Wind help please. Fully off grid high mps wind speed

carbucky

Dear All, 

i live near tarifa, a very windy place! I have 24 solar panels feeding into SMA Sunny BOY, then an SMA Sunny Island 8.0H-12. These charge 2x LG resu 10 batteries. 

For about 310 days a year this is great, but as we approach winter, this system just packs up. End up running the generator for hours and I desperately want to install a wind turbine as it’s the perfect balance, but so much noise and conflicting information. I am looking for advice\help because I’m about to overpay or get the wrong thing.

1 - I would like a 3~10KW wind turbine - can’t find discernible differences between one’s that cost 3,000 usd or 30,000 usd and dont understand why? Also on a €/watts calculation, multiple 1kw wind turbines is cheaper than many US 10KW wind website - that makes no sense to me.

2 - assuming the cheaper turbines ‘export´ less balanced power could/should i “over engineer” the inverter - would that protect the existing system? What’s the best wind inverter in the market?

3 - what inverter is compatible with the SMA kit I have already? What changes do I need to make to my system?

4 - if I get a larger turbine, would I not overload the Sunny island - therefor do I need another phase? I was told that to balance another phase I need to be balanced in all respects - does this mean I need to buy 4 more batteries?

6 - does anyone recommend a small (ish) wind turbine, inverter and other products - to connect with SMA off grid system…

thanks
 

WaterWheel

The folks at Missouri Wind and Sun Wind Turbine Products | Missouri Wind and Solar
have been designing wind turbines for at least 10 years.

While Home Pawer magazine has been out of print for a few years now they used to dedicate an entire magazine once a year to wind power.     The archived articles are available here.    Home Power Magazine | Downloadable Archive | Home

Unlike solar when the wind is blowing the turbine is always producing electricity.       Because of this charge controllers for wind don't shut the power off when the batteries are full.     Instead a wind charge controller shunts excess electricity to a "dump load".     The dump load can be anything from a DC well pump to electrical heating elements.     Often the electrical heating elements are heating nothing but instead the excess power is dissipated as heat outside or can be used to power an electric water heater.     

I've heard of setups where the home owner had an electric water heater with 2 heating elements.     One element works as a normal thermostat controlled water heater element set at say 130 degrees.      The second element is hooked to the wind charge controller and only powers up when the batteries are fully charged and runs only from power directly from the wind turbine.     Never from power that has run through the batteries.       But you must have a thermostat in the hot water heater so that when the water heater is getting too hot the controller can then send excess power to a different dump load.  

When running both wind and solar power to the same set of batteries using 2 different charge controllers it is advisable to set the wind charge voltages lower than the solar charge parameters.      That way your batteries only charge of wind when there is insufficient solar for a good charge cycle.         I've never used both solar and wind on the same set of batteries so I'd be careful that one power source didn't come on, run a full 3 hr absorb cycle, and then an hour later the sun comes out and the solar panels try to give a full 3 hr absorb cycle.      You may need to play with the absorb cutoff perimeters on both controllers to avoid cooking the batteries.

hope this helps.

Dave Angelini

If the RESU 10 from LG is feeding the sunny island, you are going to have a very hard time using another inverter because of the Heartbeat signal that comes from the card in the sunny island inverter.

Even if you get a workaround or can write canbus for the handshake with LG, you have to be very careful with more windpower to that battery bank. Since the LG battery will give you very little warning when it is over currented I would be super careful. I did some destructive testing for Schneider in 2017 on the LG I think you have, It is documented here on the forum BTW.

Maybe you have the LG  10H ?

Midnite has the best support for wind in their MPPT's. Good Luck!