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Using #6 Welding Cable For Your Wind Turbine Generator Pivots! -Slip Rings are not the correct technology for small wind turbines.Welding wire is actually much more dependable and can't ever snapoff in freezing cold weather like the carbon brushes on slip rings can. Using ONE large #6 cable provides proven 50 year + durability
- Have a look at vehicle amplifer cable it is flexible and fine copper stranded
- I have used 12.2mm OD 6.6mm inside copper size ideal for 30ft run
- any longer go up a size
- Multi fine copper stranded cable carry amps and volts further.
Use #6 Welding Cable For Your Wind Turbine / Generator Pivots! -Slips Rings Are Out Dated! - Here are all the good reasons why! Welding cable is a highly specialized power transmission medium used for grueling applications that demand extreme resistance to twisting, turning, abrasion and pulling. Welding wire is also exposed to UV rays 10 x more intense then the Sun in welding rooms so it can withstand very high levels of UV radiation too. Welding cable is made using hundreds of very small, soft and ductile strands of annealed copper wire so it will last for well over 50 years while being subjected to over 2,000,000 cycles of twists, tugs, bends, turns and all other types of 'torques'. It is also water tight and the special rubber jacket is especially made to withstand millions of hours of abrasive action.The professional welders who have used this great cable for almost a century dragging it over their rough shop floors decade after decade. Many welding machine's used during WWII in ship building are still using the original cable that was supplied with those machine over 70 years ago and they are still going strong with no sign of replacement needed any time soon.Â
To replace the slip rings in your old wind turbine or to install one of ours you will need two pieces of 6# welding wire, one red and one black. This will go inside the pole tower and can withstand lots of twisting and turning motion.You will also need to purchase a water pipe as your mounting pole. Choose schedule #80 -1.5" water pipe if you live in a real windy or storm prone area. This pipe is available at any 'Home Depot' type hardware store. I would recommend you have them cut the pipe at 17 feet. This will give you 3 feet cemented into the ground and a nice tall 14 foot tall mast that will not require messy looking guy wires.14 feet is just high enough to easily be worked on with a 12 foot painters ladder and is tall enough so kids can't get cut by the spinning blades. While you are at the hardware store buy a post hole digger and a few bags of premixed "post hole" cement too. Remember the welding wire is only to hold up top the twisting action of the turbine head in the pole. Welding wire is too expensive for long under ground runs. The longer run of wire can be done with UF type direct burial type wire. 10 gauge 4 conductor is fairly cheap. Double the wires up for maximum amperage. Twist the black and the white together to become the positive and then the green and copper together for the negative. A 250 foot box is about $120.00 at the Home Depot - Run this wire under ground as UF type wire is a water proof, direct burial type wire that is easy to install without need for conduit.. Finally connect this wire to your battery with the proper fusing. You are basically done with the hard part. What you do with your battery power is your own prerogative, grid feeding, powering an power inverter, heating water etc. *Note: IF you use a foot pipe over 12 feet tall on a wind turbine that has a 65" or smaller blade diameter it will need guys wires or need to be at least Schedule #80 to resist bending when a storm hits!!! However wind turbines that have a greater than 65" diameter MUST have guys wire AND be mounted with schedule #80 pipe!Â
More On "No Slip Rings" - Our advice on slip rings is to use heavy rubber coated welding cable and don't worry about twisted wire. Twisted wires in the pole are an overrated problem in modern small wind turbines. Heavy rubber welding cable tends to simply unwind when it is under tension and the wind turbine head favorers turning in the opposite direction to effect unwinding. Welding cable has also magical qualities when it comes to taking continuous twisting and has incredible abrasion resistance when rubbing inside the pipe. Welding cable will last for about 50 years (Not even slip rings will last 50 years)NO OTHER TYPE OF WIRE HAS ALL THESE QUALITIES EXCEPT WELDING CABLE! USE IT!!!!!!!!!!!! In all our testing slip rings eventually failed and required maintenance while over 40,000 small turbines equipped with #6 rubber welding cable operated with an exceptional 100% dependability factor for over 24 years now and counting. 100% reliability NEW AGE - Why do you assume that the wires on a tiny modern wind turbine would "BIND" ?These turbines are so scrony at only 19 lbs. They are so tiny they can't bind. Wind turbine have never before in WORLD history weighed this little.The advent of carbon fiber blades have changed the rules forever.In this new era, new ways of thinking have started. Any slightly twisted wires tend to just "UN-WIND" like a rubber band does. Yet more on the - "NO SLIP RINGS" TopicIf you have #6 rubber welding cables and put them in a wind turbine tower pipe you can only turn them about 20 or 30 times in any one direction before they get tight. Interestingly enough this point they react like a giant Rubber-Band and try to turn the other way trying to unwind themselves. A simple rubber tension system was born from welding cable! It's very reliable, cheap and never fails. No moving or rubbing parts to fail. Welding cable is specially made cable designed to endure endless abrasion, twisting, bending and turning motions offering at least half a century of service life or more. Especially if it's in a dark pipe with no UV shining on it. It should last a life time.  WILL RAIN OR SNOW SHORT OUT MY PMA?No it will not, and here is why. The turbine gets very hot in higher winds so it MUST be 'open-vented' in order to stay cool.This type of unit can actually run under water in rain water which contains no electrically conductive mineral salts like tap water or ground water does. Pure rain and snow as found on the top of the wind turbine pole are non-conductive until they touch the earth and soak up salts and become electrically conductive ONLY THEN... It is a big misconception that water is thought to be automatically electrically conductive in all of it's many states. Pure snow and rain water have Zero PPM 'dissolved-solids' chemically speaking so it can not harm or short out an open PMA resting on the top of a pole high up in the air.
