Do you even understand what you are writing? Or do you write in order to support a person in his endeavors and he, having spent money on components for his system, ended up getting an absolutely inoperative thing? You answer: "The engine, as a generator will fit" - yes, it will, but where did you get the 1.1-1.5A? At what voltage? At what speed of rotation of the rotor? Then you write: "The power standard of 1m tape, like, 5W ..." - there is no power standard here, and tapes are about 5W and about 14W, and about 7W per meter, etc., and this is a very large spread. We continue: "Since you wound up so much, it may well be enough to charge the battery" - this, in general, what does it mean? The fact that the more complex, sophisticated and intricate the scheme, the greater its return and efficiency? Complete nonsense. To charge a 12V motorcycle battery, you need about 14-15V at a current of about 0.6-0.7A (for a capacity of about 7A / h). Are you sure that the system is capable of producing such parameters for a long time? After all, to charge a discharged motorcycle battery, 2-3 hours is not enough. Do you also think that you can charge from 18V? Yes, you can, but the electrolyte will boil off in a week, if not earlier, and the plates will sprinkle. Good recommendation! They are unpretentious in charging - this does not mean that they can be charged with any voltage. Then you write: "It will be very great, because I suddenly forgot to turn off the light and the battery sat down even before it has time to recharge" - say as if the battery is charged only during daylight hours))) This is a wind turbine, not a solar battery. With a properly working system, with a constant wind, the battery should not be discharged at all, even if you forgot to turn off the light. But the photocell idea itself is good from an automation point of view. Further: the LED strip will probably work, as you say, and at 30 volts, however, for how long? Resistances limit the current, yes, but it will increase in proportion to the increase in voltage, and not remain constant! Diodes really do not like exceeding the operating current. So, the result is known: overheating of the diodes and, as a result, a sharp decrease in the service life, or their failure is extremely fast. Then write: "The capacity is also not critical, add another 1 microfarad film capacitor" - for what? Is that a noise filter? Why then 1μF? And why is there a filter at all? And, if not a filter, but a pulsation-smoothing element, then its capacity is critical! Capacitance is actually the main parameter of a capacitor. And 1μF is an empty space for the system described by a person, it will not smooth out anything. Even 1000uF, which the author of the questions wanted to establish, is very little for his idea. I would understand if it was 5000-7000 or even 10000 μF, or even more. At the end, the person asks if the motorcycle battery is enough for the tape to glow all night, and you answer that, of course, that's enough. Did you study physics in school? Or are you still studying? Was it your guess with a finger in the sky or at least some elementary calculation? Let's estimate very roughly: a person wrote that he wants to install 10-15m of tape. Even if we take the minimum values, i.e. 10 m of tape with a power of 5W / m, then by simple calculations we get 50W of power. Dividing the power of the tape by the voltage of the battery (approximately 12.8V), we get the current: 50 / 12.8 \u003d 3.9A. The capacity of a conventional motorcycle battery is approximately 7A / h. So you can estimate how long the tape will work from a fully charged battery: 7 / 3.9 \u003d 1.79 h \u003d 1 h 47 min., i.e. almost two hours. This is not the whole night. In addition, the minimum parameters are taken into account, and if the length of the tape or / and its power are greater, the operating time from the battery will proportionally decrease. Something like that.
I would not write all this, but the fact is that a tape costs money, a battery and a photo relay too ... And this is a lot of money, and people who received approval and support for their idea in the comments of people who do not understand the essence and nuances of the process, will happily run to the store, spend money on components, and in the end will receive a system that is inoperable in principle, initially. No need to give advice without understanding the issue!

I had a stepper motor lying around and I decided to try to use it as a generator. The motor was removed from an old dot matrix printer, the inscriptions on it are as follows: EPM-142 EPM-4260 7410. The motor is unipolar, which means that this motor has 2 windings with a tap from the middle, the resistance of the windings was 2x6 ohms.

The test requires a different motor to spin the stepper. The construction and mounting of the motors are shown in the figures below:

I lost the roller from the engine, so I put on the paste ...

We smoothly start the engine so that the rubber does not fly off. I must say that at high speeds it still flies, so it did not raise the voltage above 6 volts.

We connect a voltmeter and start testing, first we measure the voltage.

We set the voltage on the power supply unit to about 6 volts, while the engine consumes 0.2 Amperes, for comparison, the engine ate 0.09A at idle

I think there is no need to explain anything and everything is clear from the photo below. The voltage was 16 volts, the speed of the spinning engine is not large, I think if you spin it harder, you can squeeze all 20 volts ...

We connect through a diode bridge (and do not forget the capacitor, otherwise you can burn the LEDs) a tape with super-bright LEDs, the power of which is 0.5 watts.

We set the voltage to a little less than 5 volts, so that the stepper motor after the bridge produces about 12 volts.

Shines! At the same time, the voltage dropped from 12 volts to 8 and the engine began to spin up a little slower. The short-circuit current without the LED strip was 0.08A - let me remind you that the unwinding motor did NOT work at full power, and do not forget about the second winding of the stepper motor, you simply cannot parallel them, and I did not want to assemble the circuit.

I think you can make a good generator from a stepper motor, attach it to a bicycle, or make a wind generator based on it.

Wind is free energy! So let's use it for personal purposes. If the creation of a wind farm on an industrial scale is very expensive, because in addition to the generator, a number of studies and calculations need to be carried out, the state does not undertake such costs, and for some reason investors in the countries of the former USSR are not interested in this. Then privately you can make a mini-windmill for your own needs. It should be understood that the project of transferring your home to alternative energy is very expensive.

As already mentioned: you need to make long-term observations and calculations in order to find the optimal ratio of the size of the wind wheel and generator, suitable for your climate, wind rose and average annual wind speed.

The efficiency of a wind power plant within one region can differ significantly, this is due to the fact that wind movement depends not only on the climatic zone, but also on the terrain.

However, you can find out what wind power is with minimal costs by assembling a budget installation to power a low-power load, such as a smartphone, light bulbs or a radio receiver. With the right approach, you can provide electricity to a small house or summer cottage.

Let's look at how you can make the simplest wind power plant with your own hands.

Low-power windmills from improvised means

The computer cooler is a brushless motor, which in its original form is of no practical value.

It needs to be rewound, as in the original the windings are connected in an inappropriate way. Wind the coils alternately:

Clockwise;

Counterclock-wise;

Clockwise;

Counterclock-wise.

You need to connect adjacent coils in series, or even better, wind one piece of wire going from one groove to another. The thickness of the wire in this case can be selected arbitrarily, it will be better if you wind as many turns as possible, and this is possible when using the least thin wire.

The output voltage from such a generator will be variable, and its value will depend on the revolutions (wind speed), install a diode bridge made of Schottky diodes to straighten it to a constant one, ordinary diodes will do, but it will be worse, because voltage will drop on them from 1 to 2 volts.

Lyrical digression, some theory

Remember the EMF value is:

where L is the length of the conductor placed in a magnetic field; V is the rotation speed of the magnetic field;

When upgrading the generator, you can only influence the length of the conductor, that is, the number of turns of each of the coils. The number of turns determines the output voltage, and the thickness of the wire determines the maximum current load.

In practice, the wind speed cannot be influenced. However, there is also a way out of this situation, you can, having learned the typical wind speed for your area, design a propeller suitable in terms of speed for a wind power plant, as well as a gearbox or belt drive, to ensure sufficient speed to generate the required voltage.

IMPORTANT: Faster does not mean better !!! If the rotation speed of the wind generator is too high, its resource will be reduced, the lubricating properties of the bushings or rotor bearings will deteriorate, and it will jam, and the fastest will be a breakdown of the insulation of the windings in the generator

The generator consists of:

We increase the power of the generator from the computer cooler

Firstly, the more blades and the diameter of the wheel, the better, so take a closer look at 120mm coolers.

Secondly, we have already said that the voltage also depends on the magnetic field, the fact is that industrial high-power generators have excitation windings, and low-power generators have strong magnets. The magnets in the cooler are extremely weak and do not allow achieving good results from the generator, and the gap between the rotor and stator is very large - about 1 mm, and this is with the already weak magnets.

The solution to this problem is to radically change the design of the generator. Rather, only an impeller is required from the cooler; a motor from a printer or any other household appliances is used as the generator itself. The most common brush motors are permanent magnet excitation.

As a result, it will look like this.

