Project Free Power

Sun Trackers are a great way to get maximum performance out of your solar panels. Positioning your solar panels in a fixed location will do the job, but you will be robing your self of free power and maximum efficiency! The only downfall of a solar tracker is it takes energy to move the motor to reposition the panels so they are always facing the sun. Overall an efficient Solar Trackers can produce 30-50% more amp hour making it a very worth while project.

A simple solar tracker can be built using some common radio shack parts, to upgrade this project to full size, you would simply use a heavier duty motor and relays which would be dependent on the size of your panels and how much energy is needed to rotate them.

Parts List:
3 x LDR
1 x 33 R Resistor
1 x 75 R Resistor
1 x 100 R Resistor
1 x 10K Resistor
1 x 20K Resistor
1 x 2N4401 Transistor
1 x TIP120 Darlington pair
1 x 9v Relay
1 x 5v Motor

With the schematic laid out, you can see it is a very simple design. The position of the sensors is what allows this system to track the sun.

Sensor #3 is located in an inverted enclosure so that the light will only hit it when its facing directly at the sun. When the sun leaves photoresistor #3, its resistance increases switching on the Darlington pair which interns switches on the relay that drives the motor. When sun hits the photoresistor it’s resistance decreases disabling the Darlington pair and in turn stopping the motor.

Now you may ask what happens when the sun goes down or is hidden behind a cloudy sky? Does this tracker aimlessly scan the sky? well this is where photoresistor #2 comes in, Flush mounted this little guy can see the entire sky. When photoresistor #2 senses the sun is out it drives the NPN transistor low. If the sun should disappear for the evening, the lack of sun will raise the resistance which brings the NPN transistor base high turning the darlington pair to low and disabling the tracker. Sensor #1 is mounted to the east, which will sense the sun rising in the morning.

I hope this tutorial on building a solar tracker has inspired you to build your own! If you build your own large scale tracker be sure to post what you used for a motor and any upgrades to this system.

The 1000 Watt flux wind turbine was created as part of an off grid power project. This wind turbine uses a permanent magnet alternator to generate 3 phases to charge the battery bank. This wind turbine works spinning 2 magnet discs on both sides of the coils to generate electricity. The act of moving magnets of opposite pols past a copper coil will generate an electrical current. The first step will be to build the magnet disk. Using a piece of wood and a jig saw cut out slots equally spaced around the circle for your magnets, it is important to note when laying out the magnets be sure to adjust the polarity (N S N S N .. ect) For this turbine we used 24 magnets in total, 12 for each disc.

Once you have your template the next step is to lay the magnets in place on top of a smooth surface, use plastic or carboard to build jacket around the circle of magnets. Note: you will want to build two of these disk, one for each side of the coil. For magnets you need to use either neodymium or rate earth magnets.

Once this frame is in place remove the wood template place a small cylindrical object the center magnets (a paper cup worked in this case!). Pour fiberglass resin into the mold and let dry. This will create a very solid disk to house our rotating magnets.

Now that we have our magnet disks hardening its time to build the coils! When building the coils, its a good idea to use 2 strands of wire per coil. A single strand would produce approximately half the out put giving you a 500W wind turbine, so fro maximum output double it up! Now you need to create 9 coils using 14 gauge coper wire. The coils are wired in a rectifying diode pattern in order♠ to let the electrons flow one way. The number of turns of wire will depend on your desire output voltage.
Voltage to turn ratio is as follows 12v – 35 turns, 24v – 75 turns, 48v – 144 turns ect.

Using a sheet of wood out a circle the approximate size of your magnet disc, affix the cutout onto another board to giver your self a “mold” to resin in your copper strands. Be sure to place a smaller circle in the center of the mold for your future shaft to go through. Since we have 9 coils we are creating a 3 phase pattern, every third coil (the corresponding matching tape) is wired together in series. Lay the wires in a 2 phase wye pattern, lay on some fiberglass matting and apply fiberglass resin.

Next we need to build the hub for all this to to be mounted to, The hub is created by using two pipes and some Harley Davidson wheel bearings. The smaller pipe is placed inside of the larger pipe secured by the wheel bearings.

The video below is an overview of the wind turbine in this tutorial by Steve Spence. So be sure to check it out, you also get a sneak peak of his recycled off grid home.

The blades were built out of 2 x 6 pine boards cut at a 10 degree angle and sanded to a smooth air foils finish. This design was created by Steve Spence, for more information on this project be sure to check out http://www.green-trust.org

Welcome to Project Free Power, This is our first post of many more to come about renewable energy sources, how to utilize them and even building your own.!