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I have an idea but I'm sure I am missing something possibly to do with efficient power transfer, hopefully some of the erudite contributors to this forum can comment:
Consider a cheap "chinese" wind turbine. nominally 24V 400W, price about £140 ex ebay. They are what they are. Ive got experience with them and imo they are good value for money. I think in practice they realise 100W through winter in northern scotland.
I have been using them "as purposed" to keep a set of batteries charged for DC power of low power off grid wifi cameras. Fine.
My thought is to try to use one of these wind turbines to heat a mass (lets say water in the first instance owing to ease of coupling) in as SIMPLE a configuration as possible.
these chinese turbines are based on a rotating permanent-magnet alternator. there are 3 wires coming out of the turbine which I think you would say provide "wild AC" at varying amplitudes/frequencies depending on windspeed.
I would like to connect the three wires directly to a 3 phase immersion heater.
1. I cannot find a 3 phase / of-the-order-of-100W immersion heater to buy-off-the-shelf which makes me think that what Id like to do is fundamentally a non starter but I cant see why
2. I *can* find a 3-phase 9kW immersion element, but clearly my chinese windmill wont touch the sides with that
3. I *can* find various 12/24V DC immersion heaters (as seen in waste-oil-heater preheat tanks) So I am considering simply rigging 3 of them up in star configuration to suck it and see. I am slightly concerned that being DC there might be problems when feeding with wild AC but no idea what. Yes, I could simply use the windmill to charge the 24V battery bank then use the DC from that to feed the little element but I want to make the power delivery system as simple as possible.
Consider a cheap "chinese" wind turbine. nominally 24V 400W, price about £140 ex ebay. They are what they are. Ive got experience with them and imo they are good value for money. I think in practice they realise 100W through winter in northern scotland.
I have been using them "as purposed" to keep a set of batteries charged for DC power of low power off grid wifi cameras. Fine.
My thought is to try to use one of these wind turbines to heat a mass (lets say water in the first instance owing to ease of coupling) in as SIMPLE a configuration as possible.
these chinese turbines are based on a rotating permanent-magnet alternator. there are 3 wires coming out of the turbine which I think you would say provide "wild AC" at varying amplitudes/frequencies depending on windspeed.
I would like to connect the three wires directly to a 3 phase immersion heater.
1. I cannot find a 3 phase / of-the-order-of-100W immersion heater to buy-off-the-shelf which makes me think that what Id like to do is fundamentally a non starter but I cant see why
2. I *can* find a 3-phase 9kW immersion element, but clearly my chinese windmill wont touch the sides with that
3. I *can* find various 12/24V DC immersion heaters (as seen in waste-oil-heater preheat tanks) So I am considering simply rigging 3 of them up in star configuration to suck it and see. I am slightly concerned that being DC there might be problems when feeding with wild AC but no idea what. Yes, I could simply use the windmill to charge the 24V battery bank then use the DC from that to feed the little element but I want to make the power delivery system as simple as possible.