I built my first solar wind generation power plant for the first home I ever owned. It was more out of necessity than for energy efficiency. When my wife and I first started out, we didn't have a lot of money and bought a home out in the country that was off the grid. The house had a generator that supplied it's power when we first moved in.
So, in order to have power, the generator had to be running. Well, as you may suspect - this wasn't going to cut it. We dealt with that for about 2 weeks and it was obvious that even with lower fuel prices than what they are today, it was going to be to expensive and hard on the generator to run constantly.
I didn't know a single thing about solar or wind power but I knew my way around tools and am good with my hands. I knew I could figure that out with some reading and trial and error.
I built our first solar wind generation system for under $200.00. I had no choice. We didn't have much money. Thankfully, the previous owners appeared to have been thinking of doing solar wind electricity generation also because lucky for us, there was 6 - 6 volt deep cycle batteries brand new already sitting in the generator house ready to go that we got with the house. So one of the bigger expenses was covered.
Before I move on I would like to explain in basic terms the components of a solar wind generation system.
The basic components (now keep in mind there are some parts and pieces that go along with this) but the major components are as follows:
1. Solar Panels
2. A wind generator
3. A power control unit (controls power transfers from the solar panel and the wind generator to the battery bank and from the battery bank to the inverter.
4. A power inverter (converts 12DC to 115v AC to be fed to the house) Now you can also use a 24 volt system which I would recommend as it is more efficient.
5. A bank of deep cycle batteries. Now you bank of batteries is going to depend on how much power output your solar and wind generator put out and how much you need to store. Obviously, the more storage, the longer you will have power as long as your solar and wind generator can keep up and keep them charged.
It is not out of the realm of possibility to have a power system that not only keeps up well but over produces electricity and you can pipe it back into the grid and get paid by your electric company. This was not an option for us as there was no electric cooperative in our area that we could connect to. We were about 8 miles from the closest power box and they wanted $48,000.00 to bring it back to our house. Well, this wasn't even close to in our budget.
So, I learned how to produce my own power with out any prior knowledge. I read a couple books, unfortunately back then (1999) there wasn't as much reading material and quality reading material as there is today.
So, my system consisted of:
Solar panels that I got given to me (I am a builder) from a home owner who took the old ones off of her house. She gave them to me. I cleaned them up and they worked fine.
A power inverter that I bought from a truck stop in Oklahoma on a trip I went on to pick up a car from my moms house. It was originally designed to power the sleeper of a semi truck, but I got the highest wattage inverter they had. It was an 8000 watt Cobra inverter. It would run the microwave, refrigerator, all the lights and the tv, vcr, dvd player etc. just fine. We had to run the generator to do laundry. No biggy, we just conserved our laundry and washed 3 times a week. Which ultimately helped save water also. Not that we needed to, we had a well.
A home made wind generator that my father and I made from a 90 amp cadillac alternator. Basically a wind turbine mounted on a shaft with bearings that ran a v-belt to the alternator and 12 v wires that ran back to the power controller.
A bank of 6 - 6 volt deep cycle batteries that were wired in parallel to output 12 volts and also accept 12 volts for charging.
A 7000 watt construction generator that came on when batteries were low to compensate. It was electric start. I had a warning light in the house to let me know that the batteries were getting low, and I could remote start the generator from inside the house. Keep in mind, most systems this day can do away with a generator completely as the technology is better. The generator also recharged the battery bank. The controller would control the charging between the wind generator, the solar panels, and the generator. It would also shut down charging if the batteries were at full charge to prevent over charging. This is were you would start piping back to the grid if you were able to. We weren't so the electricity had to be shut down and basically wasted. However, this didn't happen often as we used just about as much power as we produced. But remember, this was a little system I made for about 200 bucks. Not including the generator, it was already there. I ended up buying another one later for about 500 bucks.
So, that is the basic components and workings of a solar wind electricity generation system.
For more tips and resources on energy efficiency please visit my sites at http://www.squidoo.com/solar-wind-electricity-generation-energy-efficient or http://www.ajswebinfo.com
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