How to wire to house

[soyer38301]

Hello - newbie here. I have become very interested in putting one or two 500W to 1KW wind generators on my property (3 acres in the county). I am planning on building them myself.

How would one connect the generator to one's house when you are not looking to be "off grid"? I just want to lower my bill at this point. I don't have the cash for a system large enough to run the entire house. Nor, from what I have seen of the grid-tie inverter prices, can I afford one of those.

I just want to supplement our electric usage with the turbines....

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

Scott Oyer

[elt]

Hi Scott,

You'll need batteries and an inverter to convert the power to 110v (or whatever your local voltage is) and then, yes it's a good question, how to you use it? If you don't use it, you're wasting electricity as surely as if you left the lights on... (And burning fossil fuel or whatever at your power station when you didn't need to.)

At best, my mill only supplies about a tenth the electricity that we use.  

I have a fairly simple system for my green power: the batteries and inverter are in the garage. I run an extension cord through a hole into the basement, across the length of the house, and then up into the sun room where we spend most of our time. From there, I can plug in whatever will match the amount of power I'm making. In the Summer, it's not much but it was enough to power some lights. In the Fall, it was enough to power the TV. (The mill tower didn't survive into Winter so I'm not sure yet what the windy season would have powered.)

I do have a "transfer switch" (google that) that will route the about a quarter of our house wiring to our backup generator but I'm not making enough wind power to plug into that (yet!) ...

You'll need to see how much wind energy your really have. The answer will not only vary by season but also by weather conditions from day to day... because of that, you'll need some method to be flexible with what you plug in.

Hope that helps,

- Ed.

[zeusmorg]

 Well if you use a non-grid tied system it must use separate circuits from your grid source. One thing you may look at is the difference in price of a grid-tied inverter and the cost of a battery bank large enough for your system. It may pan out cheaper.

 You can either run an entirely new wiring system from your inverter to your point of usage, or pull out existing circuits off your circuit breaker box. Some also have set up switches to transfer a given circuit from grid to RE inverter..how you do it is up to you, however it must be totally isolated, hot, neutral and ground or you may see the magic smoke released from your inverter.

[GaryGary]

Hi,

Sunny Boy make a "Windy Boy" grid-tie inverter for wind to grid-tie use.

Don't know if it would be worth it for a small wind turbine?

http://www.alphasolar.com/alpha_solar_145.htm

The new issue of Home Power has an article on PV, wind, hydro grid tie installations.

Gary

[soyer38301]

OK - Thanks to all. That really does at least get me pointed down the right road.

Scott

[soyer38301]

Would something along the lines of this inverter http://www.topsalesdepot.com/10wadctoacpo.html

work?

I have really decided that I will put the system in and pick which outlets I will put onto the inverter. I will then construct a switching system that will allow me to switch back and forth keeping the "grid" completely separate from the inverter/batteries.

Scott