The power of such a generator is enough to power the LEDs, a radio receiver. It will not be enough to recharge the phone, the phone will display the charging process, but the current will be extremely small, up to 100 Amperes, with a wind of 5-10 meters per second.

Stepper motor as a wind generator

A stepper motor is very often found in computer and household appliances, in various players, floppy drives (old 5.25 ”models are interesting), printers (especially matrix ones), scanners, etc.

These motors without alterations can work as a generator, they are a rotor with permanent magnets, and a stator with windings, a typical connection diagram of a stepper motor in generator mode is shown in the figure.

The circuit has a 5 Volt linear regulator, type L7805, which will allow you to safely connect mobile phones to such a wind turbine to charge them.

In the photo, a generator from a stepper motor with installed blades.

The engine, in a specific case, with 4 output wires, the circuit, respectively, for it. An engine with such dimensions in generator mode produces about 2 W in light winds (wind speed of about 3 m / s) and 5 m / s in strong winds (up to 10 m / s).

By the way, here is a similar circuit with a zener diode, instead of the L7805. Allows charging Li-ion batteries.

Refinement of a homemade windmill

In order for the generator to work more efficiently, you need to make it a guide shank and fix it movably on the mast. Then, when the direction of the wind changes, the direction of the wind generator will change. Then the following problem arises - the cable going from the generator to the consumer will twist around the mast. To solve this, you need to provide a movable contact. A turnkey solution is being sold on Ebay and Aliexpress.

The lower three wires are motionless going down, and the upper bundle of wires is movable, a sliding contact or brush mechanism is installed inside. If you do not have the opportunity to buy, be smart, and, inspired by the decision of the designers of the Zhiguli car, namely the implementation of the movable contact of the signal button on the steering wheel, and do something similar. Or use the contact pad from the electric kettle.

By connecting the connectors, you get a moving contact.

Powerful wind generator from available tools.

For more power, you can use two options:

1. Generator from a screwdriver (10-50 W);

Only a motor is needed from a screwdriver, the option is similar to the previous one, as a screw you can use the fan blades, this will increase the final power of your installation.

Here is an example of such a project:

Pay attention to how the gear overdrive is implemented here - the shaft of the wind generator is located in the pipe, at its end there is a gear that transfers the rotation of the smaller gear fixed to the motor shaft. An increase in engine speed also occurs in industrial wind power plants. Gearboxes are used everywhere.

However, under homemade conditions, making a gearbox becomes a big problem. You can remove the gearbox from the power tool, it is needed there to lower the high revolutions on the shaft of the collector motor to the normal revolutions of the chuck on the drill, or the grinder disc:

The drill has a planetary gearbox;

An angular gearbox is installed in the grinder (it will be useful for the installation of some installations and will reduce the load from the tail of the wind turbine);

Gearbox from a hand drill.

This version of a homemade wind generator can already charge 12 V batteries, but a converter is needed to generate the charging current and voltage. This task can be simplified by using a car generator.

The advantage of such a generator is the ability to use it to charge car batteries, in principle, it is intended for this. Autogenerators have a built-in voltage regulator relay, which eliminates the need to buy additional stabilizers or converters.

However, car enthusiasts know that at low idle speeds, about 500-1000 rpm, the power of such a generator is low, and it does not provide the proper current to charge the battery. This leads to the need to connect to the wind wheel through a gearbox or belt drive.

You can adjust the number of revolutions at the normal wind speed for your latitudes by choosing the gear ratio or using a properly designed wind wheel.

Useful Tips

Perhaps the most repeatable design of a windmill mast is shown in the picture. This mast is stretched by cables anchored to holders in the ground to provide stability.

Important: The height of the mast should be as large as possible, approximately 10 meters. At higher altitudes, the wind is stronger because there are no obstacles for it in the form of ground structures, hills and trees. Never install the wind turbine on the roof of your house. Resonant vibrations of fastening structures can cause destruction of its walls.

Take care of the reliability of the bearing mast, because the design of a windmill based on such a generator becomes much heavier and is already a rather serious solution that can provide an autonomous power supply to a summer cottage with a minimum set of electrical appliances. Devices that operate from 220 Volts can be powered from a 12-220 V inverter. The most common version of such an inverter is.

It is better to use diesel generators, incl. trucks, because they are designed to operate at low speeds. On average, a large truck diesel engine runs between 300 and 3500 rpm.

