Jacobs 110V turbine

[giduddy]

ALCON (All Concerned)

hello everybody, I've been following the forum for years, but recently joined.  Great topics on this forum.

Looking for suggestions:

Here is what i have:
Jacobs 3500 watt Jacobs 110VDC generator in great working shape
problem: no controller
My Idea flow:  110VDC generator to a clipper to a charge controller to batteries (48VDC battery bank) would like to interconnect to the grid, this is where I'm stumped as what grid interactive inverter to use?  Outback Guardian?

this is a very basic description, I didn't include any safety items (Disconnects, diodes, shunts, dump load, ect) in the description.

thanks much and I would love to hear any other suggestions

Also I am always looking for parts or other Jacobs wind turbines!!

I would like to install this 110V Jake this spring, and I have a 20KW Jacobs I have plans to install this coming fall if I can get the Mastermind controller working correctly or find a suitable replacement..


Dustin

[tecnodave]

Giduddy,

Is your Jacobs one of the 1930 thru 1955 models? Full feathering?
Just curious, have worked with these a bit. I don't know of a 20 kW from back then so this must be a second generation model?

You have a good basic plan, I have only worked with the basic Jacobs controller but the Classic would be much superior for this use.

td

[giduddy]

TD;

yes the 3500 watt Jacobs is in if the '30-'55 models, from my research, mine is right around that '48 year, 110volt DC, dual commutator, with a blade actuated governor (originally had a fly-ball governor), i wouldn't say its "Full feathering" as in turning 90 degrees from set point, but it does feather at least 75 degrees.

The 20KW Jacobs is a 1980 something model, and yes kind of a second generation, they are still made today, but under a different company name.  Mine originally was installed in California in a wind farm and they were dismantled and sent back to Jacobs sometime in the late 80's I believe.  the generator end from what i can tell all the parts cross to Onan part numbers, which I have to assume that Onan built the generator for them.

[tecnodave]

Guiddy,

You have a real keeper in that old Jacobs, one was installed on Admiral Bird Station, Antarctica, in 1933 and still is in operation today. 220 mile per hour winds and all, I have a lot of respect for those machines, have overhauled the generator on several years ago.  The original governor was fly-ball but I have not seen other feathering applied to it. It did turn about 75 degrees as original. Do you have the original blades? The oldest variety had big coil springs on the blade shafts and as centrifugal force built up the blades would move out and turn through cam action to feather the blades, it was crude but  works well when adjusted well but that is another issue, it wasn't easy to get them in sync.
There is a California woodworking shop that machine carves exact duplicates on an
X-Y numerical lathe, Santa Rosa Woodworks in Santa Rosa , California. Does a real nice job, been years, I hope that they are still around.

Is the 20 kW machine AC generator and maybe 3 phase? I was aware that Jacobs restarted but I have no information on their second generation models. Onan seems likely as they are a premier generator builder. There is a member on this forum who is likely an Onan dealer and parts source, His handle is onanparts.

I hear that newest software revisions  that multiple Classics can be run in parallel but you will need to verify that with Robin or boB to be sure.
Maybe multiple Classics and clippers will work with the 20 kW machine but I have not done any larger than the old Jacobs DC machines so that is just my guess there.

td

[tecnodave]

giduddy,

I want to suggest a book that is long out of print written by Michael A. Hackelman of San Bernardo, California, The Home-Built Wind Generated Electricity Handbook, originally published by Peace Press of Berkeley, California in 1975.  It is his second book and covers a lot of details about the older models of the Jacobs. In it he goes into many different types of wind generators but seems to focus a lot on rebuilding the Jacobs.

It is available used on Amazon.com

Also worth reading is his first book Wind and Windspinners which is about his attempts at building Savionus Rotors, I say attempts because in the book you will see many failed machines plowing the fields. He was not the thorough mechanical designer. I am not impressed with the Savionus design because they all have the fatal flaw of no method of governing the rotor speed. I only suggest this book so that you can get into his thought process, he tried very hard but crashed many machines which led him to the Jacobs.

