I desire to remain grid connected, with the goal to reduce my total energy dependence to merely a minimum monthly billing charge by the power company, and use the grid as a backup power supply.

For a grid-tie connection there are 2 ways to go: battery backup or no batteries. The battery-less solution is the simplest and most efficient, however it comes with the side effect that when the grid goes down so do you. The reason is that most grid tie systems sample the grid power (since it has to sync with it) and once that source is gone it will not convert DC to AC.

There are now what is referred to as 'hybrid grid-tie' system. These inverters can function with or with-out the presence of the grid, however they require a bank of batteries to function without the grid. They use the batteries in much the same way as they use the grid, when you say start up your electric oven there is a huge initial current draw, what the inverter can not handle with the incoming wind/solar input so it pulls from either the grid (if present) or the battery bank. In fact I have seen notes that mention that they will not operate properly without a battery bank.

I finally 'settled' for the Xantrex inverter, the other two inverter systems that were on my 'short' list were the Xantrex 4048-Series II and the Outback GVFX-3648. By the time that I added up all of the Outback options that I would need it came within $300 of the Xantrex XW inverter, with the down side that the Outback max capacity was 3.6kw. The Xantrex 4048-SW was also priced close to the Outback, as a side note the Xantrex 4048-Plus is *NOT* grid-tie compatible - why I am not sure.

Xantrex has listed an XW-4548 inverter which is pretty close to the XW-6048 but with max capacity of 4.5kw. However I was told by a couple of distributors that this inverter is not currently available and that Xantrex is notoriously slow at bringing out new products. Most likely it will be available either the 3rd or 4th quarter of 2008.

I did not like the Outback system for a couple of reasons; 1) older technology and 2) the way that they package their systems. What I mean by the second comment is that the Xantrex systems are more complete, and the Outback you have to buy a number of optional components to come up with a complete system.

So I decided on spending slightly more for the XW system knowing that I will have a lot of extra capacity in case in the future I decide to put up solar panels, larger output wind turbine what ever.

The DC disconnect is required per code to be able to positively disconnect the battery bank from the inverter. The other 3 breakers will be used for connecting the charge controller, the rectified DC from the turbine and the battery bank. This way any one of the 3 may be temporarily disconnected from the system.

Since the Xantrex XW internally contains a battery charge controller, I will be using the C40 simply as a dump connection to divert excess power to a heater element in case I am disconnected from the grid and I am not consuming enough power to keep the turbine speed in check. Depending on exactly how I connect all the devices I may end up purchasing an external charge controller for the battery bank.

	XW-6048 inverter
	DC250 DC disconnect/distribution box
	C40 charge/load/diversion controller

My garage is about 1/2 way between the tower and the house, this is why initially I ran the turbine output into the garage. In looking at the length of run between the garage and the house, and taking into consideration the power capacity, Jessie has determined that I need to make a run of three lengths of #2 THHN copper wire to the house. I already have two lengths of 2-1/2" pvc conduit ran between the garage and the house, one run contains the power from the house to the garage, and the second run will be used to contain the #2 wires from the garage into the house. Jessie mentioned that these two conduit runs are necessary as per code you can not run two different sources inside the same conduit.

Since the inverter will be located in my basement, so the battery bank needs to be there as well. I will make an enclosure for the batteries and vent it to the outside. I will run the 'wild' AC through garage and into house to lessen voltage loss, near the inverter I will rectify the AC into useable DC and plumb it into the electrical system.

No thanks to that un-named company that never returned to finish the job...

So rather than leave the generator on top of the tower and have it weather all winter long, I have also decided that I will be bringing it down to store in the garage. No sense in letting it sit out in the winter weather.

A friend that I work with used to mountain climb and he voiced that he would like to climb the tower, so Mark Sutyak will be coming by this afternoon to lend me a hand.

Weather permitting that is - right now it's foggy, the wind is low but so is the temperature. The forecast says that it will not be getting above 40 degrees today, so any amount of wind will cause a wind chill at the top of the tower too much to stand for any length of time. Mark is coming by at about 3:30 this afternoon and then we will make the decision about climbing.

The goal is to bring the winch up, attach it to the boom crane, along with the main diagonal support. Hook onto the generator and lower it to the ground, and finally bag/duct tape and lock down as much as possible at the top of the tower.

