hardware location

[Thad]

I'm planning on putting a wind generator and solar panels on a hill that is approximately 400' from my house. Off-grid. I was thinking of putting a building about halfway between to house my batteries, charge controller, inverter, and a small homebuilt alternator gen.

Is it better to have anything closer to the house, or closer to the RE source? What setups do you use?

Thanks,

Thad

It is generally easier to move the higher voltage AC over distance than the lower voltage DC. Hopefully the members will offer some insight. TW

[wpowokal]

Basically you encounter enormous losses transmitting low voltage over distance, so keep all low voltage at source and transmitt the high voltage in your case 110v ac.

Read here http://www.windsun.com/Hardware/Wire_Table.htm

[spinningmagnets]

I am still learning and haven't built anything yet, so take everything I write with a huge grain of salt, but...

My current plan is to have fire-proof battery shack 10 feet from the house. Big enough door for a delivery forklift to drop them near their final spot.

My dream (when I move) is to have a primary hydro element. This is unlikely, but whether I have hydro or not, I figure I'll have two wind-gens. I'm guessing one of the 10' DanB's to start, and then a big one, meybe 17'-ish.

I'm still studying if I should send 120 VAC or 54 VAC from the wind/hydro to the shack where it may be rectified and/or transformed into 54 VDC to charge a 48-volt battery pack. So many choices, and much for me to learn.

If I ever add solar PV, the panels will be next to the shack.

[SteveCH]

400 ft. is a long way for low voltage. Your losses would be high. You can calculate these with any of the formulas/charts you can find on the web and/or in many supply catalogues and manuals. The size wire you'd need in order to minimize these losses would be huge. Since you are currently planning on the shed being near the house, you definitely want to wire the panels so that you have the highest voltage running down from the wind gen's and panels to that shed. From there, if it is close to the house/batteries/inverter, etc., you can use whatever voltage you want. You'll still want larger gauge wires from the shed to the house, if you've transformed the voltage down, but it will only be a short run and not a big deal. Again, you can calculate the gauge needed with the formulas for voltage loss per run of a specified wire gauge, and it's different for Cu and Al.

I rewired my solar array a year ago and went through these same decisions. It had been in place for 20+ yr. and more panels added here and there as I came upon deals and/or needed more juice. In my case, the array is only about 60 ft. up the hillside, from the battery bank, which is in the house, and I had a theoritical PV output of around 2 Kw [just according to the ratings of the various panels]. I chose 36 v. from the array, stepped down at the house to 12 v. because of my battery bank and house system. It works great, and is much more efficient than my old set-up, which was 12 v. [17+] all the way. The old system was costing me dearly, as I was running only 6 ga. copper down the hill and using the 12 v. output of the panels. Bad stuff, and I didn't know how bad til I ran the numbers....

You probably already know it will be easiest to have a combiner box set-up at the array. Gives you an easy way to have circuit breakers for each string of panels, etc. I fought this, and other ideas, as I didn't want to lay out the money. Turns out it was money well spent. [$100 or so plus the breakers, $15 each]. For our place, I chose to get a couple of MX60s. I love them.