Electrical: Building the Alternator

      The alternator of a wind turbine is made up of two parts: the rotor and the stator. The rotor is composed of 12 magnets, that when the wind turns the blades, the rotor rotates over the stator. The stator stays stationary. It is composed of 10 electromagnetic coils made from copper wire.

    This picture is of a rotor and a stator from a small demo wind-turbine. The rotor, as you can see, are the four magnets connected to the small wind turbine. The four coils make up the stator. As the wind turbine turns, the magnets in the rotor pass over the electromagnetic coils in the stator, generating an electric current.

This sounds easy to make, right?

No. You’re wrong.

Creating the Alternator:
The first step of creating an alternator is to wind the ten electromagnetic coils. To do this we use a homemade machine (which breaks often and easily) to wind 290 turns of wire. Peripheral information: It’s extremely easy to lose count.

Connecting the coils:
After the ten coils are completed, they are laid in a circle around a circular piece of plywood. They are now ready to be soldered together. We solder the ends of the wires, making the electric current can run throughout all ten coils. Ten wires have been soldered to the coils. They run around to one point where they are tied together.

Making the two rotor molds:
A wooden plywood circle is cut out of a board with twelve notches cut into it. The magnets are placed inside each of these notches. Then, we place them inside a mold where liquid plastic is poured and we wait for it to dry.

Assembling the alternator:
 The alternator, as you know, is a metal object composed of a hub and shaft that are welded together. These keep the stator and rotor together. Four threaded rods are placed on the hub of the atlernator. The rotor and stator, which have four holes, are threaded through the rods. The blades of the wind turbine turn the four threaded rods, which are connected to the hub and the rotor.