Ampair 100 water turbine

[JamesDavis]

I have recently purchased an Ampair 100 generator but there is no towable turbine supplied with it. I’m intending to make one and would appreciate any drawings, photos and anything that might help. I’d be happy to buy one if it was available.
Many thanks, James.

 

[lusitano]

Different brand but same principle

 

[Neeves]

I have recently purchased an Ampair 100 generator but there is no towable turbine supplied with it. I’m intending to make one and would appreciate any drawings, photos and anything that might help. I’d be happy to buy one if it was available.
Many thanks, James.

I assume you purchased the generator second hand?

The size of the impeller blades are defined by the speed of the vessel. For monohulls under about 40' you need larger blades than a cat, tri or larger monohull. So if you are making your own, make extra blades, bigger and smaller and make attachment of the blades easy to release. The shaft needs to be heavy, or the impeller jumps out of the chop (and the tow rope hockles). If you can afford it or reclaim some torque resistant rope is better then normal double braid - it does not hockle. Again it depends on the speed of you're vessel but if you are retrieving at any speed leather gloves are useful. (Recommendation for retrieval is to stop the vessel - this might not be sensible nor possible).

We had a LVM Aqua4aerogen - the towed generator was a better source of power than the wind gen. We had a cat and at average 10 knots, vessel speed, we'ed make an average of 10amps. I made extra small blades as our towed turbine blades were too big. The turbine was stainless about 50cm long and 20/30mm OD round rod with an eye welded on one end.

Sorry - no pictures - it never seemed a device of interest to others.

Thinking about it - a discarded out board motor 2 bladed prop, chopped down, might be a worth considering.

Jonathan

 

[Goldie]

IIRC, the Ampair/Aquair turbine was available in two versions determined by the speed of your vessel. I think the ‘break point’ was 7kts and the difference was to prevent the turbine skipping at higher speed. I’m afraid we sold our with the last boat so can’t take measurements. The current boat came with the Aquagen equivalent and the previous owner had added a shaft anode to the rope ahead of the turbine, presumably to stop it skipping.

Ampair output when above 4kts was roughly 1A per knot of boat speed.

It won’t be immediate, but I could measure the Aquagen turbine in due course if that would help and no one offers the same for the Ampair version.

 

[JamesDavis]

Thanks for the replies. I think I’ll just make one scaled up from the photos and see what happens.
I’ve been testing it on the bench with a battery drill and a voltmeter. The ‘window’ of usable voltage seems quite small.