Hi Jamie - Overall it's been good other than the problems I've posted here which I attribute mostly to getting hit by lightning last August.
"My question, how was life on your 17ft mill.. what is your setup, #batteries, voltage, inverter type."
My system is pretty basic and needs work (Im working on it). I have a Trace SW4048 inverter. For batteries we had 8 'interstate' L-16HC's (these are 420AH I think made by US battery). I managed to murder those in about 3 years - it was not enough capacity for our needs and my regulation was kind of rough. I used the aux relays in my Trace inverter to turn two heaters on and off as needed, but it was a bit rough. We have about exactly 500 watts of PV on the roof. Between the 17' machine and the solar we were usually in surplus but our battery bank really didn't give us much backup. With a fridge, power tools etc - we were very hard on them.
I recently got a new battery - its an exide 'load hog' forklift sort of thing (about 3100 pounds) rated 560 amp hours at a 6 hour rate (I expect this is more like 700AH at a 20 hour rate but I cannot find that data). It was a new, but surplus and 1 year old and its been sitting around for a while so I'm cycling it a few times hoping to get the voltage to come up - it's actually looking pretty good now. Its a 72V battery, so I've tapped it at 48 and I'm in the market for 12 more cells so I can double it's capacity.
I plan to regulate this with 2 Trace C40s turning heaters on and off and 1 of the relays on my inverter with a heater that will turn on at like.... 57 Volts just in case teh C40's cant handle it all. This could happen on very windy days if Im not paying attention and have both wind turbines on.
"Did you find life with the 17ft'r acceptable?"
Yes. The weak link on that machine is the tower but otherwise it's been very good.
"would you have done anything different with it?"
Not really - if I was telling someone else to build it Id be inclined to run with a slightly wider airgap and a slightly smaller blade to keep things a bit more towards the safe side.
" I know you have solar as a suppliment and a genny but all in all how was it??"
Good - the regulation of the batteries and their size was my biggest problem I think. Right now my solar is offline (need to bury a line) so Im running off both machines and they keep me in more power than I need usually.. and this is in very low winds it seems.
