User:Emspangler/enes100/My Work

Link to team page.

Write problem/project Goal
My project goal is to construct a wind turbine that can turn wind energy into storeable and useable electrical energy.

My First Task


In a wind turbine, the blades turn rather slowly. Over the weekend, i will look into gears that take the slow rotations of the wind spun blades and increase the amount of rotations needed so the motor can produce energy. Also i will test an old battery to see if it has a charge and can hold battery life.

Summary of actual work over first weekend
For my first week of work, I wanted to focus on the gears that would be needed to increase the low rpms that the blades provide. As the first week started, i realized that the most important part of our project is finding a working generator. In the process of finding and understanding a generator, i feel like our team has started working better together.

Week1 Narrative
Over the weekend i looked into the difference between voltage sources and current sources. I found out that our generator is a power source. Power is voltage x current. I want to varify this with my group when we meet today.

My Second Task
Now that my team has found a working generator with blades attached, i need to figure out how i can increase the voltage. So far our generator has only produce at max 4 volts.

Summary of actual work over second weekend
During this week, i did no work with the generator that was found, instead my team decided to make a smaller version of a wind turbine to power an LED. This week, i feel like we played alot and got somewhat off topic. However, from this playing I have learned how to measure voltage and amperage, which is really useful for where i want to take this project next.

Week2 Narrative
Over the weekend, i identified voltage and current, during this week i measured the voltage and current of the smaller turbine.

My Third task
Over this weekend, I want to get back into focus on my problem, which is converting the rotational energy in electrical energy. I'm going to bring in a hair dryer so that i can measure the volts and amps produced by a constant wind source. The compressed air runs out too fast and produces energy like a negative parabola (goes up, reaches a max, then falls to nothing). With this constant wind source, i will be able to figure out how many volts and amps exactly the turbine can produce with this specific wind energy. After finding this information, i can calculate power using one of the formulas i have stated below. I want to find a battery with the same amount of volts so i can recharge this battery, and use it to demonstrate that my turbine has worked.

Formula for Power:

P=IV P=I^2R P=V^2/R

P(power) I(current) R(resistance) V(voltage)

Summary of actual work over third weekend
At the end of last weekend I really wanted to recharge a battery and use that to power a small car. When i started thinking about it, i realized that charging a battery would take a long time and i wanted something that could wow everyone on the spot. That's when i started thinking about lights. Halfway through the week i looked up parallel and series circuits. I drew a parallel circuit that could could power LEDs. Now my end result for demonstrating that the wind turbine works is powering lights!

Week3 Narrative
On Tuesday March 6, i tested the mini turbine design for volts and amps. I brought in a Revlon hairdryer to use as a constant wind source. When i setup this test, it failed because the hairdryer could not put out enough wind energy to get the blades to spin. Next I upgraded to a leaf blower. When i set up this test, it succeeded, you can see that in this video I got a measurement of .21 volts and 1.0 milli amps. From this test i could conclude that the mini turbine would not be able to charge a 6 or 9 volt battery like i had hoped.

On Wednesday March 7, I met with my group and started working with a larger wind turbine. Then i test this turbine for volts and amps as well. I did the same set ups as before, testing current the circuit and testing voltage  the circuit with a leaf blower. For voltage, i measure 9.75 volts and for current, i measured 2.0 milli amps. With these test results, i could use the formula, P=IV to calculate how many Watts of power my turbine is producing. This turbine would be able to power a battery like i had wanted.

On Thursday March 8, I designed a circuit that i would want to design to more visually show that the wind turbine worked. I came up with this design.

On Friday March 9, I implemented my design. I found four LEDs, one red, yellow, orange and green. I wired these LEDs to a breadboard and hooked it up to the turbine. With the leaf blower again, i powered the turbine and the four LEDs lit up. You can see this in a short video i made.

My Fourth task
This weekend I want to connect more LEDs to my breadboard. Now that i'll have 8 LEDs, i need to look up how much resistance i'll need or if the voltage is divided enough along my circuit so that I won't need a resistor. This is something i'll decide over the weekend so that i won't blow out my LEDs when I'm testing the wind turbine. Since i have already proven that my wind turbine can light the LEDs, i want to get a little more complicated and try to make them blink! For this i wanted to use switches, so i could turn some LEDs on and off. Or i was thinking about using the arduino to tell the lights to blink without me having to physically do it. These are all ideas that I'm really excited to share with my group.

Summary of actual work over fourth weekend


To get the LEDs to blink, i wanted to put switches or breakers in my circuit. Instead of going further with this idea, my professor suggested a 555 timer with a capacitor. I found this video on youtube of a girl who demonstrated how to excute this idea. I want to incorporate the 555 timer into my own project.

Week4 Narrative


Over the weekend, I cut, stripped and wired 4 more LEDS to my breadboard. Now in total, one of my breadboards has 8 LEDS. I used this LED calculator that i found on Kyle's work page to calculate the resistance needed in my circuit. I calculated that i needed 680 ohms of resistance when using the turbine with the radiator fan blades. I then decided to leave my original circuit alone and start another bread board circuit that would be more organized and incorporate a 555 timer. So far I've been using this wikipedia page to learn more about 555 timers and find a starting point to incorporate it into a design. I've been playing with this breadboard to figure out the right way to wire everything together.

Complete Project Page
Team Done Page