New to wind enery - please check my setup

Re: New to wind enery - please check my setup

Warning--I am not a fan of small wind power--So take what I say / suggest with a grain of salt.

First, here are some good DIY forums/websites for DIY small wind:

Wind Power Links
www.otherpower.com (good forum for DIY Wind Power)
Hugh Piggott - Scoraig Wind Electric site for tons of info (from mike90045)
www.greenpowertalk.org (added from "russ"--Like here but more wind/less solar)
www.builditsolar.com

Second, wind tends to be highly variable/unpredictable--So you will probably need some sort of backup power anyway (grid, solar, genset, etc.).

Third, you need sufficient wind in your location. Trees "flagging" (bent by prevailing winds) is a good indicator. Installing on 30-60 foot minimum tower, 300-500 feet way and 30' above any obstructions. Do not mount to side or roof of dwelling.

Fourth, always plan that something may fall (blade, turbine, tower) and that it is in a location where such failures are not life threatening.

Now to your power needs--The small refrigerator is a big question... A good full size Energy Star Fridge probably starts around 1 kWH per day (365+ kWH per year). Hot weather using more power than cold. And there are chest freezer conversions which can work pretty well--down towards 250 Watt*Hours per day.

Chest freezer as a chest refrigerator

You talked about running the fridge/freezer full time, but you may only go up once a month? Typically, we recommend for part time cabins to look at RV/small home style propane powered fridge/freezers. It does not take much propane usually to keep a fridge cold for a 2-7 day out of 30 day period.

It takes a fairly good sized/complex off-grid system to keep a fridge/freezer running 24x7. Plus what happens during a week+ of bad weather / no wind. Automatic genset, food goes bad, batteries killed (as you mentioned).

There are some small fridges that are intended to operate straight from solar panels--I don't know if they solve any problems though (plus appliance "stamped solar powered" usually costs 2-4x as much.

I am going to skip the Ebay stuff at the moment. I don't know the controller and inverter brands--but they are probably not something that you would want to use for an off-grid (and reliable) system that is to power electronics and fridge compressors. The AC inverter is a MSW (modified square wave) unit and not really recommended for motors/electronic loads (although, many people are happy with their setups). A couple of things to read about inverters:

All About Inverters
Choosing an inverter for water pumping

The Trojan batteries are fine--Look for a good distributor that can deliver them to your door at the price you are looking for (batteries can be expensive to ship). you did see that was a 6 volt battery and you would need a pair of them for 12 volts. And that T105 are around 225 AH -- So a pair 6 volt batteries in series would be:

• 2x 6 volts * 225 AH = 2,700 WH

For a full time 1kWH per day refrigerator (guess on my part) running with a 12 volt 1,200-1,500 watt inverter--You are probably going to need around ~1.5 kWH per day (note that inverters have inefficiencies and standby losses--so those need to be added in also)... That is a bit large for a 2,700 WH (2.7 kWH) battery bank... But that is up to you (normally for a "largish" bank, 3 days no sun * 1/50% maximum discharge = 6x daily load requirement).

I am avoiding going into too many numbers at this time as I don't have much to start with and can end up with a blizzard of irrelevant numbers that don't meet your needs.

If we can better understand your loads (by day, and by month/season)--I would be suggesting setting up a solar array + batteries to meet your loads ~9 months of the year, and the other 3 months of the year, your wind turbine and genset could be your backup power source...

My two cents worth. Comments?

-Bill