Green-Trust.Org

We finally got the AIR-X (400 watt) wind turbine raised today, just in time for a windy mini blizzard. It sits on 30′ of 3″ galvanised pipe, bolted to the side of the house. We used a backhoe to pull a rope, connected to the tower at the 20′ mark, over the top of the house, as we didn’t have the manpower to pull it ourselves. We put two other ropes on either side of the turbine to keep it from sliding perpendicular to the direction we wanted to to go.

I don’t have my anemometer up to check wind speeds, but the turbine is peaking at 300 watts and singing like a stool pigeon. I have the output of the turbine (the negative) running through a shunt connected to my FLEXnetDC battery monitor, so my Outback Mate tracks the power the turbine collects. My solar panels connect to another shunt, and my inverter to the third shunt. This gives me detailed information on my production and usage.

I have some of pictures of the process posted at http://sspence65.jalbum.net/AIR%20X%20Install/ and more coming shortly.

The Whisper (500 watt) is the next unit to go up, followed by the rebuilt 24 volt (was 12v) 1000 watt Axial Flux Turbine.

We use a multifunction display from Outback called a Mate to monitor the operation of our charge controller, our inverter, and our battery bank. We have another shunt coming in so that we can monitor the wind turbine and solar independently. But what about logging and historical performance. It would be handy to be able to compare monthly and seasonal performance. Our Mate has a serial port on the side for connecting to a computer, so we are evaluating 2 software packages that will allow us to track and record the complete operations of our system.

The first is WinVerter-Monitor OB from http://www.righthandeng.com, and the other is WattPlot from http://wattplot.com/index.htm. We will let you know about the strenghts and weaknesses of both.

The 13th annual North Country Sustainable Energy Fair, upstate New York’s largest and longest running community energy fair, is April 25-27, 2008 at the SUNY Canton Campus Center, Canton, NY. Last year thousands of people attended the Fair from as far away as Rochester, Ithaca, Buffalo, Canada and New England.

This year, by popular request, the Fair will expand to both Saturday and Sunday, and will be our most varied and in depth so far.

http://www.ncenergy.org/2008/

Steve Spence and Jim Juczak will be presenting a workshop on Building your own Wind Turbine, and Steve will be presenting on Installing your own Solar Power System.

We are making some plans for some projects, and going over other projects with some friends. DJ MacIntyre of Le Boisé Alternatives and I are planning a trip to John Ferguson of Belleghuan Ltd., to convert his diesel truck to run on vegetable oil. DJ runs a Renewable Energy business in Ontario Canada, John sells listeroid diesel engines, among other things, also in Ontario, less than 2 hours north of us. Both are interesting folks to know. Larry Barr of Rebelwolf/ESSN fame has started some new RE projects, including a solar power mobile (HAM) radio shack, and a new RE Blog, which you can read about at http://offgrid.green-trust.org/. The guy piling holes are filled with concrete and dirt for the new wind tower, so Jim Juczak from Woodhenge and I will be raising the wind machine shortly. Dharam had a death in his extended family, so he will be cutting short his stay here to be with his people, and we will finish his veggie bus when he returns. Combined with a stomach bug that flowed through here and hit a few folks, it’s been a busy week.

Now that Dharam’s fuel tank is ready to be reinstalled, we are wrapping it in two layers of Reflectix to keep the heat in the tank. New mounting brackets are being welded on the bus, and the tank, fuel filter and the lines will be hooked up today.

Tomorrow we are pouring the concrete pads for the wind tower, and remounting the PV panels on the south side of our newly repainted home. Dharam did a great job spraying and rolling the new paint.