I finally got my wind powered electron pump going after two years of planning and trying to find the time. Here is a brief summary with some pictures:
Tower:
After mulling over a myriad of options, I decided to make a tower out of a utility pole. The two main reasons I chose this approach was cost, and strength - I wanted a sizable observation deck/maintenance platform on the top. I obtained a good used 45 foot pole for $100. I had to transport it 30 miles, see picture below. All went well.
I started thinking that I needed more height so I got another 28 foot pole and joined them end to end with a piece of 10 inch steel pipe. for a total of 73 feet, minus 2 feet in the ground for a total height to the crows nest of about 71 feet AGL.
Once I had the poles joined and the crows nest built, I jackhammered four two foot deep holes into the rock; three for the guy anchors and one for the butt of the pole. Then I was ready to try to hoist it up. I had four ropes, two sets of two that went over pulleys 30 feet up in two trees that were about 20 feet apart and 20 feet 'in back' of the tower. After going around the pulleys, the ropes connected to the tower at the steel coupling. These two sets of ropes formed a V so the tower would not tip side to side. I applied force with come-alongs, the two ropes in each set allowing me to pull with another come along and then retie when I ran out of travel. The force to start the tower I calculated at about 7000 pounds total, quite a bit. The trees were cabled back so they held fine. I could not quite get the tower started, probably could have done it if there was no rope stretch eating up my travel, so I pulled the top of the tower vertically up a bit from an overhead tree. This improved my pull angle enough that the ropes could take over and up she went. This picture is of the point where the ropes take over, after the vertical lift.
Once I had the tower vertical, I finished the anchors. They are made from pieces of RR track. Once I installed the cables, turnbuckles, etc, I took the temp ropes off and tightened and tweaked a bit and all was sound.
Winter was beating me so I skipped decking the platform for now, and also only put the turbine on a 20 foot piece of 3.5 sch 40 pipe; 5 feet was below the platform so 15+71 gives a total height of about 86 feet hub height. Ill probably go another 20 feet when spring comes. Note the 'ships mast ladder' on the left side of the tower for easy access to the top. Also a few views from the top:
The mill I purchased. It is a SWWP whisper 200 high voltage (240). There is a 1400 foot #10 copper wire run down the mountain to my dome. There it hits a three phase transformer and rectifier bridge and then feeds my 12 v system. I got the nice heat sinks and schottkys off of ebay, all for under $80. Note the funky buss bar arrangement for my negative DC rail because I didn't have reverse polarity diodes.
Low wind performance, not surprisingly, could be better. I have to take some measurements and will probably mess around with a cut in relay and star/delta switch. I have seen a brief 72 amps at the batteries and see sustained currents of 55 amps. The site was proposed for development by big wind, so it should be a phenomenal site. I don't currently have a system monitor, but I have been heating lots of water