I am just wondering about grid-tie with a battery system. Is it considered more energy efficiant to let a generator just feed into a grid-tie inverter, or use a battery bank with an inverter supplying part of the house electrical demands? My system has a pure sine wave inverter that I feed power to the phantom loads in my house, such as the entertainment stuff in the living room, along with the lights in the living room and bedroom. If the battery voltage climbs high enough, the dump controller turns on the grid tie. But I have been re-thinking all this and am wondering what others have found. And I am aware that it is not reccommended to use the grid as a dump source in case the power fails, I will be adding a relay to divert power to a suitable load in that case. Wondering what others have found out, Sam Mauk
Hi Sam, good questions. 1st I agree not to use the grid tie as your dump ! I also used a battery bank to run many of the items you mentioned. My bank was a 12 V 1030 amp hr, so when it was healthy it would be reading anywhere from 12-14.3 and that was the load my turbines had to surpass to start making Usable volts. BUT my charge controller was just dumping to coils unless I added more home use to the sin wave inverter. After trying many different grid tie inverters I chose the Sun DC 10.8-30 , ths meant I was harvesting watts much earlier and with lighter winds than when using my bank. Now it is all grid tie only ! I do keep my big bank healthy just as a grid failure back up . What is the volt range of your grid tie inverter ?
Almost forgot, there are a lot of variables and some being your wind area (low? Medium? high ?) and what turbine / power curve you have to maximize your watt out put and match it with a proper volt rated grid tie for your location , equipment .
I have 2 systems going at this time. A 12 volt on my cabin and a 24 volt on the house. The grid tie is on the 24 volt setup and starts making output at about 14 volts. Because I had not properly adjusted the 24 volt system to furl out of the wind when it should, I burned up the stator. I had another stator that was not wound correctly for 24 and put it in. Now my output is pretty low, but doing something until I get time for correcting my goof up. I would like to mention that the cabin project has been pretty trouble-free for about 4 years now. I am attatching a pic of the stator that burned up. Sure was making some power for a while!
Ouch! Sorry that happened. I have wondered why these Hugh Piggot/Otherpower style pancake generators call for epoxy all over the stator. It probably really insulates the copper which obviously causes it to overheat much more easily. Well varnished magnet wire should be able to hold up against corrosion in the open air without the need for epoxy?
I gives them a way to mount without using metal. Also it is for vibration concerns. They use talc mixed in to help with heat dissipation.
Yes, I understand it gives them a way to mount the stator without using metal but I could think of many DIY ways to mount the stator without completely encapsulating it in a insulating material. There must be a better way to do it. And the vibrations should not be that intense because the stator remains stationary. Maybe one day I will have time to play with some ideas I have.
I have seen a few that have holes in the middle of the coils and magnet plates for air to pass through.
been watching this forum for quite a while and I dont think I saw anybody use the 3ph ac in sun gti inverters (not battery clamped) Is it capable of doing the job? I just took down my Delco(never again) and purchased a wn 750 so I would like to do this right!!!.I was thinking of the 10.8-30 and the 22-60 in parellel. What do you think?
That is what I am running right now. Some are running (2)10.8-22 paralleled. Blue jay is running (2)22-60 paralleled. It has to do with your normal winds and how many turbines you are going to run. If I had better wind here I would be running mine like Bluejay. But I have really low wind this year so I have one of each in parallel.
Tom, let me get this right you are running a 10.8 and a 22 in parallel? And hows that work when you have some good wind. I 'mm just south of you in colebrook out in the wide open spaces. avg. wind 13.5
Yes I have both tied in parallel with a 24 volt battery tie. The 10.8 -30 volt puts most into the grid. When there is lighter gusts the 22-60 volt also kicks in shares the wattage. When the 10.8 or 22 volt go to that 3-5 second hunting mode the 24 volt battery holds it down till they kick back in. This usually happens every once in awhile and sometimes during big gusts.
