Two electrical posts at the top of each cell allowed it to be connected in series to all the batteries to bring the total voltage resistance to 32 VDC (direct current with a positive and a negative)-- or if the house or barn where the electricity was to be used was far enough away the shelf of batteries might total 36 volts. That would be because voltage drop is about one volt for each one hundred feet of wire. Another interesting thing about 32 volts is that the wires had to be heavier than those used for today's voltages; wire sizes being a function of amperes, and the lower the voltage the higher the amps needed to make up the wattage. Elementary electrical physics.
This is all vivid in my memory because our neighbours half way to school had such a well. Although our farm had a Fairbanks-Morse one cylinder pump engine and not a windmill, most of the farms around our area did have windmills. I am not sure if the farm half way to school had a windmill or not, but it did have the Delco combination pump engine and generator, so it was interesting to stop in there to keep warm and to view the wonderful equipment. Actually 32 volt electrics was the standard farm power in the West until the first Rural Farm Electrification program in Alberta at Linden was installed. That put a lot of used 32 volt stuff on the used market for the less advanced areas, until finally nobody wanted to generate their own power. At that time I had a Sunbeam shaver with an actual rotating motor in it, not the electromagnetic push-pulls that were common. And do you know what? When we were out in the country installing furnaces where they had 32 volt power I could use the same shaver and it would run at the same speed with no problems at all. So 32 volt direct current must have about the same coil resistance as 110 volt AC.
Now back to the Wincharger. I suppose that Dad knew more about the Delco than his kids did and a lot more about how it would improve things on the farm, but money was in short supply, so a 32 volt Delco system was not in the books. But the Wincharger Company specialized in making 32 volt wind units, and these could be mounted on the old windmill or on the roof of a building with the batteries inside. But on our farm there were 6 volt batteries around, and there were 6 volt bulbs and radios that would run on 6 volts, so Dad found that he could buy a 6 volt Wincharger on one of the trips he annually made to Great Falls for tractor fuel.
I remember the package of parts that came including the wooden propeller for the unit and the angle iron base that held the unit up above the house peak, and the shiny black generator. We put it together and mounted it on the top of the old shack and ran the wires to the battery and ammeter in the house below and waited for the wind to blow. There were perhaps a couple of car batteries in parallel so the unit could have lots of charging to do before we had to pull the cord that put on the brake and stopped the rotation.
I should also tell you about the governor/regulator that came with the Wincharger. Again it was made of shiny black metal. It was mounted on the rotating shaft along with the propellor with two arms that extended only about one quarter as far as the 6 foot propellor. These arms had hemispherical cups at their ends that were double jointed in such a way that at low speed they offered no wind resistance, and at high speed there was enough centrifugal force to turn them directly into the air so that their scoop against the air would slow down the rotation. This was necessary so that the unit would not overspeed and fly apart. We sure did not go up on the roof unless the brake was on, because it could swivel around and the blade was as sharp and impersonal as Mme LaGuillotine.
That was yesterday a long time ago, but today there is still lots of wind and there is a lot more science and technology to put it to work. To generate electricity with a modern wind charger is quite simple and easy, except that we do not have enough 6 volt batteries (or 12 volt) to store the power until someone uses it. In fact we need to be able to generate it only when it is needed. A comparison that illustrates the different ages and times would be like the old hundred pound bag of flour that the cook used to have in the pantry -- that is unheard of today because we can go to the corner and buy a cake mix right off the shelf and bake it now, or we might buy the already baked cake.
Just think. The 6 or 32 volt generator really does not care how fast it turns, rotation speed only means the battery is charged up faster or slower. Neither did the 32 volt motor on the milking machine care if the batteries were fully charged or not or if the voltage was out a bit. But your washing machine today does care, and so do your lights and the tv. I have always been fascinated by the technology that makes it possible to add wind power to the electric distribution system we now have.Remember, generation is easy, but adding it to the distribution pool is not. Since the power distribution system is an alternating current system where each power wire changes from positive to negative 60 times a second meaning that anything added to it cannot alternate at 61 or 59 or even a fraction away from 60. The most extreme bad example would be to try to add 110 volts negative to 110 volts positive. Besides canceling themselves out there might be fireworks and wastage. So unless you have a big bank of batteries at each windmill you must ensure that it is always turning at only one speed with no variation. Yes, even when nobody is drawing any power from it. The technology we have today can do it and it does, but it adds so much to the costs that wind power becomes more expensive than coal or gas. Nevertheless it is politically correct, so we must do it
We heard that they had started to install a wind farm a few miles north of Three Hills, so David and I spent some time on Thanksgiving Monday to go to it. We found it on the crest of a rise and the closer we got the bigger it looked. Unfortunately, being a holiday, there was nobody there to tell us how close we could get or to ask questions of, so the pictures we took were distant ones. It seemed that there would be about ten or a dozen towers in the cluster not closer than about a quarter of a mile apart each way. And they looked big. Some of the pieces of the pylons looked like large cylinders with built in inside stairways and were still on trailers ready to be lifted into place. The seemed to be close to 10 feet in diameter at the base and then tapered up to the top. We understand that each of the three blades is over 30 feet (meters?) long. I did hear, but do not have the figures handy.
So there you have the story of the pictures.
Dad
