12 v tank heater

wireman

I recently added a wind turbine to my PV system and it came with a large resistor as a load dump  to simply dissipate energy produced after batteries are fully charged. So my first thought was why waste electricity that I paid to produce? If I were to add a 12v deicer to the system for my 3000 gal water tank just to take the edge off of the  -12 winter in northern az, and kill 2 birds with 1 stone. A 12 v floating deicer would be ideal, but I cannot locate any such item. Floating deicers seem to all be 120 v, which seems like a good way to kill some livestock, and would require a dedicated inverter. The other option is 12 v submersibles, which screw into stock tanks, but that would require a 1" bulkhead near the tank so the element would never be dry, and I am unsure whether that would be possible without impacting the integrity of the tank, or where to even get a bulkhead that would work. Anyone.....Bueller....any advice would be greatly appreciated.  stay safe

Estragon

Not a floater, but maybe something like this would work:
https://heatline.com/kompensator

Basically 12v heat tape. If the tank is metal, it could be wrapped on the outside with an insulated cover. If not, it can probably go inside from the top.

You wouldn't want to rely on it as a dump load, as it could conceivably warm up the tank enough to draw little current. Might work to use some of the "free" power though.

Just a thought.