Modern generators produce 12 or 24 volts, and a current of 100 amperes has long been normal. Having carried out simple calculations, you can determine that such a generator will give you up to 1 kW of power as much as possible, and a generator from Zhiguli (12V 40-60 A) 350-500 W, which is already a pretty decent figure.

What should be a wind wheel for a home-made wind turbine?

I mentioned in the text that the wind wheel should be large and with a lot of blades, in fact it is not. This statement was true for those micro-generators that do not pretend to be serious electrical machines, but rather copies for information and leisure.

In fact, designing, calculating and building a wind turbine is a very difficult task. Wind energy will be used more rationally if it is made very accurately and the "aviation" profile is ideally drawn, while it should be installed with a minimum angle to the plane of rotation of the wheel.

The real power of wind turbines with the same diameter and different number of blades is the same, the only difference is in the speed of their rotation. The fewer the wings, the more rpm, with the same wind and diameter. If you are going to achieve maximum rpm, you must mount the wings as accurately as possible with a minimum angle to the plane of their rotation.

Check out the table from the 1956 book, Homemade Wind Farm, ed. DOSAAF Moscow. It shows the relationship between wheel diameter, power and rpm.

At home, these theoretical calculations are of little use, amateurs make wind wheels from improvised means, they use:

• Metal sheets;

  Plastic sewer pipes.

You can assemble a high-speed 2-4 bladed wind wheel with your own hands from sewer pipes, except for them you need a hacksaw or any other cutting tool. The use of these pipes is due to their shape, after cutting they have a concave shape, which provides high responsiveness to air currents.

After cutting, they are fixed with BOLTS on a metal, textolite or plywood blank. If you are going to make it out of plywood, better re-glue and twist several layers of plywood on both sides with self-tapping screws, then you will be able to achieve rigidity.

Here is an idea for a two-blade one-piece impeller for a stepper motor generator.

conclusions

You can make a wind power plant starting from low power - units of Watt, to power individual LED lamps, beacons and small equipment, to good power values \u200b\u200bin units of kilowatts, store energy in a battery, use it in its original form or convert it to 220 Volts. The cost of such a project will depend on your needs, perhaps the most expensive element is a mast and batteries, which can be in the range of 300-500 dollars.

For the operation of any electrical device, a special drive mechanism is required. A stepper motor is one such device. There is a large selection today various electric motors, divided by the type and by the driver scheme, which is controlled by the controller.

What is a stepper motor?

Stepper motor is synchronous electromechanical device, which transfers a control signal to the mechanical movement of the rotor. Rotation takes place in steps that are fixed in a certain position.

How the stepper motor works

When voltage is applied to the terminals, the brushes of the electric motor start and begin to rotate continuously. Idling engine has a special property, it is the transformation of incoming rectangular pulses into a predetermined position of the applied drive shaft.

The shaft moves under fixed angle with every impulse. If several toothed electromagnets are located around the central piece of toothed iron, then devices with such a gearbox are quite effective. The microcontroller energizes the electromagnets. A single gear electromagnet under the influence of energy attracts the teeth of the gear wheel to its surface, thus the motor shaft makes a turn. When the teeth are aligned with the electromagnet, they move slightly towards the adjacent magnetic piece.

To the gear started spinning and aligned with the previous wheel, the first electromagnet is turned off and the next one is turned on. Then the whole process is repeated as many times as necessary. This rotation is called constant pitch. By counting the number of steps at full revolution of the engine, the speed of its rotation is determined.

Stepper motor models

According to the rotor design, stepper motors are divided into three types: jet, permanent magnet and hybrid.

1. Synchronous reluctance motors are rarely used today. They are used when a small moment is needed and a step rotation angle is too large. The rotor is made of soft magnetic material with distinct poles, has a large pitch angle, in the absence of current, there is no holding torque. This is the simplest and cheapest engine. The stator has six poles and three phases and the rotor has four poles. In this case, the step of the device is 30 degrees. The rotating magnetic field is created by sequentially switching on the stator phases. In one step, the rotor turns an angle less than the stator angle, this is due to the smaller number of poles.
2. Permanent magnet motor consists of a permanent magnet rotor and a two-phase stator. Unlike reactive devices, in permanent magnet motors, after removing the control signal, the rotor is fixed. This is due to the large torques. Since the rotor manufacturing process is accompanied by great technological difficulties (large number of poles + permanent magnets), a large angular step of up to 90 degrees is obtained. This is their only drawback. When working with a unipolar control circuit, the windings in the center can be tapped. The windings without center tapping are fed via a bipolar control circuit. Based on this, the stepper motor device is divided into two types according to the type of windings, unipolar and bipolar.

