PM Alternator Building
Thursday, December 4th, 2008OK to change the subject. But why would we talk about Permanent Alternators. For a couple of reasons. Firstly they are the best type of alternator to use in a wind turbine. For application of wind turbines, the windings need to be designed so that higher power can be generated with less speed. Secondly, since permanent magnet alternators are a little more efficient simply as a result of the absence of the field winding which takes some power to be energised, it would make good sense to use them as part of a backup engine driven battery charger.
Instructions are around to convert existing automotive or motocyle field winding type alternators to permanent magnet types. A couple of websites I have found.
- Permanent Magnet Alternator From a Harley Davidson Alternator
- CONVERTING A JUNKYARD AUTOMOTIVE ALTERNATOR INTO AN EFFICIENT ALTERNATIVE ENERGY PERMANENT MAGNET ALTERNATOR
OtherPower.com have some great pages describing how to build your own permanent magnet alternator from scratch. I am going to get around to try one or two of these.
- Wooden Low-RPM Alternator
- A serious but simple one actually used in a wind turbine made from a old car disk brake rotor: Low-RPM Disk Alternator
- An alternator being made for a Steam Powered Battery Charger
