Wind Harvest Blog

The team from Wanzek Construction completed the installation of the upper blades. Note the end caps on the blade tips. The edges of the caps extend over the blade and lessen the vortices that come off the blade tips (and airplane wings). This component increases the aerodynamic efficiency of [...]

With the tremendous help of Soga Energy in Italy, our generator has arrived. This generator replaced one that was supposed to have arrived this past spring from another supplier.  It is now onsite at the testing facility in Texas! Yay again! We won’t bore you with our many issues [...]

Cantilevering Model 3.1’s 170 square meter rotor (1830 sq. ft.) requires a large diameter and long drive shaft with three equally large bearings made by SKF. A roller thrust bearing holds up the weight of the rotor and the upper and lower radial bearings keep the rotor and drive [...]

Our Model 3.1 will collect an enormous amount of data that will be used to validate our suite of aeroelastic models. For such small instruments, these gauges are low cost and produce a huge amount of data. The Hall Effect sensors and a precise time stamping process ensures that [...]

Our principals on-site at the UL Advanced Wind Turbine Testing Facility in Texas are Jeff Willis and Antonio Ojeda.  Here they are standing in front of the almost completed Model 3.1 of our Wind Harvester turbines.  When the UL facility opens up again after Labor Day, the Soga generator will [...]

The simplicity of the blade arms makes them inexpensive. Off-the-shelf channel steel, some holes, a cable, and a straight-forward sheet metal fairing are key. The transition fairing, made by Antonio Ojeda at his shop in Spain, is slid into place before the blade is attached making it easy to [...]

Model 3.1 has a three part central mast made from pipe with each section smaller than the one below. Note the strain gauges and wires on the base of the mast. Those will connect to a transmitter that sends strain gauge collected load data to the receiver.  This data will [...]

With the top plate and housings for its upper and lower bearings, Model 3.1’s drive shaft assembly weighs almost 8500 pounds. With a small truck crane and the smart crew from Wanzek Construction out of Amarillo, it is easy to install. Adding the central mast comes next.

Here you can see the generator base plate being placed in the lattice tower before its side braces are attached. Below the hole in the generator plate will be the brake calipers and disk. You can see why this is the shortest tower on which the Model 3.1 tower can [...]

2000 feet of 11kV aluminum electrical wire from Duke Electric is ready to link the high voltage transmission station at the UL test facility to our transformer. Next to it in the trench will be laid a full duplex fiber optic cable to bring high speed internet directly to our [...]