1kw wind turbine project

[Highlander]

Project,,... 1kw, 48v system, wind turbine off grid set up

We are now at the end of our first wind turbine power operations, and although the project was not without its problems we think that the end results have worked out perfect

It all started with a hole in the ground, 1 meter square




Although we did do our research, we were never absolutely sure of how the turbine would work in the location we chose for it,.. so we put a cube into the foundation, the base of the lower half of the turbine tower is 3 inches smaller than the pipe, the idea was that if we did have to move it at all, we would have a lot less concrete to break up in order to get the tower out




We put in the lower half of the tower and left it for a week for the concrete to harden off



I hope I can explain the next bit ok,.. the tower is not a manufactured wind turbine tower, it is a standard lamp tower that was given to me, we had it looked at by an engineering firm to make sure that it was strong enough for the job, which it is easily,... the tower comes in two halves and is hinged about 8 ft above the ground, but the bottom part is secured at the base, and we have added a two tonne boat winch to aid lowering and raising ..I forgot to take a photo of this, so I hope my drawing explains it ok



Here you can see it locked in place, you can just see the two halves where they meet



The battery bank is made up of eight 12v, 115ah, deep cycle battery's



The controller is on the right, the stop switch on the left, and the blue inverter left again. We did not include a dump in here, we didn't want the type that put excess power into the air, that seems a waste, so our dump is sent up to the hot water tank, so when the battery's are at their fullest, all extra power is then helping to heat our hot water





The main cable enters the house through a socket like you see in a caravan site, it then goes to an isolator switch next to the house mains switches, this switch is important because it makes sure that you cant have the wind power on at the same time as the main grid power,...so if we have a power cut, the power we are producing cant possibly electrocute the person fixing the mains grid

This photo also shows a station that measures the wind, and is shown wireless on a window in the house, the manufactures suggest that the turbine is stopped [ but not lowered ] when the wind speed reaches 28kph,..we have done this a few times,.. but we are very pleased we added the boat winch, [ we didn't have to because it is locked by a sliding locking piece ]....because the gales we had last week, forces us to do our first lowering, and the two of us did it in under 10 minutes including undoing the guy wires,.. the next day I raised it myself in about the same time,... so that winch has made life extremely easy for us