My 16 footer

[Rock]

Dan, did all of the work on the turbine and blades.  I will post photos as soon as I can but Dan's work is supurb.  

I live in the mountains in a Class 6 or 7 wind zone.  

Turbine will be on top of my 20 foot tower.  No need for more height at this point, more wind will just make it furl more.  I may go to 35 foot next summer, but this winter I will be making adjustments and such so a shorter tower is easier to deal with.  

Tower base is made from Sch 80 pipe (2.5 inch and 3 inch) and 1/2 inch thick plate.  Tower itself is Sch 40 6 inch ID pipe.  It was free from a local plumbing contractor.  I had to splice the pipe and used 6 inch OD tubing.  It was pricy at $12 per foot.  Got 4 foot for now and later.  

Tower base is connected to a concrete slab 10 foot X 10 foot X 1 to 2 foot thick. Approx 4 CY of concrete, thats 16,000 lbs.  Base is attached to concrete via 4 each 1/2 inch anchor bolts cast in place.  Plus there are 8 anchor bolts around perimeter for guy wires.  

Its a on grid system and I have 2 each GVFX 3648 inverters and they sell back to grid.  Battery bank is 8 each 12 volt deep cycle batteries, wired to 48VDC nominal.  I also have a 5000 watt DC generator (alphagen) that is hooked to my battereis and a 1000 gallon underground propane tank. I also have 6 each Kaneka 60 VDC solar panels.  Plus I have a Lakota wind turbine that is down right now.  

[DanB]

It's mostly George, and Rich's work that is 'superb' (if its truly superb).  Everything I can do they can do better... ;-)

[vawtman]

Hi Rock

 Im sure everything is well built.

 What regs did you run into while attempting gridding a homemade turbine from the power co?

 I hear some say it cant be done with homemade devices before the inverter.

 Thanks

[Rock]

No problems at all with the power company..  When they came out to install the "special" meter all they did was make sure no power back fed to their grid when I was disconnected.  IE they pulled the old meter and seen I still had power on in house.  They checked the line coming from house to meter and it was dead.  So they oked everything.  They did not even look at my solar panels, wind turbine, or inverters.  

My 16 footer is up now. Just got it up on Saturday, before the snow storm...  

Largest wattage produced so far is 1500 watts in 20 to 25 mph winds.  BUT I have sold over 10 KWHrs back to grid in 24 hours,  YEA!!!!

It was over the weekend and wife did laundry and stuff so our average 2 KWHRS/day was exceeded and we use 6 kwhrs on saturday and sunday.

Turbine is still pumping out an average of 800 watts non-stop, in 15 to 25 mph winds.  

Outback Grid tie inverters seem to be handling the power fine.  Only draw back is that I have a dual system and master inverter kicks in slave inverter at 800 watts. So both inverters are selling 400 watts each. Not too efficiant for 3600 watt inverters.  Wish I could turn off the sell function of the slave inverter but I cannot.