I've been watching and reading here for a little while. Still tring to understand more first ... (ah ... just being lazy) .. Thank you all for the good reading.
My situation here would be that the winds in my area would be concidered light at most times ... (10 - 20 km/hr) so I am interested in low cut-in, low output generators. I would prefer to produce small amounts of power more often ... rather than waiting for that windy day to spin a big power producer.
To produce power from low winds ... would it be right to think that putting big propellers on a proportionly small generator, would improve start up in low wind speeds? I guess the problems come when the wind speed exceeds the generator design. The generator I have in mind would be wired for low cut in (more turns of lighter wire). However it would burn up the wires if I left the generator spinning faster and faster as the wind speed increased. There was some discussion about casting two sets of coils in a stator to be turned on if the wind was available for more power.
If I concidered a setup with more turns of lighter wire I would hope that I would get sufficient voltage early and that the 'unloaded' voltage would increase as the speed of the generator increased. I would not see the voltage increase however, because the battery bank's resistance would keep the voltage to its needs.
Instead of reconfiguring the stator at the generator ... if the wind increased (and generator speed and therefor open current voltage)... would it not make sense to change the voltage required at the batteries to the wind available. What I mean ... if the generator speed increased, could I not switch a battery bank from 12 to 24 volts. Would this not run the generator cooler and more efficient? Same wattage output, but more voltage with less amps. Less amps would mean cooler wiring and losses.
I know that I would need to 'pull' only 12 volts off the battery bank for the inverters, but I don't think that would be a problem. If the relays used were of sufficient amperages (they could be paralled together if they were too small) I could set a system to switch battery banks as needed. (working on computer controlled relays through a parallel port)
If that would work ... then I believe I could set up a small output system that would produce cut-in voltage early and wouldn't need to be shut down or furled early if the wind was 30km or 40km (or 60 km/hr).
Are there any circuits that would restrict the maximum power useage off the generator even if it could produce more (to prevent it from burning up)?
Am I out to lunch ... or 
