If you have a Wind Turbine in the North-East USA ... 1) Is making the most power ever ? 2) Was it destroyed by the extreme wind ? 3) Did you lower the pole to the ground, short the output or tie the tail (turn it off) ?
1) No it was not putting the most power out. Wind was howling at the lake front. Waves inside the breakwall were crashing over the public dock. Wind was steady at 4 mph except for some gusts to 40 mph all night at my house. Reason being I am 1 mile from lake and alot of the trees still have most of their leaves on. 2) Mine are at roof level and going at it. 3) I was going to short them out. But above 15-20 mph they take off and start turning fast. So I took all my grid ties and hooked them together as using my regular setup it was kicking the relay all the time. With all 4 hooked together I had 2100 watts at 12-30v and 500 w at 22-60 v. For a total of 2600 watts of inverter. I did not check much but 600 watts was max when I did. They had no trouble keeping the two turbines under controll all night. For about 2 hours it got so bad I hooked them to my 12 volt battery bank. That kept the rpms down. I also have to report that my grid ties lost sync 6 times last night that I am aware of. Only for a few seconds but with out the relay system it could have burned up everything. We never did lose power.
Thanks Tom, great information. I am glad to hear all is ok. I have seen 1200 watts out of my system with pounding winds up to 55 MPH. As soon as the winds died don to about 8 MPH i put the brakes on and i tied them to my battery bank. I never did get to see the full potential of 2kw but it was not worth as I know their will be better days. All is well and we did not loose power . I had no over volt using the 1kw 22-60 on my HY 500 and 600, only a few times on the HYE 1000. All my turbines now have a 1kw inverter on each one. I was able to see close to 500 watts out of the HY 400 at 30 MPH but again the winds were so hard I had to stop them. I still made some power even with the brakes on but the brakes were the smartest thing I could do to save my towers and system. Until a few days ago I never used brakes so it is a wise thing to have them even if you only use the brake once a year. My brake is just a simple single pole 20 amp switch that shorts out the AC phase of the rectifier.
Those wind gusts were hitting hard and quick. They took all the fun away. I shut my little whirly gig down.
Yes i agree. I was all set to do vids and collect data as their was nothing else to do anyway. The winds just got to ridiculas so i cleaned the basement and now I wait for a better day.
Here's my Whirly Gig. Spun real fast and quiet. Hummmmmmm,wonder whats up with the Fargo Flyer?? Oh yeah, there's a Windy Nation three blade hub that finally seen some motion as a VAWT. As a HAWT the birds sat on it. really! I clicked your link for wind pics. Now I know why they were reruns.
I am in south east MI 1 mile off Lake Erie and got great wind most power my turbine has made in two years!!! Kept it going and charged my batt bank full and then switched to GTI. Had 40 mph gusts every two to three min and a good steady wind the rest of the time all night long.
I'm here in Central Pa. and I put up a Chinese 2000 watt windmill a month ago and was quite worried about the storm because we've only had moderate winds and I haven't been able to do any real testing. I wasn't sure what to do so I just let her go and trusted that the tail would furl. She performed beautifully. I doubted that the thing would actually ever produce the 2000 watts it's rated for but she peaked at 3300 WATTS. It made 11KW on Monday. I'm happy. Here's a furl. Click on the photo.
Andy, You meant, "It made 11 KW-Hours on Monday", correct ? Example: 3,300 watts for 3 hours and 20 minutes = 11KW-Hours. What is your typical daily KW-Hours ? Your Chinese 2000 Wind Turbine is rated 2,000 watts ? At what wind speed does that 2KW rating occur? 28 MPH? What was the wind speed when you generated 3KW ?
Yes, KW hours. My typical daily KW hours per day which was only for the last 4 weeks was less that 1 KW hour a day. A lot of the specs are iffy for me. The Chinese owners manual didn't have the best information. I wanted to grid-tie and the windmill is rated at 72 volts and was meant to charge batteries. Most GTI's require higher voltages for 2000 watts. I had bought a Ginlong but couldn't use it so I was got stuck for a while but I found Rob Beckers from Solacity up in Canada and he figured the whole thing out. I gave Rob what information that I had like rotor diameter which is 2 inches short of 11 feet etc. and he figured out a typical TSR ratio, made me a MPPT curve and worked everything out. So getting back to your question about where the turbine hits 2000 watts? Rob's MPPT curve hits 2100 watts at 12 meters per second so that does sound to me like it would be close to 28 MPH. According to the MPPT chart, 3000 watts requires 13.5 meters per second. (maybe you can help me with the math LOL). At 13.5 MPS it should be running at 564 RPM's and making 152 DC volts when loaded to the inverter.
