One more note.. Thought I would give some insight on my plan to slowly add my RE system.
At first, I'm going to have just the windmill, one inverter and a charge controller. Eventually i will add another windmill and some solar.
What I am going to do is run the bathroom and 3 bedrooms off of the RE system, with the rest of the house connected to the grid. After seeing how things go, I'll add or subtract rooms from my RE system to suit my average generation of power. As my system grows, I'll be putting more and more of the house on my RE system. Also, the RE system will be backed up by the grid - when batter bank charge level goes low enough, a transfer switch will fire and put those house circuits on to the grid while the battery bank charges again. Once a decent charge level is reached, transfer switch puts thos house circuits back to the RE system.
Eventually I want to make a "priority" system for charging/grid power. First, each house circuit (i envision each room being a circuit, with the exception of high load appliances also being their own circuit) would be assigned a priority.. For example:
priority 1: Refrigerator
Priority 2: Water Heater
Priority 3: Living Room
...
Priority 10: Washing Machine
Last Priority: Dump Load/Shunt
The first priorities will be always considered first. Priorities nearer the end of the list are more like shunts or dump loads.. I want to design a circuit to do this automatically...
For example..
Priority 1 (Refrigerator in my example) is always connected to the battery bank/Inverter.. While charging, if full battery bank voltage is reached, then switch next priority circuit (water heater) from the grid to the RE system. Now if battery voltage is still high, switch the next priority house circuit from the grid to the RE system, and so on until if all else fails, the shunt load is turned on and energy is wasted out. ANd on the reverse end, if battery voltage is dropping, take priority 10 off of the RE system and back to the grid, followed by priority 9, 8, 7 etc... THis way, the individual house circuits act as the dump loads/charge controller. The more power you make, the more of the house circuits are put onto the RE system.. DOing it this way, the real dump load should rarely come on and wasted power should be minimal. And of course, each priority house circuit would fall back to the grid, so it should happen pretty seemlessly. I would also add the ability to not fall back to the gird (for instance, if it is detected that the grid is down, or by manual trip). THe circuit for such a charge controller would be pretty easy for a DIYer to make.
What do you think?
