Was bad enough that the piece of junk, that claimed 1.2kw output, only ever maxed out at 100 watts (at only 1.2m diameter x 6 blades, i should have known better, especially as only 900mm actually supplied). But left it on 12volt battery anyway, thought may as well use its piddling output(mostly less than 2 amps unless a gale blowing), and was fine for a few months over winter. Seems its supplied controller is junk too, yesterday in the norwest winds, with full sun having already topped battery to full, the lithium batterys inbuilt bms, must have disconnected battery, as max voltage was reached Supplied charger goes to 14.2, but when i looked at battery display it said 14.4, (and i have seen it cut off all power once before, but thought i had set solar parameters wrong, so reduced those). Side effect was wind turbine no longer had a battery load attached, so effectively only load on turbine was battery input to 40 amp mppt solar controller and 1kw pure inverter. End result, both fried(nope not fuses, magic smoke escaped). Testing in gusts today, shows unloaded the stupid thing is throwing out 50+ volts unloaded, no wonder both passed away, at over 4 times rated input voltage, such is life.
nimade,
Sep 16, 5:45pm
Wind turbines are very hit and miss. Also, without a good MPPT controller, you are weeing into the wind.
If you wish to harvest energy efficiently, look into Solar instead.
Proper wind/water power generation is quite expensive and as above, very hit and miss.
Cheers
tygertung,
Sep 16, 6:21pm
I heard about a rumour that someone was harvesting electricity from the phone line to charge batteries.
shanreagh,
Sep 16, 6:49pm
What a disappointment gpg58. There are a couple of small turbines around me here in Wellington and I also view our big wind turbine. Not sure if the owners of the small turbines manually turn them off in high wind or if there is some sort of cut-out device.
tony9,
Sep 16, 6:52pm
Not surprised, rumours abound.
Anyway, if you have fibre or phone over IP any power out of the phone socket will come from your router, which is powered from the mains.
If you have a copper/pots line you can get about 50mA. That is .05 Amps. They would be very small batteries.
nimade,
Sep 16, 6:52pm
Proper controllers regulate the voltage (step up/down) regardless of how hard the supply is cranking. Sounds like you had an average windmill, with a really cheap and nasty controller. Stick with a solar panel and a GOOD QUALITY charge controller/MPPT, mate.
gpg58,
Sep 16, 7:33pm
. Was an epever tracer that fried. The total junk turbine(shakes like heck, junk internals) and controller were cheap as chips on here, absolute junk. But biggest Mistake was to leave it connected. Oh well, at least solar is running again temporarily, as i had an also very cheap fake mppt controller, which i had removed, when i wasn't seeing the charge i expected, but that has gone back in for now.(definitely a Fake mppt as no heavy coils inside, weighs nothing ). Looking at replacements for it on here now, will not be another cheap orange perfect one :-)
nimade,
Sep 16, 7:51pm
Yeah, please be careful mate. A few extra hundy on a good controller goes a long way in the long term, and gives you and your devices/property the safety you need. I've seen so many cases of fire and damage because of scrimping on the hardware. Unfortunately, this is one of those devices that should not be overlooked. Buy once, buy right :)
brouser3,
Sep 17, 12:07pm
How big a battery bank does one want to have? One also has to consider their location and availability of energy source. Not all locations provide good north facing sites .
nimade,
Sep 17, 12:26pm
Depends on your requirements.
Also, you don't need North Facing. That's a bit of a myth. To answer your question though, your batteries and panels sizes are up to your requirements.
tegretol,
Sep 17, 11:19pm
It'd only be a rumour.
Todays exchanges are smart enough to know when the line impedance falls outside a defined range (any sort of current draw will change it) and a wee man with a white hat and a Tommy Gun would be despatched to investigate.
mannix51,
Sep 18, 3:49pm
A wind turbine requires its own controller, NOT a solar type. A solar will disconnect the load as it reaches the set voltage and destroy the turbine as you have found. A wind turbine controller will SHORT the WT output, loading up the blades to prevent overspeed. This is operator.installation error, not faulty equipment
nimade,
Sep 18, 4:59pm
Yes that's right. Those controllers dump the voltage.
A good controller will accommodate both, however. Best bet is MPPT and Solar though. Wind isn't very good unless at scale and only in certain areas.
gpg58,
Sep 18, 5:31pm
Controller was supplied with turbine, it was not being used to supply solar one. Fault happened due to it being crap, and as it was connected to battery(which internal bms switched off/open circuited), supply to solar battery connection, therefore became only from turbine, and its useless out of control, controller. I too expected it would short output internally in an overvoltage situation, so had not anticipated such an event happening, but learnt the hard way, that pieces of junk will not. Ps, rather than pull it down yet, i have shorted output so it does not speed out of control, rather hoping to see the sucker go up in flames sometime, but at a dismal 80 -100 watts, very unlikely to get that bit of satisfaction out of it either.
gpg58,
Sep 28, 5:42pm
Yes did see some models that do both in the one unit. And totally agree, it did turn out that i do not have anywhere enough wind, on a constant or even regular basis, to bother with that option again.
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