
There are three problems with this wind;
- The garden beds get wrecked and dry out quickly,
- Clouds of dust settle everywhere, and
- Most importantly, I don’t have a wind turbine!
I do have one concern with renewable energy grid tied systems of any kind, and that is, what happens when we loose our connection to the grid, or it goes down? We have lost it twice today for a second each time, and my Fronius I30 inverter dropped sync and took about 2 minutes to re sync, and then produce power again. I was generating about 700 watts at the time, and every minute counts as far as I am concerned. I have investigated this further and SMA also have a product called the Sunny Island which creates an independent grid. This is mainly used in remote areas or used to service remote villages. You can connect it to batteries which charge when there is an excess, and to a diesel generator in case your renewable source is off-line. You can even connect it to the national power grid as a backup instead of a generator. This is what I would do. The Sunny Island would maintain a grid on my side of the meter, effectively allowing me to use these sources if the national grid was off-line. I have no idea how much this would all cost, but how cool would it be to have your own grid!
Anyway, all of this is a bit of a pipe-dream at the moment because I don’t have the funds available. Maybe in a few years time, and after Kim’s new kitchen is built!
Hi,
Just wanted to inform you that the SMA Windy Boy is available to Australia. Also that the AmpAir 600W turbine you mentioned also uses the Wind Boy, they don’t actually produce their own inverter.
Thanks for the info Scherry.