St. Mary's Wind Turbine Project

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Earth Month Energy Challenge submission:
Four students completed the KidWind Challenge.  The students placed first in state with their submission.  We live in a small rural village in Western Alaska.  There are no roads in or out of the village, so all fuel for the generators must be barged or flown in.  This project helped student and community awareness about wind turbines and alternative energy use.  Pictures, data and more of the students' stories are available on the Glogster that they created.  

 

Wind Turbine Project

 

Introduction

 

Three groups went through a lot of challenges to produce the best wind turbine we could possibly make.

 

The first research project was on testing different gear ratios, and how many gears it would take to produce more volts of energy on a wind turbine. The question we are asking is, “How many gears would it take, and what is the ratio of the gear teeth would it take to create more volts of energy?” The hypothesis is that the more gears and the higher the ratio, the more volts of energy will be created. The independent variable is that we are going to change and the ratio of the gears. The dependent variable is to see how much energy can be produce with different hub designs it is usinghhgbxdbcx. The controls are that the blade design, the materials and the hub are going to stay the same. It is important because wind turbines may reduce the electricity bills in St. Mary’s AK.

 

The second project that we tested was which blade shapes will be best for a wind turbine. We have chosen two types of blades shapes to test. One is a straight blade design and the other design is a square blade design. Our hypothesis was that a straight blade will create more volts of energy than a square shaped blade. These blade shapes are what we tested a science fair project. Our independent variable is the blade shape, and the dependent variable is the amount of energy created by the wind. This is important for St. Mary’s because many people would save money due to lower electricity costs and have more money for groceries and gas.

 

The third research project is to find out which kind of material is best for a wind turbine and which would work best, aluminum foil, or cardboard. Our question is “which kind of material would fit best for wind turbine blades? “Our hypothesis is that aluminum foil is going to work better and create more energy than cardboard. Our independent variable is to get different kinds of material to use for the wind turbine and our dependent variable is to check which materials creates more volts of energy. A wind turbine in St. Mary’s would bring down the cost of electricity, which helps the people of the community save more money.

Materials

 

hub

4 turbine blades

gear base

wind turbine base

generator

dowel rods

hot glue gun

razor

cardboard

Pasco meter

gears (all sorts of sizes)

gearbox

tools

fan box

wind kit

tape

staples

card board cutting knife

aluminum foil

4 dowels blade per design

hot glue gun and glue sticks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Procedure for testing gears

 

1.  get gears and tools

2.  attach wind turbine blades to hub

3.  attach hub to generator base(no gears)

4.  hook up Pasco data sensor

5.  run test for turbine blade for 30 sec.

6.  save data or Pasco data sensor

7.  run 3 more tests with no gears

8.  run test for turbine blade for 30 sec. with a simple 2 gear system

9.  save data or Pasco data sensor

10.run 3 more tests with a simple two gear system

 

Procedure for Blade Materials

 

1.  Get Material

2.  cut out four cardboard turbine blades                                                                                

3.  Hot glue cardboard turbine blades to the dowels

4.  put the turbine blades to the hub

5.  install the hub on to generator stand

6.  hook up Pasco data sensors

7.  test the cardboard blades four different times

8.  save the Pasco data to the computer

9.  make four aluminum foil turbine blades                                                                               

10.hot glue aluminum foil turbine blades to the dowels

11.put the turbine blades to the hub

12.install the hub on to generator stand

13.hook up Pasco data sensors

14.test the aluminum foil blades four different times

15.save the Pasco data to the computer

 

 

 

 

 

Procedures for testing different blade designs:

 

1. we looked for blade designs on the internet to give us ideas

2. tape or glue to stick to the design and sticks together

3. we had tested each blade design four times

4. then we had recorded the results of each test

5. then we had done background research on the wind turbines.

 

Background Research

 

When the blades spin it causes the drive shaft to spin, it turns and rotates the coils in the generator. The generator will work only when there is force applied to the drive shaft. To get the generator to spin faster, they use gears with multiple numbers of teeth. The gears give the wind turbines a mechanical advantage; this means that they multiply it by a forceful power of the blades. Using a large gear on the drive shaft and a small gear on the generator, which brings up the rpm’s (revolutions per minute,) does this. If a gear has a ratio of 500:5, that is, for every five revolutions of the larger gear, it would make the generator spin 500 times in a circle rotation. A large commercial wind turbine nacelle (the generator Housing) can weigh up to 55 tons or even more. They are thinking about putting a few wind turbines in Saint Mary's, the people that are planning to build the wind turbines need to find a good spot to put them. If something goes wrong with the turbines, it could be a disaster. The community of Saint Mary’s could be a good spot because; saint Mary’s get enough wind to power the wind turbines. Wind turbines would help out because it would reduce the usage of diesel fuel in this town. It would reduce the carbon in the air and the wind turbines would help by reducing the diesel usage in Saint Mary’s. We think the wind out here in Saint Mary’s would be great for the wind turbines because we tend to get alot of high speed winds here in St.Mary’s, with the wind we get it would probably spin the blades 24/7. One wind turbine could create lots of energy for peoples houses. A wind turbine extracts energy

from the wind to create power for homes. The wind turbine of Heron in Alexandria is one of the first known

instances of a wind powering machine in history.

