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After catching a blurb about Enviro-Energies/Mag-Wind on Peswiki, I was very interested in their VAMLWT (vertical access magnetically levitated wind turbine) because of it's design to catch wind from any direction without having to turn the turbine to orient it into the wind and the friction negation of mag-lev.

You can see their site here (although when I first went looking for it last week I couldn't get it to resolve):

http://enviro-energies.com/index.htm

But it has a hefty price tag of $10k-$60k per advertised 1.5kWh to 10 kWh turbine generation capacity at 15 mph wind speed and "smart" inverter (proprietary) that deters casual interest. Then doing some google research I found that it/they have a checkered past (even though Ed Begly Jr. is a spokesperson and Jay Leno is getting one installed on his garage roof), so I thought it might be better to experiment with the idea to see if their claims and design were possible.

After looking at the turbine design I figured it wouldn't be hard to mock up a scale model to test different blade type efficiencies, etc. It's basically a flat platform (or it can be) with a post in the center that the blades attach to.
I have a leftover spindle from a package of 50 DVD-Rs from Ritek that looks perfect for that (even conveniently divided into thirds by cover lock tabs).

Each of the (3-6) blades will be at least as long as the diameter of the platform so they would be unattached to the base for at least 1/2 their length from the spindle and would be made out of flexible plastic about 3 mil thick (like one of those snow sleds that is a sheet of plastic with a handle).
A hole is then drilled in the outer tip of the blade and with a rope or string, tied to the platform so it would (depending on length) flex the outer tip of the blade into the wind to capture it (see figure below), and allow for testing optimal blade or vane characteristics (how much flex in other words).

I thought this a lot faster than trying to form a non-flexible material into the blade shape.

They (EE/Magwind) say that they are able to generate @ ~ 4mph wind speed due to their mag lev design and coil placements use Lenz law to suspend the blade platform frictionlessly, generate electricity, and self govern the speed of the turbine to keep it from reaching too high a RPM speed during heavy winds.

This is the part that really caught my eye as it makes wind generation much more attractive and feasible for clean energy use, but how?

I could understand how you could keep the platform levitated with like pole magnetic opposition, but not how you could generate electricity that way unless you used a flat coil between statically mounted "base" magnets and rotor/blade assembly (still not sure about that), but not how to keep from having bearings on the spindle to keep the rotor from rubbing.

Then I had a hair-brained scheme (illustrated below) as how that might be able to be accomplished, but need to ask some questions due to electrical theory ignorance.

The idea is that the post in the spindle is a coil, and the spindle cover of the rotor  has magnets attached to it in a variety of ways..........

.........and so here go the questions:

1.) Would the flat coil mentioned above generate electricity (no illustration) if the individual winds of the coil didn't have a change of magnetic polarities, but the coil as a whole did (actually, would that make it more like AC?) ?

2.) If you used flat or arc magnets axially magnetized to complete a "ring" by N/S closed connection, would it's rotation around the coil generate electricity, or would the magnets need to be staggered or gapped (not touching) to generate? Would rotation generate then? (see illustration).

3.) Would the rotation of the magnets on the coil provide force holding the rotating surface away from the coil, or only produce drag?

That's where I'm stuck now as to whether to design more in this vein, or not.

Your answers are appreciated!

The 1st illustration below shows a top view of the vane/blade arraignment.

The 2nd illustration shows the coil idea. 

Hey, The easiest way to do this is to check out turbine blades on ebay 

http://shop.ebay.com/items/_W0QQ_nkwZturbineQ20bladeQQ_armrsZ1QQ_fromZR40QQ_mdoZ

 then use your skills to hook these up to some auto alternators that use ceramic bearings from the junk yard, from the 90's Japanese cars.


I say this because I've been down this road. Non the less, if you choose a different path, have fun and good luck.

The friction/drag of the spindle bearings is negligable.  The replacement of the weight bearing bearings with the mag-lev magnets is where the friction/drag savings are.

