Today's Testing

Today we completed our final test of our wind turbine. Our turbine performed well at all wind speeds, and at each of the three gear ratios. After today's testing we noticed that the back panel of the turbine would have to be retrofitted with metal supports around each shaft hole. The reason for this modification is to prevent the degradation of the plastic as the shafts spin at the higher speeds. As we were testing without this modification today the holes widened with time causing the shafts to jump and a large amount of gear slip to occur. As of now we have made necessary fixes and this problem has been resolved. We also came to the conclusion today that our power output is severely limited by our small DC motor and not the turbine design itself. The turbine spins well at all speeds and can handle the maximum wind speed at all gear ratios. If a higher quality generator were hooked up to the turbine we are confident that we would see a significant increase in the power output. A video of today's testing can be viewed by clicking the link below.

Testing video from 6-3-13