Windmill or Wind Turbine- powered boats: how many are out there, and are they viable?

[Richard Miller]

Originally Posted by Rick Willoughby

Richard
Yes they do and the noise gets magnified if motor is directly mounted to an aluminium hull. Listen to the video on this page:
http://boatdesign.net/forums/showthread.php?t=20445

I intend to enclose the motor on my solar-wind boat and direct some cooling air into the chamber.

Are you using a VAAT or HAAT type.

I have a reasonable theoretical model of a HAAT but nothing for a VAAT yet. The straight blades make the latter less complicated aerodynamically but the dynamic force ballance for pitch control will be quite complex. I have not started on this exercise yet.

If you want to play around with the theory and have some computing skill and maths ability I can assist.

I would love to see a video of your turbines. Even some photos. Did you get any power measurement?

Rick W.

Hi Rick;
Thanks for answering my question.
I used a horizontal axis air turbine. Of course the model turbine turns at a much higher RPM than a full size version which has a lot more power even though it turns at a slower RPM. I will be experiementing with blade configuration later and would aprieciate some assistance with that when the time comes. My math skills are a little rusty but I´m sure I can revive them as they were pretty good when I was in the university (a long time ago). No, I didn´t get any power measurments but I did get some extreamly high RPMs. I estimate it was as fast as an electric motor (something just under 2,000 RPM) but that was not under load.
Rick, check your e-mail for a photo. It´s too soon to display it here for a couple of reasons.

It seems to be the opinion of most knowledgeable experimenters that a vertical axis air turbine is not as productive as the horizontal axis. I´m sure that someone out there will try it. It´s one of those things that seems very logical. I was curious about myself. If any one has tried it, I would love to hear about the results.

Richard Miller, Chile, South America (formerly of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.)

[RHP]

Found 2 additional pics of "Revelation II" , the Heavenly Twins 36 with Wind Turbine Propulsion. Enjoy.

[John in CR]

Great thread. I'm in the early construction stages of a 16ft cat that I plan to power electrically as a test for a 10-12m cat, and adding a wind turbine sounds like a great idea.

RickW,
I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around your downwind plan. Is this something you've tested and worked? Also, my understanding is that a propeller doesn't make for a good turbine, since pushing wind and being driven by aren't the same. Don't you end up with lift on opposite sides with a well designed prop and well designed turbine? Maybe therein lies your short comings on your air foils so far.

John

[Rick Willoughby]

Originally Posted by John in CR

Great thread. I'm in the early construction stages of a 16ft cat that I plan to power electrically as a test for a 10-12m cat, and adding a wind turbine sounds like a great idea.

RickW,
I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around your downwind plan. Is this something you've tested and worked? Also, my understanding is that a propeller doesn't make for a good turbine, since pushing wind and being driven by aren't the same. Don't you end up with lift on opposite sides with a well designed prop and well designed turbine? Maybe therein lies your short comings on your air foils so far.

John

John
I have not built a downwind turbine. I have seen them demonstrated on the road at small scale. There is no doubt it will work as I have modelled accurately. There are issues though in getting real benefit from it. The air propeller needs to be large to be effective and much larger than the air turbine blades to be effective. So using the same blades for the two jobs is not ideal.

There will be a point for my boat where propelling with the wind blade will be more efficient than using the water blade. The numbers do not stack up well for actually using the water blade as a turbine.

AND yes the most efficient blades are asymmetric. With the prop the convex section faces ahead. With a turbine the convex section is on the downwind side. So using a prop for energy recovery or a turbine for producing thrust is not the best option. Note however that the turbine can usually rotate to face into wind or downwind so it could be set to work either way.

For me it is a matter of tying two sources of energy recovery to large energy storage. It means that I can produce a lot of energy with the boat sitting still. For day cruising this is a good option. For ocean passages it is a different matter.

Rick W.

[John in CR]

Rick,

My ultimate plan is less ambitious than yours. I just want to come up with a better charter fishing boat that is tremendously more economical and "green" than the diesel hogs typically used. In addition to economy it should be more comfortable for passengers both in terms of sound and motion, but also practical for the 10-20 mile run out to where the sports fish are here.

