Wind Turbine for Heating Water

When you can match your heating element and the generator output qua voltage and power, the wind should do the rest.

Frequency in this case comes second. When your turbine runs too slow, the output will be low enough to deal with the resistance/impedance of your heating element.

Depending on the heat needed, you should also find a second destination for the power generated.

Install also a max temperature fixture (thermostatic switch) to switch off the element and lead the power away.

What is the workable output of that washing machine motor/generator?

Elements in Solar water tanks use like 2000 to 4400 Watts and heat up the tank pretty fast. But of course, you can do it over a longer span, as long as the tank thermal isolation has less losses as your source, and when your water use is within range.

With solar systems you need to be a solar boy/girl. I.e. adapt your needs and comfort related to sun production. Or you'll need to oversize system and back up considerably.

Thanks very much, Where I live in S.W. Victoria Australia, winter is a bit dull and that is when I am forced to use grid power to heat house water.

Even though My Sunpower 300 watt panels sometimes yield up to 20 kw per day usually around 11 on a bad day the family tend not to think long showers cost Dad money.

But despite having 40 evac. tubes connected to my original HWS these days when cloudy are not yielding enough heat.

I believe the Fisher and Pykal motors have several different ratings and imagine different props would yield more power than others.

But from looking on the net on a good day they may yield 500 watts.

I talked to a chap selling chinese turbines who suggested just selling to the grid and buy back but after nearly a year of power going into the grid I am not getting paid properly.

The fact is my bill went up because I complained. So that is just another battle I am to engage in. But Because the savings I have achieved with the tubes in the summer I can see huge savings to be made heating water by wind.

I was considering a second tank which would be the primary tank that feeds into the storage tank and even if that water is only warm heating costs would be cheaper.

I feel as Governments create more costs with Carbon policy, power to the house will double over time, now is the time to start thinking how to beat them.

Still consider a hot water tank extra as a cheaper version of a battery with less costs and headaches.

If you can manage your water storage vs. use, you are good to go. I am more for conventional solar water heaters with black bodies under glass. At least you know the output under sunny conditions.

Dimensioning the storage is important to run through the cloudy days. I run the tanks on thermo siphon principle: 2 tank of 52 Gln connected to their panel- the hot water outputs in series to a higher level isolated tank of 62 Gln. No power connected and about 340 days a year warm water for 4 people. The 3rd tank is in the top of the roof inside.

This ought to be one of the easiest wind turbine schemes to implement. Size the heater element so that it can handle the maximum generator output without excessive watt density. At lower speeds, the generator will still run the element, just not at full wattage. Furthermore, the element doesn't care whether the generator output is AC or DC.

It's possible and as said above quite technically compatible - to which I can add, an excellent way to dump excess generation at a battery bank with mixed multiple inputs.

The issues in doing it are; the sheathed elements commonly available for water heating (in Australia) are for 240 volts. A typical water heater elements: 3600 W draws 15 A, so has has a resistance of ~16Ω. 4800W, 20 A, 12 Ω.

If your wind output is 24 V, then directly connecting to 16Ω will result in a 1.5 A load, or about 36 Watts of heating. (12Ω = 48 W)

So your choices are;

a. Arrange switching so your inverter runs the heater (provided the inverter can handle the additional watts)

b. Find a non-standard element (e.g. industrial 100 Amp x 240 V = 10A at 24V)

c. Have an element made

d. Use multiple standard (similar watt) elements wired in parallel.

Each has a degree of difficulty in electrical and/or fitting, you may or may not be equipped to tackle.

Even so; the first thing you need to establish is how many spare watts you need to dump, so what current is involved, so what resistance you need - to either limit inverter load in 'a', or specs for 'b' or 'c', or how many for 'd'.

If you are doing it 24 V, you also need to consider the length of run and the copper area involved for the current and voltage drop.

If you are a fairly handy person who has access to a machine shop you should look into using the windmill to drive a Sterling Heat Pump. You would probably need to machine it yourself, but there are lots of plans out there.

The basic concept is that driving a Sterling engine backwards causes it to act as a heat pump. The beauty of this concept is that out of one side you will get Hot and out the other you get Cold. A double bang for your windmill buck. With a little ingenuity you will be able to chill the house or icebox and heat the hot water at the same time. It would also happen to be one of the coolest windmill setups out there.

Other advantages include the fact that there is no electricity involved. You can even have the windmill drive the pumps for water or other cooling/heating fluids. They are very efficient at moving the heat and if built well they can be extremely quiet. No exotic chemicals are used, making it extremely environmentally friendly (as long as you don't violate this with your heat transfer medium.)

The downside is that you will need to get creative to build the system. I don't know of any direct suppliers of Sterling Heat Pumps that you could drop into your application.

Let me know if you get adventurous and decide to go this route. I would love to follow you doing the project.

-Doug

Doug, I had thought about that idea, We have a company who have an electric powered heat pump hot water unit, might follow up that idea. Geared fan instead of generator.

Around here larger wind mill fans are available as I presume a mill would need to develop good torque to turn the heat pump. Wind mills are used to lift water for livestock so heads and towers often come up for sale.