Well, as things turned out Mark got here a little later than expected as he ran into some heavy traffic, and we eventually ran out of light, so we aborted pulling off the generator. We got soooo close, as we had the winch in place and all we needed to do was to connect the extension cord to the GFCI outlet (difficult to see when it started to get dark), hook onto the generator and lower it down to the ground.

We stopped just short of the goal as in the end time was against us and we were quickly running out of light. I think that I am learning a valuable lesson in that once up on the tower everything takes 50% longer than you think that it will as caution is the rule. The boom crane extended/lowered vertically as good as could be expected so the design of the crane appears as if it should perform well.

I may make one change however, that is moving the hand winch up to the top portion of the crane. This would save having to move between the work platforms when extending/lowering the boom crane. It was easy enough with 2 people working at the top, however getting another person to help (and can climb) is difficult to coordinate.

We did get an important piece of the boom crane up to the top (the main diagonal support), as well as ensuring that the hoist attached easily onto the end of the crane. In an ideal world I would have 2 electric hoists permanently mounted, one for the crane and one to raise/lower the tower stub. However outdoor rated hoists (not winches) are rare and very expensive, as a compromise if the hoist on the boom crane could be permanently mounted and bagged it would certainly help. I'm not sure that I fully trust bagging the hoist to keep the elements off, but still researching various options

If weather and wind permit I could possibly finish the job by myself, if not then it will have to wait until spring - we'll see. For the next attempt I will allow more time to get started/completed before sunset.

If it actually comes true then this will quite possibly be my last opportunity to get the blades and tail sections up on the tower and extend the telescoping stub in preparation for getting the turbine operational. My friend Mark Sutyak is available to help me out that day as well, so it may just come together. If not then the blade assembly will be put away for the winter in my garage.

The back-end electrical system still has to be installed as well as the grid-tie, but components are arriving and things are coming together.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about the top of the tower, eventually I will be putting some eye-bolts into the top plate to make it easier to clip safety equipment onto. And in addition I want to move the hand winch up to the top, I have realized that with it in it's current position that it forces me to move around more than necessary.

Currently if alone I had to go to the lower platform and crank up the boom crane, then move to the top platform and pin the diagonal brace, then move back to the lower platform and lower the boom crane so that it rested on the bottom collar. And all that moving around had to be done all over again when I wanted to lower the boom crane - too much!

I just happened to run across this little gem on eBay and quickly scarfed it up!

Just earlier in the day I happened to stop by another fairly local turbine/solar setup of a guy that is completely off grid. So I got a good look at nice professional electrical installation, one of the things that I had not considered was using a conduit box to contain all the wiring between components.

My inverter just arrived and I was able to confirm that the part number listed in the auction exactly matched up with the component as listed in the documentation.

I did manage to put up a Christmas star that I made from some steel rebar. This star is about 36" across with a single strand of lights around the perimeter. I connected it to a dawn/dusk switch and ran an extension chord down to the bottom of the tower for power. It is not as high up as I would have liked it to have been - top of tower was target - but the howling wind in my ears when on the tower spooks me out a bit. So right now the Christmas star is just above the tree line and from the altitude of our house you should be able to see it for quite a ways.

During the week I had made a new bracket to relocate the hand winch to the top of the tower, as well as bought four 1/2" diameter eye-bolts that I wanted to install on the top plate of the tower for clipping safety connections to. But these will also wait for another day.

I noticed that the lights on the Christmas star were out completely. So I decided to bring it back down to the ground and put a brand new string of lights on it. Once down on the ground I saw the culprit, evidently when the star was hoisted up and attached to the tower one of the lights broke, with this string of lights that was currently on it when a single light is missing the whole string goes out.

Got a new string of lights that said that it was more weather resistant, restrung the star and hoisted it back up again.

Ok better, however about 1/3 of the lights have gone out. This time I decided to use a clear tube light string that contained white LED's inside it and completely sealed. It should be about the most weather proof light string that you can get.

It turned out to be a dead calm day, with only 1-2mph winds (very rare here) with the temperature about 40 degrees. I did not lower the star but decided to remove the old string and put on the new one with the star still on the tower. I did this so that it would give me an opportunity to work on the side of the tower and learn from the experience.

