This is my wind power project
This is a review of my wind power project

The first area of discussion is wind or solar. I have wind in my area and I live on 5 acres, so the possibilities and price of solar seems too expensive for a ROA (Return on Investment). With that I may go through the figures more and the different reasoning.

Any off power systems contain some of the same common components.
Power Generation
Power Storage
Power Use

Power Generation - could be solar, wind, Gas, Coal, whatever seems most feasible for you in your situation.

Power Storage - could be scaled up or scaled down, however you will have a Buffer between your Generation and Power Use weather that is a Diode or large Battery Bank.

Power Use - is the end use of the power.


Now many will say you need to do this or that.
I myself chose to do wind power to a small battery bank inverting to the power grid.

First of all, I will talk a little about power. This is important as you move forward knowing what is what. Start with your power bill (pull it out, this will make it easy to see where you are). Your Bill will usually charge you by Kilo Watt or KW. A Kilo Watt is 1000 Watts to put in simple terms.

1 KW = take One 100W light bulb running for ten hours.
or
1 KW = Ten 100 W light bulbs running for one hour.

So for many reducing your KW use is a first good step ... so I jumped on E-Bay and bought my CFL (Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs) replacing near all lights in my house. so instead of using 65-120W light bulbs I was using 8-15W CFL. They act close to the same, they take a bit (10-20 minutes) to warm up to full power of brightness, but we like them. Realizing where your power is going is most important. Generally your power will break down in this order number one heating and air conditioning, then Water heater, then main appliances fridge, freezer, washers, then lighting. So with that said managing your temperatures etc will go a long way. I myself have a wood burning efficient fireplace and ceiling fans

OK so now on with my wind project.
Windmill I purchased a PMA (permanent magnet alternator). I could have build one, however it would not be as good or last as long. I got my PMA and wind turbines (the actual blades) from (http://www.missouriwindandsolar.com/) a good place. I e-mailed lots of questions and got some good response. I bought 12 hornet blades and two PMA's 24V and 48V, I erected one windmill and tower built from scratch, got batteries, charge controller, inverter, wire and got my system to work.

So now I will go into detail of the wind turbine, I first changed the PMA from DC to AC as I got the 3 phase PMA and instructions this would allow me to use smaller wire and loose very little power from the windmill to my house with the batteries. I found some pipe on Craig’s list (http://www.craigslist.org/) cheap so I got several pieces of metal pipe one 22 feet long. I placed two 5-foot pieces in the ground placing the 22 ft. in between them and using a couple bolts was able to lower and raise the pole with a little brute muscle.
my wind mill basically was welded together from 1 inch square stock and a piece metal for the tail. I then attached the PMA and the blades loaded them onto the pole ran wire (12 gage) down to the house. Oh and I painted it all green for fun.

Once at the house the power is a wild AC went to a rectifier 4 strong diodes in a great case. This converts it to a stable DC. I then ran the DC through a Fuse to protect my charge controller a (Xantrex C60) I then ran lines to 4 batteries I bought from Craig’s list ... a person changing out batteries in his electric trucks. so I had 4 batteries wired in parallel and series to have a strong 24V DC bank.

I then got an inverter the most expensive part of the project. My inverter had to be quality to tie to the Power Grid. so I bought an outback tie grid inverter and charger. OutBack Power Systems GVFX3524 24 V DC 3500 V AC.

Now the electric hook up is a bit tricky to understand at first, but once you understand you love it. First of all you need to create a separate Fuse Box for crucial items, I moved my fridge, deep freezer, and Fireplace fan over to the new circuit box. the power for the new fuse box comes from your existing box so you need some 6 gauge wire for that and more for the inverter. So from your fuse box you now have power going to the new fuse box that is running crucial areas. next from your original fuse box run power to the inverter and then from the inverter run power to the new fuse box. the New fuse box will be special it will have a piece of metal making your power only come from either the original fuse box or from the inverter.

So how does it work ... when you are not generating power the inverter/charger will charge up your batteries. If you are generating power then the extra will go to the inverter and be used for the new fuse box. if you generate a ton it will also go back to the original fuse box and send the power back to the Power Company. Additionally the inverter/charger will charge up the batteries if drained. If no power is being generated the power will go from the original fuse box to the inverter to the new fuse box.

So I hook it all up and all is getting adjusted, power goes out so what happens, my wife calls excited because the living room plugs are also on the circuit for the Fireplace fan so her Christmas tree lights are all still running plus we had a fire going with the fan and her fridge was still working kind of great, took her a minute to realize that the power went out. Bad part was that there was no wind so After 45 minutes we too were without power (good to know).

Anyhow that is most of my story it is not all done as I'm still getting it inspected and passed off by the power company.