Unipolar. You can change the location of the magnetic poles without changing the direction of the current. It is enough to turn on each phase of the winding separately. The device consists of one winding per phase with a tap-off located in the center.

Bipolar . Such motors have one winding per phase, there is no common terminal, but there are two per phase. Due to this, bipolar devices are more powerful than unipolar ones. To change the magnetic polarities of the poles, the direction of the current in the winding is changed.

Hybrid engine

To reduce the step angle, a hybrid stepper motor... In its design, it incorporates the best properties of permanent magnet motor and jet motor. The rotor is presented in the form of a cylindrical magnet magnetized along the longitudinal axis. The stator consists of two or four phases, which are located between pairs of pronounced poles.

How to start a stepper motor, its control

Connection work and stepper motor control will depend on how you want to run the device and how many wires are on the drive. Stepper motors can have from 4 to 8 wires, so a certain circuit is used to connect them.

• With four wires. Each phase winding has two wires. To connect the driver step by step, you need to find paired wires with a continuous connection between them. This motor is only used with a bipolar device.
• With five wires. The central terminals of the motor are internally combined into a solid cable and brought out to one wire. It is impossible to separate the windings from each other, as many breaks will appear. You can get out of the situation if you establish where the center of the wire is and try to connect it to other conductors. This is the most efficient and safest mode. Then the device is connected and tested for functionality.
• With six wires. Each winding has several wires and a center tap. A measuring device is used to separate the wire. The motor can be connected to a unipolar or bipolar device. When connected to a unipolar device, all wires are used. For a bipolar device, one end of the wire and one center tap of each winding.

A controller is required to control the stepper motor. The controller is a circuit that supplies voltage to one of the stator coils. The controller is made on the basis of an integrated circuit of the ULN 2003 type, which includes a set of composite keys. Each switch has protective diodes at the output, which allow connecting inductive loads without requiring additional protection.

How does a stepper motor work?

The device can operate in three modes:

• Microstepping mode. Microstepping devices are the latest developments of some manufacturers and are mainly used in microelectronics or industrial conveyors. A special chip creates such a voltage that the shaft becomes in the position of one hundredth of a step, for example, 20 thousand movements occur per 1 revolution. The driver can create more than 50 thousand control voltage cycles per revolution.
• Half mode. Due to the reduced vibration level in the half-step mode, such devices are often used in industry. After one phase is activated, it freezes in this position until the next one turns on. It turns out an intermediate position and two poles act simultaneously on the tooth. When the first phase is turned off, the rotor moves forward half a step.
• Full mode. The control voltage is transmitted in turn through all phases and a complete step is obtained (200 movements per revolution).

Stepper Motor Specifications

In the field of electrical engineering and mechanics, a stepper motor is considered a complex device that includes many mechanical and electrical capabilities. In practice, the following technical characteristics apply:

1. Rated current and voltage. The maximum permissible current is indicated in the mechanical data of the motor. Rated current is the main electrical parameter at which the motor can run for as long as necessary. The rated voltage is rarely indicated, it is calculated according to Ohm's law. It shows the constant maximum voltage on the motor winding when it is in static mode.
2. Phase resistance. The parameter shows what maximum voltage can be applied to the phase winding.
3. Phase inductance. How quickly the current in the winding will increase is shown by this parameter. In order for the current to increase faster when switching phases at high frequencies, the voltage has to be done more.
4. The number of complete steps in 1 revolution. The parameter shows how accurate the electric motor is, its smoothness and permissible ability.
5. Torque. The mechanical data shows the speed, which depends on the torque. The parameter indicates the maximum rotation time of the electric motor.
6. Holding phase. This phase shows the torque when the device is stopped. The two phases of the device must be supplied with rated current.
7. A moment of stupor. During the absence of supply voltage, it is necessary so that the motor shaft can be turned.
8. Rotor energy time. Indicates how fast the engine accelerates. The lower the indicator, the higher the acceleration speed.
9. Breakdown voltage. The parameter refers to the electrical safety section and shows the lowest voltage that breaks through the insulation between the case and the device windings.