Small wind turbines can be used to create energy for schools, clinics and places that do not have an

electric grid. The worlds largest wind turbine has an axis of 160 meters above ground and the rotor

tips reachs a hight of 205 meters and is the only turbine that is taller than 200 meters. The name of

this wind turbine is the Fuhrlander wind turbine in Laasow Germany. Alaska’s future is heading towards a renewable energy resource. wind generation stands out as one of the most obvious and

functional alternatives to help keep energy supply high to Alaska while at the same time lowers the

electricity bill.We’re also studying about the different types of  materials used for wind turbines. There are different structures in wind turbine blades like the bone, skin, layers, and wires, and gel-coat. This project in our opinion is fun because of all the mechanical stuff that’s going on and hands on experience, we get to learn about how a wind turbine works and how it is created.

 

Data Tables

 

 Blade Design

 

blade design		sample 1	sample 2	sample 3	sample 4	average
straight blade		0.201	0.209	0.21	0.206	0.207
square blade design		0.214	0.214	0.20	0.214	0.211

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gear Design

 

	Sample 1	Sample 2	Sample 3	Sample 4	Average
No Gear	0.43	0.573	0.463	0.419	0.471
With Gears	0.867	0.806	1.011	1.146	0.96

 

 Material Design

 

materials	Sample1	Sample2	Sample3	Sample4	Sample5
	0.530	0.550	error	0.485	0.522

 

 Discussion of results of blade design

 

As you can see on the graph above, for the straight blade test our \\\\\\\\ highest amount of electricity created  was 0.201 volts and the lowest amount of electricity created is 0.21 the average amount of

electricity created for the straight blade test is 0.207 volts. For the square blade design testing our highest amount of energy created  0.214 volts and the lowest amount of electricity created  was 0.20 volts. The average for the square blade test is a 0.211 volts

 

 

Discussion of results for gear ratios

 

Trial I

 

When we tested our first trial, we didn’t use any gears or gearbox for our wind turbine. We had tested it four times and the graphs below shows the results that we obtained. The first time we tried testing the hub without gears and gearbox and we had produced enough volts of energy spin to the generator but it did not provide as much energy as we expected it to. We used our fan blades to get the results for our test. The lowest amount of electricity created was .419 voltages and the highest amount of electricity was .573 volts but the average amount of electricity was.471 volts that’s what we got when we tested the wind turbine with no gears.

 

Trial II

 

The second test, We used the hub and generator with our gears during the second experiment. We put a bigger gear attached to the hub and a smaller gear attached to the generator. The results we got from the geared hub produced way more volts of electricity. The reason is because we had used the big gear, which has more many teeth than the smaller gear. The smaller gear is forced to spin faster because the smaller gear has less teeth and that makes the big gear have a lot of advantage for making it spin faster. The lowest amount of electricity created 0.806 volts, the average amount of electricity created is 0.96 volts, and the highest amount of electricity created was 1.146 volts.

 

The data table above shows how much electricity was converted from the different uses of our hub, fan, and gearbox/no gearbox reactions. We used different sizes of gears to see which one would produce the highest amount of electricity.

 

Conclusion

 

Here are three different conclusions to the three different projects we had done

 

Conclusion for different gears

 

When we tested the wind turbine without gears we weren't getting as much voltage but when we tested it with a simple two gear system we were getting more than 1 volt of energy. When we first started to think about what to use for holding the gears we thought that we would be using a gearbox but it turned out to be defective, so we changed the design to use without the gearbox and instead used cardboard box to keep the shaft in place. When we start the KIDwind challenge we will update our wind turbine and make it better.

 

 

Conclusion for Blade Designs

 

Our hypothesis is that the straight blade would generate more electricity was supported. We  have done this project to test if wind turbines would be good for St. Mary’s, Alaska, because in the rural villages gas, oil, and desel are expensive. Many people do not work and are on un- employment paychecks, which is not very much money. The wind turbines would cut the electricity bills for most peoples homes.

 

Discussion of Results for Materials Design:

Conclusion - • What variable has the greatest impact on power output?

•  What type of blades worked best at low speeds? High speeds?Were they the same types blades?

•  What numbers of blades worked best?

•  What shapes worked the best?

•  What length worked the best?

•  What problems did you encounter?

•  What is the impact of quality of construction?

•  Did the materials got really bendy when they got longer - was this a

problem?

•  What happened when the wind turbine blades were bigger than the fan?

 

The reason why we want wind turbines out here homes is so we can save coal, gases, and other liquids that give people electricity to keep there house’s going.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ideas for Future Research

 

We could find out more about where they are planing to put a wind turbines, what kind of turbines, how much, and where are they going to be put in Saint Mary’s. The community wants to bring wind energy facilities here it is going to be put it in between Saint Mary’s and Pitka’s Point. Not only that, but is there going to be enough energy to run our town, so the cost of the wind turbines worth would be it.

 

Future Research for Blade Designs

 

Our ideas for future research is to test out a spoon blade design or test the turbines on a higher speed

 

 

Acknowledgments:

 

We would like to thank all these people for our wind turbine project; nick for building the basse, and our science teacher, Mr. Woodgate. Without the help from these people, we would not have gotten this far. All the students that are doing projects appreciate and thank all of you who helped us and used your work time to help us out on our project.

 

 

Work Cited:

 

www.google.com/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi

 

www.google.com

 

www.kidwind.com

 

http://www.nationalwind.com/files/NationalWindTurbineFacts.pdf

 

Work Cited for blade designs:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine_design

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine#History