We recently put up a WindTura 750. We have a "shack" and large plot of land, but no reasonable way to get power. The shack is about 205' from the tower. We've currently been using a gas generator, but that is loud and not permanent. We have access to a large amount of pallet racking, so we decided to construct a tower, with the main purpose of housing a wind-powered generator. The racking unit itself is 45' tall and the pipe that holds the generator is 15' above that. We're sitting at 60', which is only about 10' above the treeline (we'll trim some trees if it becomes an issue). The pole holding the generator is fed through a larger pipe. We have a winch with a cable connected to the bottom of the generator pole (30' pole, see photo). This allows us to easily maintain the unit, by unsecuring the pole and cranking the winch (see photo). We're using 10/3 w/ GND from the generator to the control box. The control box has a Xantrex C40, with a 900w dump (overkill for now). It has a 12v battery bank and a PowerBright 2300w inverter. Almost everything purchased is from Windy Nation. I've included a design of the control box. Please, any input or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! I'm always up for constructive criticism. We officially completed it on Friday (11/18/11), but have had minimal wind since then. I'm still working out a few kinks, but we're working through it. The lack of wind has hindered my testing. The tower is on a 4 acre man-made, dammed pond (5' dam). We're already designing a hydro power solution, which would be a great compliment. The problem is the distance between everything. The dam is 350' from the tower, the tower is 205' from the shack. I'm not sure the power we would get from the hydro, and if the loss while traveling over 350' would render the whole hydro idea useless. Sorry for the book report. I look forward to hearing from you veterans.
Get off of 12v system and use the feature of your c4o and set up a 48v battery bank.. With the lenth of cable you are feeding you will need the highest volts possible for efficiency. Very nice,Guess you dont need much of a climbing harness..
A cool vision of a seperate line in and brackets to attach solar panels(80w less than $200 now) of the correct sides of the tower. A true TOWER OF POWER
The 205' run back to the shack is 110v AC, coming from the inverter. So then we are OK right? Or would it still be better to increase our battery voltage?
If you are talking about the turbine ac before it is rectified,that is not correct,it is locked in at the voltage of your battery bank...The more tht I think about it,while 48v is the most efficient I think it might be hard for the 750 to hit those voltages alot..The gen head is wound with the right gauge of wire to be the most efficient at 24v..
I didn't mean the run from the generator to the rectifier. I have a PowerBright 2300w AC inverter, which converts the 12v DC to 110v AC, then it runs back to our shack. But that is good to know, because if we do our hydro project, that would be a 300+ ft run from generator to the batteries. We may need to convert to a 24v system at that point.
