Wind Turbine Blog

 Wind Turbine Project 

 Overview: Electromagnetic Induction

Making a Wind Turbine work relies on a concept called Electromagnetic Induction. Electromagnetic Induction uses mechanical energy to change the magnetic field of something. This induces a current which causes a current. In the wind turbine, we are using wind to spin magnets over coils of wire which changes the magnetic field. Below you can find our version of making this real.

Materials and Methods:

The materials you will need to build a wind turbine are:

1. Wire (lots of it, you will need to make it into coils)
2. Magnets (at least about four)
3. Electric Tape
4. A Water Bottle
5. A knitting needle 
6. Hot Glue
7. Your own choice of base material (we jus made a structure out of poster board, however, it was sort of shaky. We suggest something more sturdy for any future models). 

Here are some pictures of our turbine:

Here is our Wind Turbine in its entirety:

As an overview: The Windmills/Water bottle is attached to the knitting needle in the middle, as is the plate with magnets on it. When the water-bottle spins, it then spins the magnets. Our structure is made up of a base made out of poster board with wood to reenforce the sides. 

1.)  Here are the coils, which we made four of, each consisting of 200 loops. We taped them to the base of our structure.

We coiled these coils around a strip of cardboard, making sure to be consistent in the direction we wrapped them.  

2.) Here are the magnets, which are located right above the Coils. 

When the needle spins, the magnets spin above the coils which are stationary. The thing we attached the magnets to is a circular cutout from the poster-board. We hot glued magnetic nuts to the poster-board and then the magnets were attracted to the bolts. This way we didn't have to hot glue the Magnets. We used four magnets and four coils. 

3.) Here is a closeup and wide shot of the wings (made out of a helped water bottle). 

In the top photo you can see that we cut the water bottle in half lengthwise and then attached them in an increment in order to create a a surface area that would move from the wind. The water bottle and the magnet plate are both hot glued to the needle. However, you can see that at the top of the base, the needle is not glued. This is so that the bottle and the magnets move freely from the base, which has the coils attached to it. 

Results of Our Wind Turbine:

What we generated: 

We generated .0015 A of current with our wind turbine. 

Lightbulb results: We were not able to light a lightbulb. The concrete explanation is that we did not create enough current to do so. The deeper reason for that is likely that we were not careful enough about our construction. Our base moved a lot when it was spinning and I think that maybe prevented it from being most efficient. 

Here is a video of our Wind Turbine in action. It looks pretty cool, but you can see that it shakes. 

We Generated .002V

Discussion: What Worked and What Didn't.

What Worked:

• Having all your materials when Ms. Lawrence tells you to so you can start right away. Seriously, everyone needs to do this because it is super helpful and mitigates stress. 
• Making sure you keep the deadline in mind as well as the optimal design execution.

What didn't work: 

• Well this is something I learned which is that the base needs to be sturdy.
• I think if we had more coil or perhaps more turns, the same speed of spinning would have caused a greater current. Also, from what I have learned about Electromagnetic Induction, I think more powerful and more numbers of coils and magnets would help induce more Voltage. 
• One issue we really ran into was finding a good way to coil the wires because it was really a lot of wire to handle. My advice on this for myself or anyone next time is to do it around some object like a strip of cardboard which is what worked for us. Also be sure to visually indicate which way you are wrapping or else you might forget. Lastly, do not wrap too tightly around whatever strip you use because we did that and it was a real pain to get off. 
• If I could do this again with more time, I might consider adding more wings to catch the wind in order to spin with more speed.