In the second book he details a negative feedback loop // regulator // which can be adapted to any wound rotor wind generator. It is suitable to use with the Jacobs and any DC or AC generator which has a wound exciter, not to the current designs of permanent magnet 3 phase generators in use today. At least not without thorough redesign using SCR's to control output.

The theory of this //regulator //was to match the generator to the power available from the wind, the physics of a wound rotor generator is that when doubling the shaft speed the power will increase by a factor of 16, however the wind is cubic......when doubling the wind speed the power will increase by a factor of 9.....resulting in under loading the rotor blades  at low wind speeds and or over loading  them high wind speeds. This was done by comparing the wind speed by reading an anemometer and the shaft speed of the generator (by counting the ripple frequency of the DC output)  and using the values to modulate the field current to correct the generator output to more closely match the wind power available.

I expanded on Hackelman's work designing my own feedback loop regulator in one of my home made generators. This machine had a Compound Wound Rotor design which had both series and parallel fields. The generator was built by General Electric as a motor to pull an elevator up a shaft and was rated at 3/4 horsepower from 60 to 1800 r.p.m.'s , that is not 3/4 horsepower at 1800 and some much lesser value at lower speed but a full 3/4 horsepower through the whole speed range, it was selected because it was a massive design which had a huge torque capability. My design manipulated both fields by switching the series field from //edit// boosting at low r.p.m.'s and bucking at high r.p.m.'s //edit// and varying the power fed to the parallel field to correct the generator loading to match the power available from the propellor. This was accomplished by using an a comparator circuit which compared the generator r.p.m's to the anemometer r.p.m.'s and varying the DC current to the parallel field and switching the series field from //edit// boosting to bypassed to bucking //edit// the generator output. The whole idea was to get a perfect 9/1 match to the power available from the wind. The work was experimental and was terminated when I ran afoul of government regulations as to visual pollution of the airspace, however I was successful in getting the generator to match the power available.

My work was never published and I hope to continue with this work at some point when we do not have to battle the bureaucrats.   

The Classic will match the generator voltage to the battery voltage but will not replace the original regulator design of the Jacobs which adjusted the voltage (power) fed to the parallel fields of the Jacobs, you will need to find a method of doing that. The regulator designs used on most automotive generators (not alternators) use a very similar design to the original Jacobs regulator but there are much better all electronic designed available today.

I hope that I have not overloaded you with this information but I feel that it is an avenue worth researching.

The feedback loop regulator was used on Hackleman's downwind machine which had the fiberglass body which looked like a fish. All this is from memory and my work was done in the late 70's and early 80's so some details have been lost to memory, but Hacklemans's book has lots of valuable information on the Jacobs machines.

Good luck with your project and feel free to ask for my experience with wind energy.

td

Edited to replace the wrong wording in several places,   Edited areas are marked with //edit//....my mind works faster than my typing     td

[tecnodave]

giduddy,

I did not comment on your original post as to the grid interactive inverter because all of my systems are off grid, I have never done grid tie so I have nothing to share on that one. There are many on this forum who are grid tied or grid interactive.

td

[giduddy]

Tecnodave;

Thanks for the information!!  its appreciated.  I'm going to have to reply step by step because this is so much information...

     Believe it or not, the book you recommend by Michael Hackelman i already own, picked it up it up a few years ago at a garage sale... it is a great book with a plethora of useful information.

     I am on the lookout for his first book also, first though I have to finish reading the library I already have, its getting a bit out of control.

     Relative to exciting the fields, the easiest way i found to do this is by hotwiring the field to the output of the armature at the back of the generator.  The result is only two slip rings, one for + and one for -.  This would mean that the unit is almost self-regulating and I would have a spare slip-ring if one were to fail.   I have a bit more tests to run on the generator itself first before i fly it like that, but this seems like what most people with older Jakes are doing.  if that is the case, I believe that a clipper matched with a classic should do the job just fine.

