Electronic – FEM: How to calculate impedance in stator circuit for loaded generator

That's an impressive piece of kit - far larger than most of us will ever get to play with.

Alternators can and do behave differently with reactive (in this case inductive) load components, with exact results varying with the design.

SO, I'd say that the "right" answer is to ask the alternator's manufacturer for specifications of its characteristics with varying amounts of inductive load.
But as a starter ...

• Mechanical load wise the alternator will not mind inductive load component. VAR (Volt-Amps reactive) are "Wattless". The energy source (diesel motor?) will not know they are there overall. You will still however have to provide for the IR distribution losses for the reactive current so they will contribute some real Watts, but it will be small compared to if they had been pure-resistive-load Watts.

• Inductive load component may quite possibly affect the ability of the alternator to regulate well. I assume that you are producing a 3 phase supply. If so, you'll wan't to keep the reactive component spread reasonably evenly over all 3 phases.

You'll be able to find better references than this, but a quick search turned up this Southern Illinois University Laboratory experiment instruction sheet which seems to do a good job of covering the basics. Dr Louis Youn, whose web page this is on, should be able to advise further. They note:

• The output voltage of an alternator depends essentially upon the total flux in the air gap. At no load, this flux is established and determined exclusively by the dc field excitation.

  Under load, however, the air gap flux is determined by the ampere-turns of the rotor and the ampere-turns of the stator. The latter may aid or oppose the MMF (magneto motive force) of the rotor depending upon the power factor of the load. Leading power factors assist the rotor, and lagging power factors oppose it.

  Because the stator MMF has such an important effect upon the magnetic flux, the voltage regulation of alternators is quite poor, and the dc field current must continuously be adjusted to keep the voltage constant under variable load conditions.

  Related: If one phase of a three-phase alternator is heavily loaded, its voltage will decrease due to the IR and IXL drops in the stator winding. This voltage drop cannot be compensated by modifying the dc field current because the voltages of the other two phases will also be changed. Therefore, it is essential that three-phase alternators do not have loads that are badly unbalanced.

I suggest that you try isolating the CFL bulbs (or enough of them to make a difference) in a switchable bank and observe effects on regulation (if any) with them in an out of circuit. This may work best if you test load with a limited number of incandescent bulbs and a large percentage of CFLs. Or, "best" of all, a purely CFL load. Observe carefully / no responsibility taken / Do not bend fold staple or mutilate / YMMV / Caveat Emptor ... - but it will probably be OK.

Another possible issue is CFL startup, but it is unlikely that the load on the alternator can be worse than the horrendous cold filament surge load of incandescents.

If you do find that the inductive component is causing eg regulation problems you can add capacitive reactance to balance. At the load capacity you have it may be attractive to use a 3 phase motor adjusted to present a capacitive reactive load to the system. I think these need to be wound-rotor slip ring induction motors - Mr Google is not too forthcoming on this but I know he knows. The technique is mentioned here- but using a rather large and special induction machine to do it.

Mechanical Generation of Power is basically how we first got electricity. It's a fairly common application, and there are over a billion of them running around outside. Automobiles have been using rotating shafts to power themselves since the very start.

The schematic for it is fairly simple. An Alternator going into a rectification stage which is then tapped into a battery for power storage, or directly to the rest of the circuit if the shaft can generate a fairly steady speed and voltage.

Automotive alternators have been design in a way to couple the alternator to the shaft without directly mounting it around it, through the use of a belt or pully. As long as the shaft is fixed in place, and the alternator can be mounted along side, this works great (Safety first of course). There is a minimum RPM for stable generation, and output voltage will vary based on the RPM, so you have to work around that (Use a regulator circuit). The alternator's ideal rpm should match the Shaft's range of speeds.

A not typical setup for illustrative purposes: