Retro fitting a windmill to an already installed PV system

w124man

I've had a 6kW south facing system for almost a year now and along with a 5.1kW battery its doing a fine job as originally specified. However, I recently got my supplier to quote for an additional 4 panels on the west aspect of the house to catch those summer rays which would negate the night rate charging of the battery when needed. To do the job I want would cost close to €2500 as the original strings will need to be fitted with optimisers.

That's a lot of outlay for a small gain but I understand that the original panels will need to be taken down and there will be a lot of labour involved. So, I was thinking of a small windmill of around 1.5kW output which would benefit me more over the 12 months. This would be a stand alone system feeding directly into the house or to the grid. It will have its own inverter and will not feed into the existing battery. Anyone done this yet?

graememk

Possibly this thread,

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120430821#Comment_120430821

I think the one person that has it, is connected to the battery and charges that directly from the charge controller

10-10-20

What size is your inverter @w124man, is it 6kW to match the solar panels?

w124man

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120900711#Comment_120900711

Its a 5kW Solis

jkforde

fyi, Solis will not warrant your inverter if you hook in a wind energy source afaik.. best check with them

w124man

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120904573#Comment_120904573

Yes I'm aware of this. As I said in the post I would use a second (small) inverter to handle the turbine output and would be separate from the solar system

Buffman

Have you priced up a proper 1.5kW wind turbine? They're not cheap.

Why can't the 4 new panels just be fitted with universal optimisers like Tigos and leave existing alone? Or just make them as a separate system with their own grid-tie inverter?

I'd say either of those options would be much cheaper and far less hassle and have quicker payback than either a wind turbine or putting optimisers on all your existing panels.

10-10-20

In fairness, you have better diversity of the supply if you don't put all your eggs in one basket.

Plus, who-else is going to test some wind generation for us on boards if we keep dissuading them? 😆

con747

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120915530#Comment_120915530

Already being done post #13 onwards https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058269147/micro-wind-turbines/p1

w124man

Interesting read that. Thanks.

It looks as though an Instabreeze i1500 48v turbine with its own inverter in my rural location would be quite busy in the winter.

Right now my existing system is producing 553 watts - in July!! The above mentioned turbine in the current wind conditions of 28km/h would produce twice that. Cost would be €2000 or there abouts which is about the same as adding PV to my existing setup or adding a small independent system.

My only worry would be how to prevent overspeed of the turbine!

con747

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120917371#Comment_120917371

That turbine has a turn off mechanism which stops it when wind is overly strong, he mentions it somewhere in the thread how it operates. Found it, post #142

"When the wind exceeds 13m/s the turbine hinges back on itself out of the wind, the 2 counter weights you see hanging down tilt it back again when it goes below 13m/s."

ColemanY2K

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120917422#Comment_120917422

There's a video online where a i1500 in Orkney keeled over in 50mph wind. The brake couldn't stop it. I'll try and dig it out...

Edit........video >>> https://youtu.be/ptu5Omb6EKw

w124man

I actually stumbled over this vid last night and had a look. Not a great design tower, in fairness, for winds of that speed.

Anyway I did the sums, weighed the risks and binned the idea. I'll stick with what I have at the moment as I almost have 12 months data to examine to see where improvements can be made

DC999

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120918613#Comment_120918613

Some of the (Irish) islands off the Irish south, west and north coast have telephone poles that have side braces. So it's 2 poles at an angle bracing the main pole. The wind is that strong it can knock a wooden pole down that is anchored into the ground. Someone working on islands told me that recently. I had no idea!! But that's offshore islands so I expect they get fairly hardcore weather.