     I also thought of wiring the comms in parallel to cut the voltage in half, but a problem is with the current draw for the high voltage fields.  In order to create the needed flux, a low voltage Jake draws 3.5 amps, but the high voltage Jake, the one i have,  only draws 1.5 amps.  While I think it will generate, it will  not generate any where near what a low voltage machine would generate.  The high voltage Jake generates about 20 amps and the low voltage about 60 amps.  I think i would  simply do not get the current i'd be looking for. I'm thinking I'll stick to 110 volts DC at 20 amps vs 50 volts DC at still only 20 amps.

thanks again

Dustin

[tecnodave]

Dustin,

Sorry to load you up with so much information but I wished I had far more when I started tinkering machines in the late 70's. I have tinkered with many types but found very early that the 3 bladed Stuart design had by far the best performance and that the Jacobs was the best example of the type.

I do not think that you will gain anything by wiring the commutators in parallel, this can be done but the machine will be more efficient at the higher voltage and you would have the issue of generating the 110 volts for the field coils. The other downfall of doing this is that you would double the current on the slip rings.

By far most of the early units were single commutator units designed for 32 volt battery systems rated at 3000 watts.

The dual commutator units are really 140 volts DC out to charge a nominal 120 volt battery bank and require 110 volts DC to the field coils. I realize that a lot of people are wiring the armature output back into the field input but if you do that it will keep the machine always loaded. The original controller varies the DC input to the fields to govern the output. Most modern wind generators do not do this as they are AC 3 phase permanent magnet fields and can be controlled only by shunting the output. The Jacobs is also unlike all modern generators as it is specifically a low wind speed unit generating useful power at 9 m.p.h. Wind speed and full power at 15.4 m.p.h. unlike the current generation of generators that need 25 to 30 m.p.h. to generate full power. It is also direct drive with the generator putting out useful power at 125 r.p.m and full power at 225 r.p.m. There is no other generator that has matched this and as far as I know absolutely no one has matched the efficiency of the original Jacobs  of 48.9% of a possible 53.7% maximum for a 3 bladed design. None of the modern 5 to 8 blade machines come anywhere close, they are more on the order of 20-30% maximum.

One detail that I recall is the Jacobs used a very special manufacturing method for their generator brushes that had carbon layered with graphite. If you can obtain them they will make a Hugh difference in the performance of the machine. Most replacements are only carbon. Jacobs had many patents on his machines including on these brushes.

On the Classic and Clipper I would definitely recommend the Classic 200 as you will be to near the maximum input voltage of the Classic 150 and the 200 will easily handle the current and power of the Jacobs when used with a 48 volt system.

One other person to read is Jack Park, of Baldwin Park , California. Jack is a licensed Aeronautical Engineer and has a real grasp on the aeronautical aspects of wind generators. He designed the best Savionus Rotor that  Hackelman had, the one with aluminum foils, but unfortunately Hackelman did not properly mount it and it too ended up plowing dirt. Park was inspired by Hackleman's work but soon realized that the Savionus was at best 15% efficient and he moved all his efforts to Stewart designs.

I drew more from Jacobs work than any other but I never got my own Jacobs, ending up with a extremely rare 1932 Delco-Remy Win-Lite 1000 watt 12 volt complete with a matching auto start generator with the same 1000 watt 12 volt generator as the wind generator and a few others. Generator automatically starts itself when batteries are undercharged!  Bought from a scrap metal yard for 10cents a pound!

David

[tecnodave]

Dustin,

Thinking a bit more on paralleling the commutators ,if you feed the 60 volts to the existing fields you would not get 20 amps output as half the voltage will result in half the current so you would  get only one quarter the power to the field resulting in one quarter the flux. The only way to do it would be to have a custom field coil wound, Hugh headache for no return.

David