The 'Front Bladed, Horizontal Axis' wind generator is the most common by far, and they are used on everything from,
Micro-scale,
This thing is nothing but a few PVC pipe fittings, a computer fan blade, and a CD for a tail to keep it facing into the wind.
It will light a small Light Bulb or string of LED's according to the inventors.
Great kids toy project or learning tool for beginners.
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To small-Scale,
This is a real teaching tool, and one not much larger than this is what I use to top off, or 'Finish Charge' the batteries in my Electric Conversion pick up.
The smaller amount of current the wind generator provides at night is EXACTLY correct for 'Finish Charging' the batteries after the solar (PV) cells have given them 95% of the charge they needed....
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To Large-Scale,
This is much bigger than I'll probably ever have, but in a windy area, this could easily supply all the electrical energy needs for several households!
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To MASSIVE SCALE!,
In case you haven't seen the massive wind farm generators, this should give you an idea of what 1.5 MW generator looks like!
I won't be owning anything like this very soon!
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Anyway, these
Front Bladed, Horizontal Axis generators have some pretty common features for some pretty basic reasons....
Front blades face into clean air flow.
The air isn't disrupted by the tower since the blades see it first.
They will have a 'Pivot' or 'Yaw' point so the generator can turn to follow/face into the wind.
Since the blades are in front, the natural tendency of aerodynamic drag would be to pull them around backwards to there pivot point,
SO,
They require some kind of device to keep them facing into the wind.
Smaller units usually have a 'Tail Blade' that stands off some distance behind the pivot point.
The stand off distance is to multiply the leverage force created by the tail fin.
Larger models, like the super large commercial models, will have a computer that controls the Rotation of the generator body, and with input from a small weather station and computer on board, keeps the blades facing into the wind via servo motors.
'Blade Over Speed', or blades moving too fast in a storm or gusty winds can be handled in a few different ways, but there are just three or four common ways that
MOST builders use to control blade speed...
I'll cover those in a different post, since I'm only allowed 4 images in a post.
Blades can be covered pretty quickly, and the name of the game is 'Swept Area'.
The more surface area the air flow pushes on, the more 'Torque' the center shaft is going to create.
The more Torque the center shaft has, the more 'Work' you can do.
Again, I'll cover that in a different post since I only get 4 Images per post, and I've already used up those four on this post.