How to test an old wind turbine?

[fredrussell]

Picked up an Ampair 100 at a boat jumble today. It all seems to be there, including regulator(?). When blades are spun slowly by hand voltmeter showed a reading of 10 volts or so when connected to unregulated pos/neg wires.

I’ll set it up in garden and connect regulated output to a battery. Is it as simple as ‘if battery charges it works’ or is there a better test I can do?

 

[VicS]

Put some load on it and see if you can can get anywhere near the spec performance

 

[Sailingsaves]

As Vic says; a multimeter is your friend.

Test voltage of battery before connecting.

When the wind blows see if voltage increases, but then switch multimeter to 10 Amp setting and configure multimeter to read amps and place it in series with turbine and a battery pot and see what amperage is going into battery. How much did it cost?

 

[fredrussell]

Many thanks guys - will report back.

 

[VicS]

Many thanks guys - will report back.

If you are going to test it by charging a battery use a somewhat discharged battery. Its not going to show any significant output if you connect it to an already well cahrged battery.

A car headlamp bulb as a load and up to 20 knots of wind should give you some readings close to the performance graph
A couple of bulbs in parallel should test it fully

 

[fredrussell]

Thanks Vic, the headlight bulb thing is a good call.

 

[VicS]

Thanks Vic, the headlight bulb thing is a good call.

I keep an old head lamp bulb ( low beam filament has blown but the high-beam one is OK) on a couple of long leads with croc clips .
Its also useful as a light ,
for checking power supplies getting through ( a digital multi-meter will give a good reading even through a bad connection and is guaranteed to make a fool of you sooner or later )
for checking glow plugs in situ .