Hi ya Cap'n.....it's been a little while.

True enough about the spindle bearing, and I figured the design would need @ least 1 on the top of the coil joining the rotor to it to keep the rotor from flying off during an updraft, but I was thinking along the lines of just that 1 and the added (stepped) generation potential as well.

You idea of the spindle being the generator is interesting, but would be a poor utilization of the overall device.  As it is, the enviro device is lacking a completed magnetic circuit (no steel backing/return circuit for magnets) reducing total flux - and thus power output - and the coil arrangement is flimsy and seems it would be prone to wobbling/failure.

Ah, here I find I didn't clarify completely. The spindle is a generator, not the generator, and question 1 pertained to the other parts besides the spindle since I don't know enough electric theory to know if it would generate anything because the N/S joining of the arc mags minimizing the flux they have.
If it just generates enough to run a controller that turns on gate switches for turning on sequences of the generator coils and produces a repelling effect (although the attached pic below has a better design to achieve that I think?) to keep the rotor from rubbing the coil.

I'm not quite following the " lacking a completed magnetic circuit (no steel backing/return circuit for magnets) reducing total flux" part though. I thought since the N/S flux polarities were joined that the flux was minimized and don't understand how the backing completes the circuit more or what positive effect that could have.
Could you explain just a bit please?

1. the greatest power output is when 1 leg of the coil is covered by a N pole and the other leg of the coil is covered by a S pole.

In the pic I've attached you can see that I've thought about a coil doing just that ( Imagine the other 2 series of magnets have a similar coil, but it's a bitch to draw a flat spiral w/ my graphics program so i only did 2).
I wonder about the coil canceling the repulsion effect of like polarities.

I'm not sure if it would generate anything either because of the polarity never changing over the coil segments.
From my tiny understanding I'd think the polarity generated on the outsides would rush to the center of the coil and generate heat from resistance, but no usable power?
Maybe a continuous coil per polarity, and not groupings of polarities?

The thread here:

http://www.overunity.com/index.php?topic=6759.msg155621#msg155621

brings to mind a few changes that might be advantageous to the attached pic and how it could both generate and repulse

2. the airgap between coils/magnets should be smaller than the gap between magnets.  Otherwise the flux will take the path of least resistance, the adjacent magnet, rather than throught the coil.

That's why I asked about the ring the individual arc mags formed. That's what I thought that when the flux is traveling to an adjacent opposite polarity it's generating ability is compromised.
But something keeps nagging at me about the idea too.

3. the magnetic field of the coils will be changing with the rotating magnets.  I would think this would cause a severe wobble in the device?

This I don't know. I assumed since the segments were joined and minimal flux was available from them that it wouldn't be of much use as either repulsion or generation, but if there was an effect, it would be equilateral since the mags made a complete ring.
It shouldn't take to much time to mock it up with a glue gun and some mags, so I'll still probably give it a go.

I started this thread the other day as the mag-lev aspect as well as the variable-reistance coil controler caught my eye.

http://www.overunity.com/index.php?topic=6764.msg155717;topicseen#msg155717

Like i said, I saw it on PesWiki and all the links were dead except for the flux movie.
I've since gone back and looked at the other movies that are now available and see that my idea is not that much like theirs (large ring mag repulsion vs. the many staggered like polarity thing I drew, mine would probably cog some).

Thanks for replying, but I'm still a bit puzzled if you wouldn't mind.

@X000000

Thanks for the link bud, but those are turbine blades for a HAWT (horizontal) instead of a VAWT (vertical, which is the design I prefer), so I don't think  they'll do me much good.
I'll keep the starter idea in mind, even though I'd like the idea in the thread I mention above to pan out a little more.

Keep 'sperimentin' though!


The pic below are a top view. On the left the upper side of the base w/ coils, on the right the underside of the rotor. The weird design is to try to minimize cogging. I'm still thinking about various sized magnets (instead of the uniformly sized ones I illustrate) to help that.

So far, it's just an idea.