Steel wire carrying twelve volts ?

Bet Larry knows how to do it with no hands. Giddyup, whoa, backup, whoa....

On Mon, 28 Apr 2008 01:06:23 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, Don Foreman quickly quoth:

You betcha. Now will you guys lay off the Single Guy jokes? You're just jealous because we know how to switch hands and GAIN a stroke.

-- As a curmudgeon, I grok that in its entirety. --LJ

I know this is an old post by now, but I hope you did do a test. I didn't see where anybody took the zinc into account in their resistance calculations. If the coating is in good shape, it might help. If it doesn't work out that way, you could simply buy the cheapest 16 or 18 gage weather proof wire pair available and run 120vac up the hill, putting the 12 volt supply at the top. I suppose you could even run 24 volts ac or so up the hill on the steel wire, then transform it to 120vac, accounting for losses, at the top for the power supply.

Pete Stanaitis

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grumpyoldhori wrote:

Joe, that is not for ground level un-insulated wire is it?

How windy is it there? Could you maybe supplement the solar with a small wind generator? You probably wouldn't need anything elaborate for this.

Plenty of wind, but like the solar panel it comes back to money, the routers are only NZ $100 now. But, either solar or wind work out at around $800-$1000 with controller and battery. The wires are there and cost nothing.

Yes. But there will not be enough current available to run whatever the thing is you want. A crude method is to bump up the bottom end volts, then stick a constant current regulator at the top to float charge a small battery (NICAD/SLA whatever?)- you might get only a few milliamps, but should do it, assuming load is not constant. Google on LM317 applications for a circuit....and stick a fuse at the bottom lest a cow drop a short on the wires...

Naturally, as in all things technical, there will be incredibly complicated alternatives involving heaps of planning, research, work, and expense....

Andrew VK3BFA.

Andrew VK3BFA.

Well, they didn't think of that for sure, but signal wiring such as this need not have covers over the terminals, and so on. In other words, they don't worry that someone might touch the metal.

Joe Gwinn

Every 250 metres, but I have plenty of copper pipe the right size for making up jumpers

On Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:31:11 +1200, with neither quill nor qualm, grumpyoldhori quickly quoth:

See

-- As a curmudgeon, I grok that in its entirety. --LJ

I haven't tried this...

If all you are trying to do is charge a 12v battery why not brew up your own wind generator. Maybe a small AC Delco self energizing alternator and your own fan blade. I understand that it doesn't take a whole lot to convert the Delco alternators to self energizing. The toughest part in my mind is coming up with some sort of fan/blade.

Even an old bicycle generator set maybe enough to do what you want. See these links for a couple examples:

Look up "Savonius rotor" online. For anything less than 25 W or so, it makes more sense than a regular turbine. A good Savonius is only about 12 - 15% efficient but you aren't paying for wind. And a Savonius doesn't have to be aimed at the wind, so it's one heck of a lot simpler.

I built one that used an old permanent-magnet refrigerator fan motor (actually the fan motor from the freezer compartment) for an alternator. The rotor was less than two feet tall and it produced around 8 W in a modest breeze. It was for a kid's science-class demo or I would have made it waterproof. It's easy to do because bearings can be covered easily and don't need seals.

-- Ed Huntress

Lot of information about making a wind generator using an AMETEK motor and PVC fan blades. ebay has lots of AMETEK motors for sale. I would do it in a heart beat but there isn't much wind where I live. Nice thing about wind, it blows even when the sun goes down. You can find plans for controllers on the web also.