Reply With QuoteSo no one has a wind turbine?
Wind Turbine
Just wondering has anyone got one?
Noisy?
Council?
I was looking at a few on Ebay they seemed pretty reasonable
Is it the same as hooking up a solar system?
Ca you use the same inverter?
Can you have 2 inverters hooked back to the grid or do you need one big enough for both solar and wind?
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So no one has a wind turbine?
no wind turbine but i imagine it would be similar to a solar setup, more than 1 inverter possible, and pump it into batteries, likely 12v-24v from the turbine, seems 48vdc with control boxes, needs more investigation, altenators produce 13.8vdc, x vac(depending on speed) if the diode bridge is removed, so there is lots of homebrews out thereSo no one has a wind turbine?
Last edited by anyone; 20-03-11 at 07:55 PM.
I discussed wind turbines briefly with my solar panel installer, whom also did wind turbines. He did not recommend them on a small scale installation unless you were off grid and could not optimise solar. Higher maintenance and higher cost were his main reasons.
In the absence of first hand responses a friend has one of the Jaycar ones he spent a small fortune on batteries and inverters etc. He had it setup at home which is on a hill and connected to his PC in the office. It seemed to run on mains or being charged a lot and the whole lot got moved to his business where its mounted high on a second story roof in a wide open area.
On odd days it goes nuts when the wind blows but most of the time it seems to produce little.
Put it this way unless you live someplace where the wind blow a real lot reliably I would not bother. Particularly considering the cost of the batteries.
Wind turbines can't be compared to solar , there are very few area's they work, everyone thinks they live somewhere windy enough but in reality only around 1% of the population live in area's that will occasionally produce average outputs.
They are expensive , ugly and very unreliable , noisy and inefficient , most councils wont allow them because of the noise.
Most power providers don't allow wind turbines to be connected to the grid.
The inverter is totally different to a PV inverter because they have no open circuit voltage like PV does , so can't be used to supplement PV output at night as a lot people think would be a good idea.
Bang for bucks PV wins hands down.
Sorry forgot about the noise thet too.
I probably live in the 1%Originally Posted by Joey
Don't know about council or neighbours
Why don't power companies want them connected?
Would love one for me if its viable,but would try and get one for the community garden as an educational tool if we can get the funding.
See if it does what it should and go from there.
(it would be at least a year or two before we could generate the money to get it.)
They have them at CERES in Brunswick and another community garden near Dandenong and Springvale Road
They have workshops on how to bild one from a washing machine motor on You tube and power your home.
but there really isn't much off the shelf info or any nearby to visit and talk to someone about.
I've briefly looked at wind turbines but it isn't windy enough where I live. Looking at their power graphs, they don't seem to make much power unless there is a good breeze. I can see them doing well off shore or right on the coastline.
You must live in a light house then ? trust me most people "think" they live someone windy enough but reality is they don't
Wind turbines are horribly inefficient and on the odd occasion where they are operating at their optimum they are under high stress which causes many of them to fail.
Basically to produce the same output as a 1kw pv system you need to spend around $15,000 on a wind turbine and then put a bit away for maintenance because it will fail.
It will never pay for itself before you have to do it all again.
I think you answered the question about why power companies don't want them , most that are interested are talking about home made pieces of junk that don't comply with the Australian standards required for grid connection.
The one that do comply cost 2 to 3 times as much as a PV system they have at least some idea of an average feed to the grid.
seriously this topic has been beaten to death all over the net , Wind Turbines are not a viable alternative on any scale.
Its nearly a light house top of hill near water.
3 KW for under 5 G
sounds cheaper than solar.
Other than the inefficiency of the turbine you might want to look at the cost and longevity of the battery bank. These batteries are very expensive and have a finite life. A friend lives in country NSW and all you can hear during the day and some at night is petrol generators running charging stuff battery banks. A lot of people installed standalone off grid solar and the panels can't charge the batteries now and the cost of replacements is so high they just use a petrol generator now. Makes my friends wife wild as the sound reverberates through the valley.
I didn't want to go the battery route just feed back to the grid
I already have a 1.5Kw solar panels back to the grid
have 2 mates on batteries and solar
one only has a few panels (2 old small ones he got with the house) and heaps of batteries, is away for a month and has to run the gen if he comes back for more than a week a few more panels would sort that as his batteries are new big and expensive.
Other mate is off grid 3 KW solar system and batteries no generator.
He has fridges freezes dishwasher tvs and heaps of lights.
Last edited by Dishtrackted; 22-03-11 at 12:49 PM.
wind generators seem to favour the permanent magnet design(motor) so no exciter needed and works at smaller rpm, spin it and a voltage is produced, being a generator and a motor i can see cars with one in each wheel, solar panels on top subsidised when braking
sourced a golf cart 12vdc motor will try a few tests, many ways of designing an efficient home brew using strong magnets, though this relationship between magnetisim and electricity is not new we havent maximised it to our benifit, the net has helped spread the word and now 3 phase generators can be made at home with the switching gear we have these days we gotta utilise
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