Freetricity.com

That's not true Tom!

The type of neodymium magnets you use and their placement determines what voltage and at what rpm that voltage and current is at.

We will be offering two versions of the WindMaster.

1) A low wind speed version that produces a max of 31 amps at around 400 rpms but does not increase after that even though the voltage increases.

2) A high wind version that allows both the amperage and voltage to increase as the rpm's increase with a cap of about 45 amps and 70 volts.

Hi Tom, Nick, John or any of the guys that know. While this did not work out for me I am still interested in RE and in particular wind. I am still trying to learn all I can. Tom asked Carl about his credentials and it reminded me of something Carl told me early on that does raise a legitimate question. Carl was telling me how at one of his personal homes he had three of his E2D's up and he had twisted all their wires together thus making a 36v system out of three 12's and then he used an Outback inverter and auto transfer switch to run 80% of his power. When he said it I thought "that is exactly what I want to do". As I was looking at inverter options and exactly how to accomplish this I had an RE retailer tell me that it was simply not possible to hook turbines in series to increase voltage. So my question is can it be done? Can I use multipal turbines to increase the voltage of my system or am I simply running multiple same voltage systems into one battery bank? What is the effective use of multiple small turbines?

Hey Sue I only wish I had been as smart as you.

What I found At Freetricity


Hello, my name is Rich Parker and I was interested in the Freetricity opportunity until I found these questions of their product here.

I called and spoke to Carl and told him of my concerns and asked if I could come out to California to see and test the products for myself. The only condition I set was that I wanted to see first hand while I was there the battery charging capabilities of both the 1200 Watt E2D system and the Windmaster 12 volt dc system in a controlled setting.

He accepted and I went out for two days and these are the results:

1) The 1200 watt E2D system generator was in a drill press when I arrived and the deep cycle battery was reading 10.5 volts on my meter.

The 1200 watt system has five components: The wind generator. A 15.5 volt regulator. A Xantrex C-35 charge controller a modified sine wave 1200 watt inverter and a deep cycle battery.

We turned on the drill press on at 12 noon to 600 rpms (as best I could calculate is around 10 - 12 mph wind speed).

It puts out that regulated 15.5 volts easily and I read 14.5 amps going into the battery.

At 5:15 pm the battery was charged fully and reading 12.86 volts.

This was well within their claim of 3 -5 hours of wind needed to charge the battery.

2) The 12 volt Windmaster generator (much larger) was in another drill press and we turned that one on at 12 noon also and at the same 600rpms.

The 12 volt Windmaster has the same five components as the 1200 listed above the only difference is the generator itself (and the props are bigger but they were not involved in this testing) is larger and has four output options.

It puts out that regulated 15.5 volts easily but this unit delivers 31.5 amps at that 600 rpms.

At 3:15 pm the battery (that had started at 10.35 volts) was fully charged at 12.78 volts.

All readings were read going into the battery.

Again, this product delivered exactly what’s advertised.

I have to admit I had a great visit and thought the staff of Carl, Linda, Morgan and Ceaser to be very professional and accommodating so, I signed up to be their El Paso area distributor.

My website arenewableoption dot com will be up and running soon.


If you are interested in Freetricity’s opportunity and have read these posts do what I did … go out and see for yourself!


Thanks

Rich

Thank you John.

I do expect all to go well. I did not conduct any torque or drag tests but they have a working windmaster on the roof of their shop and it was connected to the battery through the regulator, charge controller,etc and was spinning freely most of the time I was there. And since their office in the shop runs solely from the wind generator system I can only assume that the charging load was present during several hours while I was there. I can add that during a good wind it spins so fast you can't see the props!

But the important point for me, after reading these posts from people who said they couldn't get a battery to charge was to see that it could. And someone said they had done the drill press test without success.

Also, they are offering 3 different prop sizes that I guess are to address any situation.

Rich

Rich,

I see your website is still awaiting upload. Have you received the WindMaster from Freetricity yet and can you let us know how it is working for you?


John

John,

I thought I'd wait until I had my system up and running for 30 days before responding.

I received my 24 volt high wind system. Installed it and after a couple of days decided the high wind version was not for me.

I returned it for the low wind version that I received at the end of March and that unit works much better for my location.

My system includes a 24 volt low wind WindMaster, 4 six volt Sears Die Hard golf cart deep cycle batteries, a Xantex C-35 charge controller, an Aims 24 volt pure sine wave inverter  and a Gen Tran manual transfer switch.

I'm not in the windiest area (I get a regular afternoon wind for 4 - 5 hours) of the country but my results are as follows.

It takes on average 2 days in my low wind area to charge the batteries to full charge. Since the batteries are still new and have only been cycled about 20 times or so my full charge is reading about 12.56 volts not the 12.8 I expect after a few more battery charge/discharge cycles.

Once the batteries are charged I get about 1 full day of use into the circuits I have wired into my transfer switch.

I have monitored the device almost religiously since April 1st and I think it is an outstanding product. I have noticed a few things I don't really understand though.

When the battery and charger are in the bulk charge state the charge happens at a way faster rate than when they are in the middle or absorption stage.

Does anyone know why? Can I do something to speed this up?

In conclusion:

A) The WindMaster looked way better than when I visited Freetricity. Better manufacturing all round.

B) In my low wind area I get 1 full day use out of 2 days of charging time and I think that is outstanding.

My website is currently being developed and I will post pictures of my system ASAP!

The WindMaster is extremely well built performs better than I expected so I expect my distributorship will do great!

To quote my son "I'm totally stoked"!

Rich

John,

I've already been scolded by Morgan (my account rep at Freetricity) for buying the worst possible deep cycle batteries so I am going to switch to an AGM type later this week. But they are Diehard # 27321. Want to buy them from me:)

I have a cheap digital multi meter I got at a discount house and the voltage setting above 20 VDC doesn't work so I have been reading the battery voltages in two's (sometimes ones) to make up for it. I only read the voltages when the green light on my controller says fully charged.

I have been charging them then dumping into my transfer switch so I could see how long they would last. It's been working for me so far so I'll continue 1 day on two days off until I become a more sophisticated user.

I haven't got an electric bill yet to show what I have saved but I average around 820 KWH's a month and since I am getting one day free out of every three I am expecting to save at least that much and from my thinking if it saves me 33% off my electric bill each month it is a hands down slam dunk success.

I get my meter reading next week so I am hoping I can view the KWH's used online shortly after that.

My inverter is a 1500 watt unit.

Rich

If you're getting 25 kilowatt hours of energy out of them I might be interested. lol.

I have 8 Concorde PVX-1080T 12V 108 A-H deep cycle solar batteries.

108 ampere hours at 12 volts is 1294 watt hours or 1.294 kilowatt hours at 120V ac without taking any losses into consideration. Eight of them thus gives me 8 x 1.294 or around 10 kilowatt hours of storage.

My electrical usage is a bit less than yours at around 600 kilowatt hours per month or 20 kilowatt hours per day.

I ran my house overnight (without A/C loads) off the batteries to test how long it would go on fully charged batteries after a long day of sunshine and my inverter cut out due to low voltage when the batteries reached 42V about 5am the following morning.

I would estimate that my 8 expensive Concorde deep cycle solar batteries will give me about 5 kilowatt hours before failing, so if you can get four or five times the amount of energy from the "worst possible deep cycle batteries" from Sears them I sure am interested in them.

John

Rich,

Never mind that I can't find the batteries, I just wanted to know what the ampere hour rating was for them, and I certainly would be interested to know what you paid for them. However, I still don't understand why an El Paso business would have their phone answered in Illinois? I might be coming to El Paso and just wanted to know if I could take a drive by and have a look at your WindMaster?

You can email me directly at jbodden @ candw.ky if you don't want to post your home address on this message board.

John

Court update:
I had promissed to report the outcome of the Oct.2 trial. I am sorry to say that this is just an update. As has been the standard with Freetricity, Carl came to court with nothing but excuses and begging for it to be delayed.

Starting in Jan. Carl has been telling anyone that would listen that he was suing me. Since that never happened. I finally filed on him and had an Aug. court date. He avoided that by dodging the certified mail summons sent by the court. I then got the Oct. court date and Carl was served by an actual process server. Due to Carl dodging the Aug. date the Alabama distributor was able to file against Carl, have him served by the same process server, and get the same Oct court date. That allowed us both to be there when Carl came in alone and claimed that he had just found out about the trial three days before. He had no idea about it. The judge sort of smacked that down however me and the other plaintiff had received advice from the court to list both Carl and the company since he had used an alias when setting it up. It turns out that this is bad advice and the judge granted Carl the continuance he asked for based on that incorrect title line. New court date of Nov 6. where I am sure Carl will again try some sort of trick. Of course the delays have sort of worked out for me so far. Flying is no real trouble for me or the Alabama distributor and the golf is great out there year round. We had a very nice round while we were there this time. So we will just keep showing up and reporting Nov. 6, Dec 6, Jan. Whatever it takes.

I have spent almost 2 hours reading all these posts.

While, I can't be sure, I'm guessing that 80% of all posters are affiliated with either (Our Host) The Store or Free Tricity...

Same on you for confusing the issues involved.

I just ordered a Windmaster to be installed on my home here in  Shreveport, La.

I have heard enough, so I am ... "Cautious" about what is expected.  I am a local HS Teacher, we will do this scientifically.  I will document and photograph everything from the first opening of the shipping container to the display of my utility bills for 90 days before and after.

The industry wants PROOF, so I will provide it.
As a service to my fellow man.

Bob Dekota, Shreveport, La.

Hello John:

Thanks for reading my post.

I am interested in issues of product quality here. The question in my mind is that "Is the WindMaster worth owning and does it preform as advertise".

All other issues other than QUALITY, I am uninterested in and will not respond to.  I am told my E2D will arrive the first week of November.  I will keep you posted as to the timely arrival as this does pertain to good management, which in turn  pertains to product quality.

Hay, TGIF....huh
Have a nice weekend John.

Hello Ken:

Well to be honest, we have a pretty mild wind here.  I looked up some NOAA Wind data and we are a level 1 wind zone here for much of the year.  Summers are often windless.  It seems that pretty much all wind turbines need 6 mph or greater to turn at all. We have our windy days, but they are mostly in the Fall, Winter and Spring.

I like to think of myself as a reasonable fellow. So on an annual average basis, I'm hoping for a 20% reduction of my utility bill.  After testing this system for 6 months, I may add 600 - 800 Watts of solar panels to the system.  I have already started looking at solar water heaters.

I have been talking with my students about energy independence and 'the Pickens Plan'. Several of the students have expressed interest in becoming involved with the WindMaster as a study project. Maybe even some experimentation to find a better impeller design that will work in our low winds.  We have already brainstormed a few really good ideas too.

It's always exciting to see the kids jump into something new.

Ken, I hope this answered your question.
Have a Great Weekend !