Appendix B: Meeting Minutes •
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Self-Sustaining Street Light
4.6 m/s is the reported average wind speed – found by the CoE o Need to know how the wind fluctuates, the distribution – jet, from our own data we will record. – Reid will work on analyzing the data PV – 30” by 25” LED type 4, 36 W or 40 W For our presentation to present to Dr. Suresh from CoE, about 20-25 minutes Basman is here to help talk about choosing an appropriate generator o May have to include gears – to have a minimum torque, and be able to run at lower wind speeds o Can’t have a large generator, because it will have a large back emf o Smaller ones with less toque, can place around the shaft gear like a planetary gear, and connect the generators in serioes. o However, a concern is the losses associated with using gear, Reid and other believe would be high For Data that Reid shares- Watts vs RPM o Data is extrapolated, because data is not provided before 130 RPM, however, it does not explicitly say that it doesn’t work below this point. o Reid may want to call and find out if this is true. o As suggested by Basman – the idea is to use small generators with a gear instead. Fixed gear idea could have very low losses VAWT’s are very picky with startup, higher torque required with a drag type as well. Need generator with low RPM and low torque Basman – can trick it with a nice controller, have turbine driving and variable resistance, slowly ramp up the generator with its torque We are in the range of 100-300 RPM Check into fixed gear systems – Chris Exactly how is the battery charged? o Will the battery even charge at such a low voltage? o Necessary to know for matching appropriately. The current timeline is shown o It is requested by Pelken/Dang, to allow time for debugging, to push everything 12 weeks earlier, but not everything can really be moved o Before installing for actually demonstration/testing, can ask an electrical engineer how to measure the voltage output, and how it changes based on input – to get a rough estimate. o Also, while in testing, will read the value before the light source, and monitor for the week, correlate wind speed with output from anemometer at the same time. Pole Height – now about 25 ft, and out LED can work up to 30 ft high anyway For the CoE presentation – want to include the CoE as one of the testing sites. Basman can help find the generators – will forward links and information to Dang/Reid Key – want the static torque to be low Can we use a motorcycle or moped alternator? There is a wind tunnel being build at Skytop, we can use it to test our actual product next semester, and use it to monitor output. 2-3 slides from Pelken’s presentation to include in ours
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