My initial plan was run the electric drives off a smallish generator for a 15 knot run out, and then troll in silence off of batteries with some solar panel assist, and maybe a pair of wingsails. Now, however, I feel compelled to add a wind turbine to the mix, especially since I already have blades and generator for a 2m wind turbine I've yet to build. My small cat test should give me a pretty good idea for how much I can reduce my battery requirements for a full day of silent fishing, though I'm expecting to need closer to 1.5kw for 5-7 knot trolling with the 10m version.

I think a HAWT may be more appropriate, but initially I'll try a more typical wind turbine, since I already have the blades. I do agree that the electronic transmission arrangement is much more practical than a purely mechanical one, since even though losses during operation may be 10-20% greater, the energy storage benefit outweighs any detriment.

Thanks for sharing your plan, and I'll coin a new term since hybrid is just too common. My tentative goal is now a "Tribrid" drive system.

John

[Rick Willoughby]

John
Keep us posted on the testing.

I have a couple of Mars PMAC motors and Kelly controllers. I have made and tested the drive unit. It is not in final configuration yet but worked well.

The second motor is for the wind turbine. I have a gearbox for it so I can mount the motor/generator low. I am yet to test the motor in regen mode.

I chose these because the have good efficiency and will motor or regen. If you have not seen the test then the last post on this thread:
http://boatdesign.net/forums/showthread.php?t=20445
shows the Mars motor drive running off two small batteries. I was very pleased with the way the Kelly/Mars worked.

Rick W.

[Windmaster]

Originally Posted by John in CR

Rick,


My initial plan was run the electric drives off a smallish generator for a 15 knot run out, and then troll in silence off of batteries with some solar panel assist, and maybe a pair of wingsails. Now, however, I feel compelled to add a wind turbine to the mix, especially since I already have blades and generator for a 2m wind turbine I've yet to build. My small cat test should give me a pretty good idea for how much I can reduce my battery requirements for a full day of silent fishing, though I'm expecting to need closer to 1.5kw for 5-7 knot trolling with the 10m version.


John

That's interesting. Wingsails would certainly be a good option. I have been working on self-trimming wingsails for some time.
The idea is to provide a form of boat power that is completely self-tending - just pushes you along when there is wind to drive you, can be switched off at will, and does not require any complicated raising-lowering/adjusting or even tack changing procedures.
These hold some advantages over wind-turbine power. Simple, no moving parts, very little to go wrong. In fact, Rick would do well to consider this kind of power for his project. But I think he is well into electrical systems and such simplicity might not appeal to him
I have built and sailed completely automatic wingsail models, and my present fullsize-version only requires one control for left/neutral/right tack.
You can take a look at my website http://www.sailwings.net where there is video of the automatic models and further information.

Having been a experimenter with rotary sails also, I do admit they have the advantage of being able to take your boat directly into the wind. I think there is a place for both forms of wind-derived propulsion.

Peter Worsley

[Leo Lazauskas]

It Pays To Increase Your Word Power:
Here's a weird vessel called a "biscaph" that looks like it could slice and dice inattentive crewmates and their appendages.

The sketch of the vessel (without central shaft) is from:
H.M. Barkla,
"The Vertical-Axis Turbine/Propeller for Ship Propulsion",
Wind Engineering, Vol. 8, No. 4, 1984.

There are clearly an enormous number of problems associated with this type of vessel, not least are the vibrations due to wings passing in and out of each others wakes. (I do like the direct coupling to the Voith-Schneider prop, though.)

One way of reducing vibrations is to use helical blades (as shown in an earlier post of a catamaran powered by a "Turby"); another way is to allow the blades to pitch in a way that allows extraction of as much energy as possible while reducing shaking to an acceptable level.

For those who are interested in the turbines themselves, there is more information in a very recent paper from the Japanese Society of Mechanical Engineers:

B.K. Kirke and L. Lazauskas,
"Variable pitch Darrieus water turbines"
J. Fluid Science and Tech.,
Vol. 3, No. 3, 30 June 2008, pp. 430-438.

There is also a copy at my website:
http://www.cyberiad.net/library/pdf/...3_no3_2008.pdf

Have fun!
Leo.

