Hi I finished bulding my 17 ft from the book about 6 months ago. Mine is battery bank with grid tied. The inverter I use is xantrex 6048 That's 6KW.( around $5,000) I have a gurd controller that I use for a auto shut down. I find that xantrex has about a 20 second delay when it comes out of standby and goes into the sells mode. This causes the volts to get high and trips my auto shutdown which is set at 60 volts. As you may have read on this forum the 17ft design needs to have at least a 12" offset, I think the book calls for a 8" also you will have furling problems if you don't make sure of the offset and blade rotation. I started out with offset to the right and clockwise rotation (looking at the gen from the blade side) and was haveing furling problems. I just changed the offset to the left with the blades rotating clockwise and it fixed my problem. I am not a expert by far but like you I use the forum alot and it is most helpful.Read everything that you can about stator burn out and furling before you build your gen. As far as the inverter goes the first thing you should do is contact your electric company and find out what they require. You are going to wind the coils for 48Volts as per the book so you will need a inverter for 48Volt, controller for 48v (set in the diversion mode),and a 48volt dump load.
