Inverter Questions; My application

[freejuice]

Hi Folks,
I have a cheaper 48 volt inverter, which seems to be doing its job ok for the time being.
 But I need to get serious about things, so I need to describe a few things about my application before I continue.

1. Eventually I would like this inverter to handle wind and solar but for now I will have my wind generator hooked to it. While it would be nice to have an inverter to handle both, I can use sperate inverters ( one for grid tied solar & one for wind..the wind is an island system, not tied to the grid)

2. I would like for it to be capable of passing NEC ...no crazy grounding issues or anything like that

3. I would like this inverter as pure sine wave around 3000-3500 watts

  Eventually I will also be tied to the grid with thel solar array, net metering the solar system, while using seperate circuits for the wind in a battery island configuration.

 Do you folks have a preference?....what are the inverters you folks swear by? I hear of Xantrex, Outback's SMA'as etc. These are the ones which always rise to the surface regarding quality, but I have never dealt with any of them, and users like you folks out there have.....what were the good times...what if any, were the bad times?
 If I have to go with seperate inverters, I'm looking at the Island/ battery inverter first.

 I hope I gave enough info about my situation and didnt throw a " How long is a piece of string" type of question out there
 
Thanks,
 Gavin

[DamonHD]

I have 4 SMA SunnyBoy PV inverters, with a SunnyBeam remote wireless meter, all pretty robust looking and reliable (eg survived some mistakes by the sparkies), and I would happily specify them again, but the oldest install is only about three years, so not an enormous history.

Rgds

Damon

[WindriderNM]

 Way not use both wind and solar for the batteries and dump whatever is leftover after the batteries are charged into the grid?

[Shadow]

You wont go wrong with Outback.

[freejuice]

Thanks for the feedback, does Outback make a grid tie unit for wind and solar?I'm thinking along the lines of charging the batteries with wind and using solar for grid tie. If they do thats what I need.
 But I do worry...almost feel that I need to keep the wind seperated just in case the local power company wants to give me grief over a non-ul generator...that way they cant pull some kind of 11th hour mumbo-jumbo grief to my plans.
 The solar array will eventually be about 7 kw.
 I'm sure all of this information is avaialble out there with a little research on my part, but you guy's have been there and done that and save many hours of researching these concepts.

SMA has a windy boy and a sunny boy, do they have an inverter which doubles up both?
 I understand their inverter has to have a particular higher voltage range fo wind generators...no big deal on my part I could rewind a stator to thier specs and tie in....but as is the case is  with the possibility of 11th hour hampering by the local grid...maybe I need to check with them too, but Im sure they would cause grief over the wind turbine being tied in.
 It would be simpler to have one Island and  have no worrys over a grid tie solar array...has anyone out there done what I'm thinking of doing?

[fabricator]

What did you wind your 17 for 48v?

[freejuice]

Hi Fabricator,
 Sorry I didnt see your response until now.
 Yes, it is wound for 48V
I have one of those 48v inverters you and Chris were discussing...it appears to be working without a hitch, but that grounding issue got my attention!

 My ideal situation is to have a good inverter for the wind generator hooked to a breaker box and slowly but surely begin transferring some of the house circuts over one breaker at a time, say up to 5-6 120 v 15 amp breakers.
 I still have to straighten the wiring sequence out with a disconnect box....I want to switch back and forth  from the inverter/ battery bank to grid powerr, if my batteries are a bit low.So I need to be sure it works like a transfer switch and isloates me from back feeding into the grid in case the grid goes down....safety's sake

Eventually I will have solar too, but it will be exclusively grid tied. I was wondering if there was an inverter out there which could do both...that is to say, soalr grid tie power while allowing the wind turbine to load the batteries in an island configuration.....Am I asking too much out of one inverter???......I know these inverters nowadays are getting "smarter"...much smarter than I am!

[fabricator]

I'm not using those inverters at all any more they were a huge dissapointment, they could fill a huge hole that exists in the small wind market, especially as far as 48 volt is concerned.
After some consideration I switched my 17 to 24 volt, I didn't do anything to the mill, just changed some dip switches in my TS60 and rewired my eight batteries to two paralell strings with one series wire between the strings, the mill seems to like it just fine, it runs a little stalled which is fine with me, I'm in this for the day by day power production not bragging amps.
In this condition I believe I will make more long term power in lower winds and it will stall badly in higher winds, but around here it is the day after day 10-15 mph winds that will be the primary power producer, the hand full of days a year I get winds over 25-30 mph are not worth worrying about.
When you go down to 24 volts you have a much wider selection of quality inverters, these inverters are used in the RV and boating industry and are tried and true.
Go to "The inverter store" or "inverters are us" and do a search for AIMS inverters, or Wagan, there is another quality inverter built by a company whose name starts with Sam, cant' recall the rest of the name right now but they make excellent inverters.
Some of the AIMS inverters have built in transfer switches and chargers, they are a fraction of the price of the outrageously over priced big name RE inverters, you can get these inverters from like 1kw to 8kw.

[freejuice]

Dale,
 Thanks! I will check into those inverters when I have a few more dollars to spare I will be shopping.
 Yes, mine ran just fine on 24v too. as you say it looked like it was approaching a stall, but produced good useable power in that mode.....the cell phone video I took of the mill was with the 24 volt setup.
 I have noticed with those 48v inverter we have... is this:
 When the  incoming  DC amps push the voltage over a  set limt, the inverter automatically shuts down...some kind or over voltage protection...when the voltage drops back within a limit it "beeps" several times and starts back up...nice feature  to have I guess but kind of annoying when the computer screen blacks out.

I need to look into stopping this....I dont mind the inverter shutting down for over voltage protection, but I need to limit  how the inverter gets those DC surges  

 It appears I need to have seperate inverters anyway, one for wind and a seperate one for grid tying solar.
 Not to hijack my own thread but those who are always shopping for panels I found some U.L. panels about 1.65 a watt ( for those who need U.L. ) here:http://www.solarblvd.com/Solar-Panels-&-Systems-Individual-Solar-Panels-55---95-Watt-%2810%29/c1_25_41/index.html

[fabricator]

I don't think there is a person interested in RE who is not always panel shopping, He never posted about it here but Chris Olson just bought 100 sharp panels from northern tool and installed them on one of his farm buildings.