A stepper motor (SM) for a printer is suitable as a generator for a wind turbine. Even at low rotational speeds, it generates a power of about 3 W. The voltage can rise above 12 V, which makes it possible to charge a small battery.

Principles of use

Wind turbulence in the surface layers characteristic of the Russian climate leads to constant changes in its direction and intensity. Large wind generators, the power of which exceeds 1 kW, will be inertial. As a result, they will not have time to fully unwind when the wind changes direction. This is also hampered by the moment of inertia in the plane of rotation. When a crosswind acts on a running wind turbine, it experiences enormous loads that can lead to its rapid failure.

It is advisable to use a low-power wind generator made by hand, which has a slight inertia. With their help, you can charge low-power mobile phone batteries or use LEDs to illuminate the cottage.

In the future, it is better to focus on consumers who do not require conversion of generated energy, for example, for heating water. A few tens of watts of energy may well be enough to maintain the temperature of hot water or for additional heating of the heating system so that it does not freeze in winter.

Electrical part

A stepper motor (SM) for a printer can be installed with a generator in a wind turbine.

Even at low rotational speeds, it generates a power of about 3 W. The voltage can rise above 12 V, which makes it possible to charge a small battery. The rest of the generators work effectively at rotation speeds of more than 1000 rpm, but they will not work, since the wind turbine rotates at a speed of 200-300 rpm. A reducer is needed here, but it creates additional resistance and, moreover, has a high cost.

In generator mode, the stepper motor produces an alternating current that can be easily converted to direct current using a pair of diode bridges and capacitors. The circuit is easy to assemble with your own hands.

Having installed a stabilizer behind the bridges, we get a constant output voltage. An LED can also be connected for visual control. To reduce voltage losses, Schottky diodes are used to rectify it.

In the future, it will be possible to create a wind turbine with a more powerful stepper motor. Such a wind generator will have a large starting torque. The problem can be eliminated by disconnecting the load during start-up and at low speeds.

How to make a wind generator

The blades can be made by hand from a PVC pipe. The required curvature is selected if you take it with a certain diameter. The blade blank is drawn on the pipe and then cut out with a cutting disc. The span of the propeller is about 50 cm, and the width of the blades is 10 cm. After that, a bushing with a flange should be carved to the size of the SM shaft.

It is mounted on the motor shaft and is additionally fastened with screws, and plastic blades are attached to the flanges. The photo shows two blades, but you can make four by screwing two more similar ones at an angle of 90º. For greater rigidity, a common plate should be installed under the screw heads. It will press the blades more tightly to the flange.

Plastic products do not last long. Such blades will not withstand prolonged wind at a speed of more than 20 m / s.

The generator is inserted into a piece of pipe, to which it is bolted.

A weather vane is attached to the pipe from the end, which is an openwork and lightweight structure made of duralumin. The wind turbine is supported on a welded vertical axis, which is rotatably inserted into the mast tube. A thrust bearing or friction-reducing polymer washers can be fitted under the flange.

In most of the structures, the wind turbine contains a rectifier that is attached to the moving part. It is impractical to do this because of the increase in inertia. The electrical board can be placed at the bottom, and the wires from the generator can be brought down to it. Usually up to 6 wires come out of the stepper motor, corresponding to two coils. They need slip rings to transfer electricity from the moving part. It is quite difficult to install brushes on them. The current collection mechanism can be more complicated than the wind generator itself. It would also be better to place the windmill so that the generator shaft is vertical. This will prevent the wires from braiding around the mast. Such wind generators are more complicated, but inertia decreases. The bevel gear will be just right here. In this case, you can increase the speed of the generator shaft by picking up the necessary gears with your own hands.

Having fixed the wind turbine at a height of 5-8 m, one can begin to conduct tests and collect data on its capabilities in order to establish a more perfect structure in the future.

Currently, vertical-axis wind turbines are becoming popular.

Some structures even withstand hurricanes well. Combined structures that work in any wind have proven themselves well.

Conclusion

A low-power wind turbine operates reliably due to low inertia. It is easily made at home and is used primarily for recharging small batteries. It can be useful in a country house, in the country, on a hike, when there are problems with electricity.