Our solar may be reliable, and every day I thank it for providing yet more free power without having to go and prod it in any way, but there is something very satisfying about sitting watching the wind generator spinning. Somehow it proves that theres electricity being made, the sight of the blades turning is strangely comforting, now that I’ve got over the nagging doubts about the wind pulling it apart and causing some sort of catastrophe.
Of course the location isn’t brilliant, we are too near to the barns here, but despite this it is working away, even in the northerly wind that we seem to have today. The prevailing wind is from the south and it goes like the clappers every time the wind goes round that way.
Like all this technology, the bit I enjoy the most is the faffing around with all the electronic gubbins. The turbine came with a slightly suspect Chinese controller, which although appearing to work fine, has completely inscrutable instructions, and readout, so I don’t trust it entirely not to do bad things to our batteries. Plus I have no idea exactly what the generator is doing, generation wise.
Hence I have found an excellent unit from www.karasouli.com which does the usual controller things, but which is programmable (so it will suit our batteries exactly), and also does data logging (so I will know what the turbine performance was, and what it produced).
Because this is a ‘proper’ controller, it doesn’t do all the other bits that the mystery Chinese box does, such as braking, preventing reverse charging, and converting the 3 phase wild AC into DC, but those bits have been got easily, and yesterday I got a 1Kw dump load from ebay, so the setup will be complete.
Until I get the chance to assemble all these parts into some form of system, I will eye the Chinese box of tricks with suspicion, and of course it will probably work perfectly. Be good to have a ‘spare’ though..
