Integrating wind turbine into PV/PW

[zƬesla]

Looking at Flower Turbines which has a low cut in wind speed, and curious whether it would be possible to integrate a wind turbine into a PV/PW system? If memory serves another forum member has wind turbines but as a separate system.

We have two SMA SunnyBoys and unfortunately the WindyBoys are no longer manufactured. So, any viable options to have a turbine tied into our existing PV/PW system? Or is that just a non-starter with Tesla?

Ideally looking for something that would generate ~12kWh/day which would cover our typical minimum use.

 

[BGbreeder]

@zƬesla
Have you measured your windspeed? Optimally, one has rather sustained high windspeeds for effective power.
The amount of power available to capture goes as the cube of wind speed. I.e. doubling the mean wind speed increases the power by a factor of eight.

Wind energy potential assessment based on wind speed, its direction and power data - Scientific Reports

Based on wind speed, direction and power data, an assessment method of wind energy potential using finite mixture statistical distributions is proposed. Considering the correlation existing and the effect between wind speed and direction, the angular-linear modeling approach is adopted to...

www.nature.com

All the best,

BG

 

[CrazyRabbit]

easy, just be sure current/wire is accounted for with CT on solar...

 

[CrazyRabbit]

i would be interested in price and production...

 

[Vines]

Looking at Flower Turbines which has a low cut in wind speed, and curious whether it would be possible to integrate a wind turbine into a PV/PW system? If memory serves another forum member has wind turbines but as a separate system.

We have two SMA SunnyBoys and unfortunately the WindyBoys are no longer manufactured. So, any viable options to have a turbine tied into our existing PV/PW system? Or is that just a non-starter with Tesla?

Ideally looking for something that would generate ~12kWh/day which would cover our typical minimum use.

From the hardware side, the small wind sector isn't really supported well at this time.

Theoretically, if you have any inverter designed to work with the wind turbine and it has with UL 1741 listing it should be able to interact with the backup system similar to how a properly sized solar inverter would so.

In practice, I have not done it but this is a supported configuration.
Here is one of the smallish turbines that I do know of, but it is not small. Excel 10 Off Grid - Bergey Windpower Co.

Not sure about the quality of the other brand smaller ones in the 500-1000w range but I see several available from various sources, mostly with up to 48 vdc output which would work ok but will have some not insignificant losses.

 

[skepticcyclist]

I've seen video of someone doing this with Enphase microinverters. They built a DC capacitor bank, connect to turbine to the capacitors, and the capacitor bank to the microinverter. This microinverter was then strung together with the others from the solar

ETA to add video link

 

[zƬesla]

Have you measured your windspeed? Optimally, one has rather sustained high windspeeds for effective power.

That's where I found the flower turbine of interest – it's low cut in speed and low maintenance. As the goal would be to just eek out average ~12kWh/day to power minimum loads, and I'd rather not deal with a tower, "regular" turbines have not appealed to me. This would supplement the existing solar. We had a lot of rain last year and were down 1.5–2MWh from other years.

 

[BGbreeder]

@zƬesla The flower turbines are certainly pretty; do you have pricing on them? I don't see them actually available on their shop page.

A cluster of five large turbines is going to need at least 4.5mph 24x7, or five mediums would need a minimum of 8.5mph wind 24x7 to get 12kWh/day per their numbers.

Have you looked at any of the other helical turbine companies?

(Total aside: The Persians (Parthians) used a a variation on that design several thousand years ago for milling wheat, using the cluster effect with a wall of wind powered mills on a ridge. I've built version of their AL123 design, though many moons ago. That design had the advantage that they don't need steering, but the "split barrel" designs suffered from low lift characteristics that cut into efficiency, and over speed is a real issue. The site suggests that the turbines have a high wind speed tolerance. The apparent wind and lift gets to be an important effect for these turbines.)

There was a local variation for many years.

Harkleroad wind turbine - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

All the best,

BG

 

[zƬesla]

The flower turbines are certainly pretty; do you have pricing on them? I don't see them actually available on their shop page.

They're in process of repricing and don't have a new list out yet. I don't know what the old pricing was.

Have you looked at any of the other helical turbine companies?

Briefly. There are some out of Europe that look promising.

I don't realistically expect price-wise for it to make sense (yet) to go this route. When we put in our 3 pole-mounted PV arrays, I had them add an extra conduit so I could easily expand, and being able to supplement solar with wind has its appeal. Sadly, what would be much more cost effective is to cut down some tall pines that block the morning winter sunlight on the panels so production doesn't start until late morning.

 

[miimura]

@Jason Bloomberg has wind turbines integrated with his system of 10 Powerwalls.

 

[zƬesla]

@Jason Bloomberg has wind turbines integrated with his system of 10 Powerwalls.

Forgotten about that one and for some reason didn't come up in my search. Here's the post.

 

[JSNH1919]

I have a micro hydro that outputs 100 to 350 watts. I had it connected to a 48 volt battery outback gvfx3648 inverter and it worked great. I upgraded to powerwalls and so far I have not found a good solution. I have tried the ebay made in China grid tie 1000 and 2000 watt inverters for wind turbines and they work and when the grid goes down they dump the power into resistors. The dump always works but the inverters don't last. I experimented with enphase micros and any dump system I tried was not fast enough when the grid drops to prevent exceeding the input voltage of the micro and would pop them. My power goes down a lot and the powerwalls at full charge shut down the inverters by increasing or decreasing the frequency causing the inverters to go off line.
I am looking for a solution too for this problem. right now I am just using this power to heat water.