i am working on a small wind turbine for a project but i cant find a large enough DC motor for cheap.But at a thrift store i saw a large used AC motor for $10. I know you can use DC motors to generate DC current but can you use an AC motor to generate DC power?
you would either need to do some painful redesign of the the motor or attach an inverter to the output. How large is your project? You might be able to get away with just picking up a small motor from radio shack.
Hey Nutz, your other answers here are quite right. Forget the AC motor, because even though you want to produce AC power ultimately, you'll never have control over the frequency. You said small turbine? We've built a couple ourselves, with mixed results. The best thing for the money is the electric scooter motor. They are small, inexpensive, have ball bearing movements and are quite efficient. I would suggest a 24 volt unit for a 12 volt application. You won't overvolt the battery, the generator voltage will just sag to the batteries charging voltage curve, and only the output amps will change to reflect the amount of torque the wind turbine is generating. Most are designed to operate at around 2000 to 2500 RPMs at 24 volts, so you'll want to gear it so the generator turns around 1500 RPM while generating. They come with belt pulleys or chain cogs installed on the shaft, use whichever works for you. I'll put a good parts website below, but there are a few other if you google electric scooter motors, or go cart motors and such. Good luck, and take care, Rudydoo
no, not without a lot of difficulty. Stick with DC motors, and only ones with permanent magnets. .
A small DC motor might have a permanent-magnet stator, but a large AC motor would probably have a coil stator. You need to power the coil stator with a DC / battery power source, to use the AC motor as a generator. Plus, you would use a silicon-diode rectifier to convert the AC output to pulses of DC; and use a large electrolytic capacitor to convert the pulses to a constant DC source.