WATER IN CEMENTED TOWER PIPES;Drill a small 1/4 drain hole at the cement or ground level of the pipe. Fill the pipe with a few cups of liquid cement (water mixed with Portland cement powder only, NO sand or rock!!!) When this mixture comes out of your 1/4" drill hole then chase it with a gallon of clear water. If it clogs during pouring use a piece of wire until it flows clear water. DONE! - Water in pipe problem gone!!!!!!!!!!!
Tower strength is a must We only talk in terms of lateral loading or in simpler term sideways thrust or loading. Your Hornet turbine creates 1100 lbs of lateral loading at 115 MPH.That is like a car with a rope tied to the top of your tower applying 1100 lbs to the tip of the mast in an attempt to pull it down. Your tower manufacture should understand this.If you are in a cold area also remember about 'icing" that brings down more towers than just wind alone. In other words BUILD YOUR TOWERS TOUGH!Using schedule #80 1.5" steel water pipe is the best choice over the cheaper and more common schedule #40 pipe.plenty of steel 5mm wall steam pipe at scrap yards you can recycle it.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Q. How do you get the electricity down from the generator as it changes direction to face the wind? Would the wire get twisted without sliprings? A. Our turbines do not have a tail that flips to the left or right in high winds so how can the wires get twisted??? This is a 70 year old misconception left over from a bygone era when ALL wind turbines made in the 1930's would turn in one direction for high wind protection. This would set the stage for twisted wires since an old style wind turbine would tend to make one to many left or right turns.Now in the age of carbon fiber and other advanced materials blade can take winds at hurricane speeds that would normally snap old style wooden propellers. Now-A-Days using rubber welding wire is all that is required for dependable power transmission down the pole. Weld Cable is made for twisting, abrasion and tension resistance. Like a giant rubber band welding cable will never be able to make enough turns to get twisted-up before it desperately wants to release it's build up of tension energy and literally unwind itself in the pole. Welcome to the new millennium and evolution from old ideas. THINK ABOUT IT - A wind turbine manufacture brags about therebrushless PMA's since brushes are undependable, they admit to the terrible dependability of carbon brush generators!Now in the very next breath they then brag about the carbon brushes in there wonderful slip-ring assembly !! See a conflict of interest here ??
"Carbon brushes wear out, sooner or later but most often they fail by snapping like ice sickles in any
freezing weather and those are just a few of the cold hard facts against the use of carbon brushes in general"
BATTERY TALES: Hints for people that are attempting to operate a household and are not on the grid:Get a fork lift battery! Try calling places that sell used fork lifts. The 12 volt batteries that run fork lifts are the best! Many of these old batteries are discarded because they can no longer operate a fork lift for a full 8 hour work day but they still have enough operational life to run your household for many decades. Many can be bought at recycling prices and still have 100 times more amperage than a brand new bank of automotive type batteries that will only last for 2 or 3 years. Lifespan of battery types while engaged in demanding alternative energy use:Cheapest bargain store bought automotive battery - 6 to 8 months life before it goes to the junk heap.Professional battery store bought T105 battery - 2 to 3 years life before it goes to the junk heap.Professional battery store bought L-16 battery - 4 to 7 years life before it goes to the junk heap.Industrial bought Fork Lift battery - The one I own is 31 years old now, I will let you all know when it finally dies. Customer Comments: "My fork lift battery has been powering our home for 27 years now and still charging strong!I feel sorry for the people using 105's or L-16's, that is a great way to go if your goal is tocreate a mountain of useless lead within your life time or run out of power in the middle of dinner.This is the best advice you are ever going to get and it is your funeral if you do not listen!Our 12 volt /110 AC inverters can run for weeks at a time on our monster sized fork lift battery."
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