I was handy in regards to creating and building machines for jobs of need in farming, but last five years I have been at war with the legal profession and Governments after becoming victim to a law firm theft, I have been fighting to change State and National regulation for consumer financial security from thieves in law firms and the self protecting anti consumer legislation put into law by the profession.

This is a project that would be good at taking my mind of all that.

Can you provide some source of reference, I had envisaged before ,Fan on RH gear box.

Drive shaft down to heat pump on the ground.

Let me do some digging and I will see what I can come up with. Machining projects are a hobby of mine and I have always been fascinated by sterling engines. I would help you out, but regretably I live on the other side of the world (Hollywood, Florida, USA.)

I will post whatever links I can find that would help you to do this. If you do go forward with the project I would love to see some design notes and pictures as you make progress.

Thanks,

Doug

The "Stirling" engine name is NOT spelt "Sterling".....itcame from the surname of the man who invented the engine a Reverend Robert Stirling......

See here:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine

Hello,

Please Google the information about home made wind turbines

and have look at, following website

www.scoraigwind.com

www.othwerpoer.com

Regards

Madhav Chowdhary

( founder / owner )

SWEE Technologies

Pune (India)

Thanks, I am familiar with the sites. I have found a UK site, REUK.CO.UK, the renewable energy web site:

http://www.reuk.co.uk/wordpress/reuk-home/

They have a range of heating elements for wind turbines from 200-watt 12v, 24v, 36v up to 1200-watt 48-volt elements.

I will make contact with them for information, but this would give the best of both worlds to heat water, the sun and the wind.

In Australia the talk is of a tax to go broke by "carbon tax."

If this occurs, the old and the poor will not be able to afford electricity as they are saying power costs will go through the roof.

But over here where we suffer drought the farmer will have to pay tax on carbon emissions regardless of reaping a crop.

Our government tends to want to be the very first to do something. Free trade, for example, is a great idea except every one else has maintained protection.

I keep saying plant bloody trees and pay the South Americans a fair amount not to cut down the bloody rain forest. The lungs of the earth.

That is my way of thinking anyways: action by creating renewable energy is more effective than a tax that is gobbled up into general revenue; planting trees to store carbon and create a clean air is the way to go.

Over here they are locking up old growth forests, yet it is young, actively growing forests that store carbon and effectively.

But using the wind and the sun to heat my house water is my bit in positive action any way, along with planting trees.

I have been e-mailing politicians to look at algae for diesel using power station carbon and cities effluent on a broad scale, but such ideas are stupid so it seems.

Depends on how much you are able to throw at it, the ideal way is to have a bank of batteries fed through an inverter/charger this will keep the bank full except when you are calling for out put, If you imagine your use of power as water and when you cook or heat water or all the other things that you use electricity for,you empty the container the water is stored in & because you can only fill it from a tap that gives say a twelfth of the amount that you need, then it takes 24Hrs to fill to the top again, you can take out enough energy in a short period to do all the cooking ,heating & hot water then it will refill again. If you look for a company called Victron (I think) they explain it in more detail, but thats the gist of the idea.

Bazzer

If you want hot water from the wind, do not bother to complicate things with generating electricity!!

If you can "wield a welder", you can build yourself a Savonius windmill (its a VAWT) and therefore does not worry about wind direction. They are not quite as efficient as the conventional ones, but all you you need to do is build it bigger or just more of them......

They also have the advantage that if the wind gets too strong, just drop a big sack or a cylinder over them and the stop running.....

Now to water heating.

"Thrashing" the water, will heat it up, no need for speed control as in most electrical systems.....small wind = low heat, High wind _ lots of heat......

Here is a good video of how to make the heater:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh_-DUKQ4Uw&feature=PlayList&p=653178A7AF5847C9&index=0&playnext=1

Search on YouTube using the word "savonius" for windmill designs.

http://www.reuk.co.uk/Savonius-Wind-Turbines.htm

http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Windmill_20powered_20friction_20oven

I am reliably informed that some years ago such water heater were/are in use in Sweden for many years.

Never convert energy from one sort to another if you do not need to, it just reduces efficiency and in this case complicates/makes more expensive the whole job....

Best of luck.

See this post http://cr4.globalspec.com/comment/178703/Re-Savonius

And several other's by Lapinbleu about his simple Savonius water heater.

The more one looks the more one sees.

I have been reading about spinning magnets near a copper plate heating water.

But I was also thinking a hydraulic pump could be driven and a restrictor in the line surrounded by a heat exchanger is another way.

But it seems the rotating magnets near a copper plate can heat water up to 170 degrees F.

I saw peoples ideas spinning magnets inside aluminium tube, but Thought that A Savonius type mill with a shaft driving a disc with Magnets on it over a copper water jacket and under neath another fixed disc with magnets on it.

The shaft could also drive a small pump taking water to storage and back through the system.

I followed articles going back to 2006 but there was no reports on how successful ideas were when put into practice.

But After one reads how water can be heated by restriction that also makes one think

I have had water pumps get hot and suck in pvc suctions so a lot of heat can be generated.

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