Wind Power

Red Dragon · Newbie

Wind Power

Tony Bev · Guru

Welcome to the forum Red Dragon

I saw a vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT), in a seaside town in Wales UK, a few years ago, and wondered if they were feasible for recreation vehicles

I have never seen anyone use them, in a recreation vehicle, as we probably have enough sunshine for solar panels

It would be interesting to find out a bit more about them, as (if there was enough wind), they could be used at night time

Red Dragon · Newbie

Hello Tony.

Ive spent the past 6 years developing VAWTs with a retired professor named Dr Brian Kirke who still lives in Adelaide. He did his PhD back in 1994 on VAWTs but could never find a company willing to build a prototype to test.

That was until he met me. Together we built a 5.0kw prototype and Ive since started to build a second 5.0kw prototype in Perth. We are currently building a 500w hydrokinetic turbine for a village In Sarawak which we will soon test in SA.

I recently designed a 400w unit in response to my friends whom have always believed there was a market even in Australia. I guess its for those days when there just wasnt enough sunshine due to cloud / rain. I believe more than ever that there is a market for a simple product in the 400w range of output for recreational use.

I visited a company last week to gauge their interest and Ive been invited back once Ive built a functional prototype. They are interested as far as developing a Solar / VAWT / charge controller. I approached them because its always good to be associated with a trusted brand when starting out. These guys already service the market Im targeting so its a perfect fit for my product.

If I decide to commercialise the 400w design then Ill look at crowd funding plus a startup grant to go into production.

I thought this would be a good forum in which to directly gauge interest and opinions.

Regards, John.

Tony Bev · Guru

Thats very interesting, John

I for one, do not have enough room inside my motorhome to carry a VAWT

I also believe that my roof would not be strong enough, to set up a VAWT on top of it, even with the turbine being tied in the stop position

I would therefore rule out Jayco Conquest, (same as my Avatar) as being probably not suitable enough

The Winnebago motorhomes (2006 era) seem to have a much stronger roof, but less room inside

Hope that someone who is using one, could come along and say how it is

Red Dragon · Newbie

Hello Tony.

My 400w design fits into a hard case once disassembled. This was also a prerequisite from the company I met with last week. They said it had to be compact, easy to set up and to put away.

It can mount to a wall or a roof but youre quite right about the strength or lack of with some structures. The trick is how the load is distributed from the panel to the VAWT pole.

My favoured deployment method is via a simple guyed sectional pole. Its 3500 tall and is in 8 pieces. It uses 3 750lb paracord guy ropes and 3 steel ground pegs made from 50 x 6 steel angle.

Regards,

John.

Peter_n_Margaret · Guru

I don't like our current camp chairs because they take 90 seconds to put together, so I can't believe I would ever consider something like you describe. But we are all different.
We currently have 880W of solar (and will increase that to 1320W soon). It is set and forget, takes no storage space, is totally silent and weighs in at 14kg.
All of the wind generators I have experienced are unreasonably noisy and require more wind strength than is pleasant to be camped in. If you can address those issues sufficiently, you may have a chance at a commercial product. If not it simply won't sell to the RV fraternity.

What are the costs, output specifications, space, weight, noise levels and deployment time for what you propose?
Cheers,
Peter