Wind Turbines

mountainfrog said:

We are not on the grid and use a generator, batteries and inverters for our electricity supply.
Over the day our batteries are drained to about 20 - 25 % of their capacity.
We are now thinking about installing a small wind generator to prevent our batteries from reaching such a low level.
I have done a search but no recent information has come up.
So, my questions are:
Who can share his experience with wind energy?
Who uses it here in DR?
Which company sells small wind generators in the DR?
M?frog
www.samanave.com

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I could share some info on wind generated power in DR,

I used (past tense) in the DR,

Nobody that I could find out sold it in the DR at the time I got mine, I guess this hasn't change much since....

I had to make my own with several parts currently avilable in any markets in the US, my blade's diameter was 23 feet total, I used a low velocity star up of 5.9 MPH wind speed and the high was in the 132 MPH, I had the turbine located only 12 feet away from the battery bank to avoid line loss in transmission (something of a headache still), It was a nightmare to be changing the outer flaps on the blades every so often and the poor pitch design that most if not all of the blades on the market provide to protect form high winds damage (too much wind not a good thing) I did get a nice juice to the system battery bank of some 9.3 kilowatts but it flutuacted so much that it wasn't so reliable for critical system use, you could probably get a factory fully assembled turbine with more than double the power but beleive me it's going to cost you an eye and some ribs, I abandoned this project just because I had an Electro-mechanic engineer design and built a current power system for my biz in the DR, otherwise I would had kept trying and who knows maybe I could had made it work to my advantage.

One thing I found out very fast was to use large capacitators for my big ticket power dragsters and had a positive influence in the drainage problem of my battery bank, even using some in the small appliances will do good work, also keep the Battery bank well ventilated and use high quality low resistance connectors and cables in all your setup, you need to keep the OHMS in the best performance level to maximize the transmission of the power generated by the turbine without sacrificing voltage.

Hope this could help you in some way!

Wind generators

There is a dealer in Santiago who handles the newest light weight 38" bladed wind generator, maybe Hillbilly can tell the neame it is on the same street as the telephone company office.
10 kw systems see info at http://www.bergey.com/

Hlywud said:

There is a dealer in Santiago who handles the newest light weight 38" bladed wind generator, maybe Hillbilly can tell the neame it is on the same street as the telephone company office.
10 kw systems see info at http://www.bergey.com/

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Even thus I couldn't prove it, I'm pretty sure the kids and not so young kids down the block were 99.99% responsable for most of the damage to the outer flaps on the blades, the noise was like a mack truck with a bad roller blade!!!

If I could get a hold of the guy who did all the work for me in Santiago then I'll send it to you via e-mail, he was the nut behind all that expense, it worked for while but the wind tands to die sometimes in the DR, and that could prove a disaster to your battery banks, I never saw the thingy in person as I was and still am in the US, but got my father to rec a video tape of it and to be honest it was big, ugly and noisy like hell! yet it provided good power for the initial needs at hand at the time, the costs to keep it running are low considering the output they can provide but I'll strongly recommend that you get somebody with ample know-how and leave the surprises for others, as these windy thingys arecapable of slicing a cow in half if they are not properly secured and for pete's sake tied down no matter how much they assure you it wont move! DR is home to target practicing Huracanes every two or three years, the way diesel prices are shooting for the stars I don't blame you for going down this way at all, but try and mix the two of them a little and it will work out just fine.

mountainfrog,

getting a wind generator is a cool idea, but why not just double the size of your battery bank. It will be cheaper and you will run the charge down only half as much.