Thread: Wanted: 20m or taller steel street light pole....

Originally Posted by PDW

I wouldn't call Sorell Hobart, incidentally. It's a fair way out of town.

You should have borrowed one of my sextants while you were down here & shot the angle to the top of the tower. Piece of cake to work out the height then. I very, very rarely go out that way myself though.

Do you already have the wind generator head? I possibly missed that bit as I'm only peripherally interested in wind stuff - big towers etc are too much hassle for the return.

PDW

Hi,
You do not need any fancy survey equipment, any broom stick warrior (Boy Scout) can do the calculations from the shadow.
Regards

Originally Posted by jhovel

The other thing I've been noticing is the size of traffic signs attached to the poles I had in my mind. Some of those are pretty big - and would eaily be as big as a 2kW wind generator. I wonder what wind speeds these signs are designed for? I can't imagine that they were allowed to be designed to 'rip off' and fly into freeway traffic at any expected windspeed....

now that is something I know something about
in general, with a road sign, you don't mind if, following a really strong blow, the supporting posts are a little bit (or very much) bent -- replacing the posts is relatively easy and low cost

It's a balance between poles that don't bend and poles that will break off if hit by a car.

not quite the same with a wind generator
1. you don't want the generator breaking in a really strong blow
2. you don't want the pole bending in a strong blow as this will affect the ability of the generator to continue working when the wind dies down.

That's why if the tower/pole is of light construction it must be guyed. Of course if a guy wire snaps, all bets are off.

I was considering putting one of these in myself a few years ago. I had thought of making one from an old washing machine motor, more for the hell of it than any other reason. I decided it wasn't worth the effort because of a number of problems to do with finding a decent site. If you don't have a suitable location, then it's really not going to ever meet your expectations power production-wise.

One of the references recommended that the height of the turbine should be 10 metres + the length of a blade higher than any object within a 150 metres radius. Otherwise there is too much turbulence, which will affect the power output. It doesn't matter how windy it gets where you live, if you can't achieve that, they basically say don't bother.