[yipster]

thanks for posting and that sure is interesting
here another rig sketched in the fifty's that was never tested and barkla allready pointed out the poor vortices at top of his triangle
lately i'm rather intriqued into fluid dynamics as they are more powerfull but heré some more to read on darius rotors

[wannasail53]

Originally Posted by John in CR

Rick,

My ultimate plan is less ambitious than yours. I just want to come up with a better charter fishing boat that is tremendously more economical and "green" than the diesel hogs typically used. In addition to economy it should be more comfortable for passengers both in terms of sound and motion, but also practical for the 10-20 mile run out to where the sports fish are here.

My initial plan was run the electric drives off a smallish generator for a 15 knot run out, and then troll in silence off of batteries with some solar panel assist, and maybe a pair of wingsails. Now, however, I feel compelled to add a wind turbine to the mix, especially since I already have blades and generator for a 2m wind turbine I've yet to build. My small cat test should give me a pretty good idea for how much I can reduce my battery requirements for a full day of silent fishing, though I'm expecting to need closer to 1.5kw for 5-7 knot trolling with the 10m version.

I think a HAWT may be more appropriate, but initially I'll try a more typical wind turbine, since I already have the blades. I do agree that the electronic transmission arrangement is much more practical than a purely mechanical one, since even though losses during operation may be 10-20% greater, the energy storage benefit outweighs any detriment.

Thanks for sharing your plan, and I'll coin a new term since hybrid is just too common. My tentative goal is now a "Tribrid" drive system.

John

Now we are talking John. I have been thinking that the use of small wingsails would make the wind turbines/electric drive much more doable, I am hoping to build a bluewater cat with that combination as well as solar with the hope of a circumnavigation. i have been considering vertical turbines on the hulls {with generators below deck}with the soft reefable wingsail on the bridgedeck.and a backup vege oil generator. great thread guys some of it well above my head but learning a lot.Guess i'm going for a quadbrid maybe a couple of outboards and a sculling oar just in case, i really don't like breaking down at sea.

[Leo Lazauskas]

Originally Posted by yipster

thanks for posting and that sure is interesting
here another rig sketched in the fifty's that was never tested and barkla allready pointed out the poor vortices at top of his triangle
lately i'm rather intriqued into fluid dynamics as they are more powerfull but heré some more to read on darius rotors

Thanks for the reference. I used a few of Paraschiviou's ideas in my computer code. There are some papers I wrote about VAWT and a long bibliography at:

http://www.cyberiad.net/vawt.htm

All the best,
Leo.

[beppe]

Originally Posted by Windmaster

In the late 1990's I built and tested two different versions. They went quite well directly against the wind, but more development work is required to get them optimised.

Hi Windmaster, Ruud
great work! have you any figures abut the speed, the power generated by the turbine etc.?
I may have something useful to you and to the colleagues who want to develop wind turbine boats, because I developed a waterbike, that is a high performance pedal boat. I believe is solves all the problems 'under' the wind turbine. The waterbike glides at six knots under a (human) power of about 230 watts (recent development possibly less...), that means that probably a rather small turbine could power it, possibly reducing the wind turbine own drag.
BTW I am very interested in 'unusual' developments becouse I just started a project aimed at improving and innovating pedal boats in a collective fashion; the components and the expertise are therefore available.
Please have a look at http://www.openwaterbike.com/
Best regards
Beppe

[Windmaster]

Hi Beppe

Thanks for your interest. I don't have exact figures for the performance of my Rotary Sailing boats. Using natural windpower, it is extremely difficult to get them, since the natural wind varies so much (as much as 50 percent) in speed at all times, and direction varies also. I can only say that they sailed directly against the wind with no problem. (How often do you see speed and performance figures for normal sailing boats). My own recent aim is to reduce the size of the wind-turbine required and this is very much possible. I think that the diameter of the turbine should certainly be within the beam of boat if it is mounted on a catamaran. Designing a suitable transmission was always a problem and co-operation from HPV designers would certainly be welcomed.
I would like to speak to any interested parties privately and if they would be kind enough to leave their email addresses on the contact form of my website http://www.sailwings.net I can give further information that I don't want to divulge on this open forum.

[michmex]

hi,

have you visited this link : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcyone_(bateau)

[michmex]

hi

and this one:
http://www.gual-industrie.com/
http://www.gual-industrie.com/statoeolien.html