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Cost Projections
Our goal for this project is to create an affordable self starting option for the Darrieus VAWT. In order to do this we need to take into account all our costs to build and test our prototype next semester. To build a cheap, testable prototype that we are able to bend and change at will we are planning on using thin aluminum sheets that we can easily purchase from Home Depot ® for a maximum of $66. Aluminum is ideal for our purposes because it is easy to work with and is light. In order to get energy from the turbine itself, we will need an alternator as well. The alternator we’ve considered is designed specifically for wind turbines and is able to output a significant amount of power with low input. The cost for the alternator is $37. The energy output from the turbine will run to the battery, in order to protect the battery from being overcharged, we will also purchase a charge controller which is used to control the energy running into the battery from both the alternator and the solar panel. This device is available for a cost of $16.87. The battery we will be using in our tests is a 12V, 7Ah battery. This battery is much smaller than what would be used in an actual wind turbine application but for the purposes of our tests it will work well. A single battery of this power is capable of running a stereo system for up to four hours and comes at a cost of $20. Because our design incorporates a dc motor that will disengage from the turbine at an appropriate time we will need to acquire a motor and a microcontroller. The combined cost of these two items will be about $50. Additional items we will need and can acquire for free are an inverter to convert the dc power to ac, and a voltmeter for testing purposes. The total of all these materials is $123.87. We will plan on having an additional $50 set aside for unforeseen costs which brings our total the $173.87. The last thing we needed to consider was the training at the Community College Baltimore County Fabrication Lab. The training would allow us to use the facilities of the lab to rapidly prototype more precise designs we will develop. The cost of training one person is $100 so if this is the option we decide to use it will only be feasible to train one or two people.
Actual Costs
These tables show that most of our costs were projected to come from the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) Fabrication Laboratory training. Once we determined that this was impractical for the scope of our project, these costs were not added to our final budget.