mercotac would transfer the DC current from the generator to a battery storage facility. You didn't say either AC/DC current was required, so a DC heater should work for the chicken house. All you need is enough "juice" to keep the water from freezing.

For an application like this, "watts is watts" and it doesn't matter one whit whether they're changing direction. A DC generator would be fine although alternators can be more efficient and easier to control than permanent-magnet generators. However, at this point we're back into the realm of "rotary" which gets away from the beautiful simplicity of resonant action powered by wind and needs higher velocities that have to be scavenged "at altitude" (which varies depending on one's local topography).

Hope my $.02 worth helps a bit

It was certainly food for thought.

I may have to experiement a bit. I suspect I've got most of the pieces-parts required.

[Uncle Al]

FYI - The Mercotac connector on each of my Leslie speakers handle 12V with
no problems. Either at full speed, slow speed or stopped, the sound is the
same as if it had Full trem, Slow trem, or No trem. (trem = tremolo).

So, low voltage should not be a problem for a Mercotac connector, even at 1 volt,
at .o5 amp.

Uncle Al

[sapphire]

OK OK! I give up on this idea and am changing gears.

I want to build a solar powered gizmo/contraption that will keep the chickens water from feezing in winter

Help???

[Uncle Al]

OK OK! I give up on this idea and am changing gears.

Sounds like too many 'Arm-Chair' engineers/designers maybe

Uncle Al