Roof Mounted Wind Generator
& Solar Panel

Goals of this project

• Clean wind-generated power
• Off-grid system - when grid power is offline, I'll have a 2nd source.
• 110V plug that I can plug what ever I feel like and the electric company (PG&E) can't bill me.
• To see if can design and complete such a project
• To have a cool looking wind turbine mounted atop my house

Equipment Used:

• 12V 450W Ghost, 10-Blade turbine Comes with built in diode rectifier & clear polycarbonate blades.
• 2qty T-105 Batteries Deep Cycle, 225 Ah (@ 20 hours) ~$115 each I bought them from Turf & Industrial Equipment in Santa Clara. $314.90
• 750W Inverter by Black and Decker PI750AB
• 12V Wind Turbine Charge Controller Comes with relay
• Guywires (cable)
• Plastic Storage container
• 25ft. 12ga electral wire(2-pair/4 wires) Instructions reccomend 8 guage speaker wire (very $$$)
• 8' Pipe/Pole
• 10 light Golfcart Battery guage (found on ebay)
• 15' Regular house wire & plug outlet
• Pice of plywood to screw parts to
• I think that's everything for Wind

• 1 UL SOLAR 120 Watt 12 Volt Multicrystalline Solar Panel
• 1 SUNFORCE 12 Volt 10 Amp Charge Controller w/ Digital Screen
• Used a wood 2x4 with
• 2 door hinges
• Container of Henry Roof Cement
• Slotted Angel Galvanized Steel bars to make adjusting the vertical angle of the panel easy.
• Standard 14ga house wire

There are 2 types of setups for wind generators. Off-grid (not connected to any existing wires in your house) and Grid-tied (feeds energy directly to you home so that everything that’s plugged in, uses wind energy first before using utility energy). My setup is an off-grid battery wind generator, there are a few reasons for this system.

• Off-Grid means you’ll still have a power source when the utility energy goes down. (Grid tied has to turn itself off due to safety issues)
• If I want to save or use wind energy I plug the electronics or appliances directly into the wind energy plug.
• Permits, If you are to plug any energy source into the grid, I’m darn sure there’s going to be permits involved. (what about mounting your wind generator? Until they tell me to stop, no-harm no foul, if someone complains I’ll deal with that when I get to it.)
• Grid-tied is usually a lot more expensive and all the parts come in one big kit where the wind generator is tuned to the electronics that feed your home. I tried to find such a device that would fit my small generator, I was unsuccessful. (My wind generator is relatively small .5KW vs 5KW or even 10KW generators used to power whole houses.)
• If you are only using energy 12 hours a day (you are at work and sleeping the rest of the time) your wind generator is still collecting and saving energy while you are away/sleeping.

Why did you go wind instead of solar? I was tired of the wind always blowing in my area, instead of getting mad, I got even! Now the wind works for me. I’ll also probably go solar at some point, why stop with wind?

Video of 10 blade, 450W wind generator. It comes with a built in diode rectifier. I mounted it on my roof on an 8' pole using the chimney and 3 guy wires. (HD 720 video, taken with flipHD)

Mounted Wind Turbine - NOTE: The video is somewhat deceiving, all you need to know is that the turbine only spins faster and faster. The clue is by how much the blades are flexing.

Video of the battery setup in the attic. (HD 720 video, taken with flipHD - it's in 2 parts.)

Random pics i need to write stuff about:

PICTURES OF SOLAR PANNEL:

10-23-2010
10-25-2010
11-22-2010
12-14-2010