Homebrewed Electricity > Wind
Block diagram for our turbine
kitestrings:
I made an attempt to compile a handful of schematics into a single overview of our turbine and related controls. It's not quite a schematic, but better than some of the hand-drawn thoughts on napkins that I'd had up until now. I've been telling my wife I should probably put some of this down for my children, and her next husband (the toothless b@&$rd), for when I kick off. I call the turbine "kitewind".
SparWeb:
Hi Kitestrings,
I find myself looking at the Classics again, which drew me back to this.
I'm curious: what do you do for grid connection, if any?
kitestrings:
Nope. We're off-grid.
I didn't show our PV (3.2 kW) system or any of the end-use side of things in the above diagram. We have the two Classics for the turbine, and we have an older Outback MX60 that contributes the solar to the same battery bank. For AC loads we have just an Outback VFX 3648 (48VDC, 3.6 kW, 120VAC), and our Onan (4.5 kW) for back-up. I'd always thought that we'd add a second OB for 240VAC, but it just never seemed necessary, or worth the effort.
I suspect a connection to the grid would just be a limitation of the inverter used.
Here's where our system is a little weird -
We started with a very modest 12VDC system (circa 1985). When we transitioned 48V we kept much of the existing 12V lighting. I added a 60A, 12VDC breaker panel (Square D breakers are rated to 24VDC). So, we have a 12V tap with a Solar Converter equalizer.
Our water system is a 24V Sunpump submersible to a cistern, then a 48V vintage F E Myers piston pump for pressurization.
We also have two small step-down converters: one 48/12VDC for the fridge, and one 48/24V that supplies our freezer and submersible.
I'm by no means suggesting anyone else should adopt this approach. As I think you know though, things evolve differently over time than they might otherwise if one started from scratch with all future objectives known, or better predicted, and without the financial and resource constraints most of us start out with -
Sorry, more than you asked for. Let me know if you have any questions about the Classic's. I'd say they have worked well for us.
Best, ~ks
SparWeb:
--- Quote ---more than you asked for.
--- End quote ---
Sure, every system that evolves long enough develops prehensile things like gall bladders and wisdom teeth.
I was pretty sure you operated off-grid, but wondered if there was occasional support from an existing supply.
Thanks for the extra detail.
My house is already on grid, so I'm looking at an existing pump, stove, heating and other things that pull many thousands of kW each. And it's trivially easy to turn them all on at the same time. Replacing them all would be very invasive surgery. While I could save energy that way, I also expect such changes would not increase the value of the house, nor have anything but a negative effect on reliability or ease of repair. For all of the modifications I've already done, I'm the only repair man. I've whittled our consumption down to less than 8000 kWhr per year. Probably terrible to an off-gridder like you.
These considerations make choosing a grid-tie inverter pretty complicated.
SparWeb:
I'm finding it difficult or near impossible to incorporate the wind turbine into the grid-tie design, unless it's absolutely stand-alone by itself and doesn't interact with the house in any way. That precludes any self-consumption of WT electricity.
There are ways to re-arrange it, but it would require numerous trenches dug across the yard. The layout is currently radial from the utility pole. A system that prioritizes self-consumption must permit the grid-tie inverter to manage the load delivered to the grid and used by the consumers. Pretty much impossible if the grid-tie inverter is on a sub-panel of a branch not connected to the source producing energy.
Oh, and getting back to why I mentioned the Classic - if the WT is purely for export it had better be optimized by MPPT.
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