It's been a lot of work, and I only built the tower and controls. The turbine is a 10' Danbuilt from back in '05 or '06. Very nice metalwork and blades on these if you are thinking of buying one. 2006 prices were a little lower, but even at $1750, for myself, it would be worth every penny, especially with the new magnets and improved stator. This is a very nice turbine. Here are all the pictures.
I have a friend at the local electricians shop. She lets me go upstairs and scrounge old boxes out of their huge pile and refuses to charge me for them. On the left is the rectifier box, C60 controller above, and the dump load on the right.
Here's my homebrew dump load. Made out of old GE dryer elements and a couple surplus 24V fans from Allelectronics. It dumps about 1200W. I would prefer it up around 1500W but I didn't like how short the nichrome was, and how red the wires got in this configuration. The fans help a bunch, I see no glowing red wires with the fans on. The hot air is forced out of the top and the bottom of the box. There is wonderboard behind the box, and the box is spaced out from the wonderboard about 1" by more wonderboard in little 1" squares. I feel pretty safe with this configuration. It was scaring the crap out of me screwed right to the plywood. Nothing could ruin your day like coming home to find your power shed burned down.
Here's the rectifier box. Thanks to Dan for the large expensive Forcefield heatsink. If it's unclear, the whole thing is built into the lid of a Square D disconnect box. I can hinge the lid up to inspect/repair things or hinge it down to make it pretty. I actually found the ammeter and the shunt at the local junkyard. It's a 75A unit, and I'd prefer 50 or so so I could watch the needle jump more.
It's true, watching wind turbines is more interesting than watching television. Solar trackers are kind-of-interesting, but wind turbines are surprisingly fun to watch! I saw 100 watts out of the turbine in what I would normally consider calm air.
If you are still here, thanks for bearing with me. This project took over three years from dream to completion, and it is a major accomplishment in my life. I swear, mentally, designing and building a 2400 sqft off-grid house was less daunting than getting this turbine in the air.
Thanks Dan, and everyone else for all the help along the way, and I apologize for all my complaining about the forum lately. I suppose I have been out of line, but I like and care about this place and wanted to feel a sense of community. Now that my life is complete, maybe I can mellow out a little. :-)
Cheers!
