Photos

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Visit from the Bald Eagle

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South

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West

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10 Responses to Photos

  1. mtnforge says:
    March 28, 2018 at 7:42 pm

    Now thats a sunrise! Looks like NewHampshire.

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  2. mtnforge says:
    March 30, 2018 at 3:12 pm

    Hear you, we been doing the same thing. Your green house coming along well? I’m dying to build a high tunnel. Been searching materials myself to discover the most durable at the best pricing. Money always being limiting factor. Not telling you anything on that right?
    ( mtntopforge at hughesnet dot com )
    The long low shadows of the trees in winter hit our solar array. That time of year you need every watt we can get out of them to keep this big ol fork truck battery we use charged. Solar panels don’t like shadows. Though the Kyrocea’s panels we got have diodes between the sub cells so they don’t back feed each other. Still it cuts down on output. I’m building a wind turbine, hopefully get that running in the next month. Weld up the tower soon as the weather improves, and raise that puppy. You can’t have trees within 100 or so feet to get steady air. Plus the trees where blocking too much sun on the garden. Plus you can never have too much cord wood. It was a great bonus we can now see the sun & moon rises. Lot of rainbows too.

    I see that rainbow in one of your shots. Not many things cooler than rainbows. Spectral Wonders!

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    • Mike Houst says:
      December 17, 2019 at 7:12 pm

      Looking back to my Dad’s experimentation, lesson one was you can’t have too robust a wind turbine. We put a 3 blade system on a 30 ft steel column in the back yard, facing into the prevailing west winds, no trees, 1200 feet above sea level and 1000 above the Mohawk river level. Worked fine until we had one storm come through with 120+ mph winds (anemometer was only calibrated to a max of 120) caused the bolts to pull through the laminated wood and fiberglass blades, but only after the lead balance weights had blasted/ripped out and went flying who knows where. The blade that came off was skewered into the ground about 80 feet from the pole. Blades were about 3 feet long and bolted to three, 1 foot arms extending from the generator shaft.

      Lesson two was that the wind doesn’t blow all the time, even in places where it blows frequently.

      Lesson three was that wind power is about the most unreliable means of energy generation out there. Even solar is more reliable given night time and clouds.

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      • mtnforge says:
        January 11, 2020 at 7:08 pm

        Heard that! I’m a metal guy. 47 years as a welder/fabricator, I understand intrinsically the behaviors and properties of various metals, so I feel very comfortable using metal blades. Can not say much about wood other than the yield and tensile properties, and the fatigue qualities, are much less than with wood. But then again wood has been a materiel used successfully for over a century for airplane props. But there are very specific specifications for them.
        I looked into the wood blade sets used by the WindPower guys up in Colorado, the 8 foot swept area and larger laminated wood types driving their coaxial PMA’s. they look very good, but they use a tilting design mount that cuts out of the wind above like 25 mph, or something around there. Those big blades have a lot of inertia and mass, there is a max rpm design limit to them. I have their workshop manual on building your own and if I’m remembering right they specify a wind speed limit.

        I’m running a gull wing aluminum alloy design blade set, 3 blades, it has a pretty low angle of attack, but they are also 84 inches swept area, rated for max 70mph, but they are really low wind speed high torque, that mostly produce a steady watt output in 7-12 mph wind speeds we have on our ridge, though very important that this wind turbine must be under load at all times, so they aren’t free wheeling or passing rpm limits. I’m running 2 resistance type 600 watt 12vdc heaters as dump loads, which put out some serious heat, along with 3, 600 watt 12vdc water heater elements in an industrial stainless water tank I adapted as a domestic water heater and a heat transfer system to also supply hot water via natural convection to forced hot water floor type heating units, and a “hot tub” I home built, all staged via differential set charge/dump load regulators, so I’m always putting at minimum of 1200 watt resistance load on the PMA regardless of battery bank charge.
        It’s a tricky set up to run, and if it gets sketchy, there is a short switch to the PMA to stop it or slow it down. The PMA is a dual PMA unit from Missouri Wind & Solar, max output of 2000 watts @ 12vdc.
        Rule of thumb is you always must have more dump capacity than the max output of the PMA to keep blade rpms at safe speeds.
        Yeah I agree solar is a lot simpler to deal with, but the sun don’t shine at night, and winter days do not provide enough charge for my system alone, and when I need to provide juice to refrigeration, unless I had some monster battery capacity and the solar capacity to charge such a battery bank that can keep the fridge and freezers running without going past 20% depth of draw, to maintain the longest battery life cycles, I find I could not do it without have both wind & solar. And still there’s times I either have to shut down draw off the battery or use a gas drive charger to keep the battery from going to low.
        In all that we have mentioned, it can not be stated enough there are no set guidelines, every system thats off grid is different, just so many variables, there can not be standards you can go by, only general guidelines to get set up as a starting point then modify as you go along. It is not easy, it is not for the weak of heart as they say.

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  3. JCscuba says:
    July 6, 2019 at 6:00 pm

    You live it the right place for the time at hand. Are you close enough geographically to join the battle?

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