I had previously made up a new mount for the hand winch and procured a couple of 1/2" steel eye-bolts. So I climbed the tower again (getting lots of experience) and set out to finish up the new modifications.

Ok I have finally learned to not bring up a cordless drill to the top of the tower! First battery went dead just after I finished up putting a single 1/2" hole for eye bolt. Back down, this time I hedged my bet and brought up 2 charged battery packs. Well I dropped one of the from the top of the tower (can you say smashed?) and then the 2nd battery went dead after two more holes. Don't forget they are 1/2" diameter holes in 3/8" steel plate...

Back down again, this time I got an AC powered drill and hauled up an extension cord. Back up and finally finished the job as the wind was starting to kick up a bit.

The new position of the hand winch takes the cable around a single pulley, then down to the bottom where it pulls up the boom it looks like it will work out lots better than when it was at the bottom of the crane. I would have liked to move it back more, but the old pulley mount was in the way. Possibly next spring I can change the location so that is as far back from the boom and put in a couple more eye bolts on the top plate. Hind-site being what it is this task would have been *far* easier to do when the tower was on the ground.

The crane diagonal stays pinned at the top and is lashed to the tower to keep the crane stationary. On the left you can see the 3/8" steel life-line that is installed The top platforms are working out well, when standing on them the linear actuator for the brake system is at chest height, so I can easily perform maintenance, etc. on the entire generator while it is still at the top of the tower.

One last thing that I might do next year is to raise the top mount for the life-line a couple of inches higher. Right now to transition off/onto the life-line you have to kneel on the top work platform to either connect/disconnect from it. It is a bit awkward with my height and I find myself fumbling a bit longer that I would like to especially when I have gloves on.

So I designed what I would consider a better battery tray than I could find on the open market. I gave this design to my good friend Paul Schreiner of PS Composites who specializes in figerglass and composites manufacturing. This design easily fits four and also allows for up to six of the #31 size batteries (110aph). Multiple trays can be ganged together to hold more batteries if needed.

There are risers that raise the battery off from the floor of the tray which allow for air circulation completely around the battery. And in the case of a battery failure the tray would contain at least the contents of a one battery within the tray. And to top it off Paul should be also making a fiberglass sides along with a easily removeable pexiglass top to create a complete unit that contain the batteries.

The idea is that people can purchase either just the battery tray or a complete box. In addition the intension is that this tray/box is used for inside use (not outside exposed to the elements), along with a fan for positive ventilation of dangerous gasses.

Since I have almost all of the electrical components in I decided that I had to start to plan on the layout of the electronics.

The 3/4" thick board that I put up onto the cement block wall measures 48" high by 64" wide, I wanted to be sure that I had plenty of room to put everything that I wanted/needed. So the first thing that I did was to make .jpg images that were scaled down to the same ratio so that I could use them like colorform images and move them around until the layout suited me.

I also decided that I wanted all of the DC electronics on one side and the AC electronics on the other side. This way I would not be tempted to run both AC and DC wires inside the same conduit, but instead separate conduit runs for both.

This is the image that I came up with for a board layout, I have the wild AC from the turbine feeding the rectifier as well as the grid feed from my main circuit panel to the inverter from the left side. You can see that there should still be plenty of room on the left side of the board for an AC electrical sub-panel:

Feel free to download my scaled images just put your mouse over the item(s) and click it, the images will come up in a separate browser window, just save it locally to your PC.

With the image in hand I first located and hung the inverter since it was the heaviest. I used eight 1/4" x 1" long lag bolts to hang the bracket, then hoisted the unit up onto the bracket and fastened it in place (this thing weights about 125 lbs!). I made sure that there was almost 5" of room over the top of the inverter for proper ventilation. This also had to be done behind the diversion controller so that the conduit holes would align properly with the distribution box. I used a simple strain relief nipple and nut to connect them.

Next I hung the rectifier box and then the DC breaker box. In order to get the holes aligned between the inverter cable box and the DC250, I ended up spacing the box away from the backer board using some strips of 1/2" thick plywood, made sure that the conduit holes aligned vertically between the inverter and the DC box, and then mounted it.

Next I connected the diversion controller to the top of the DC250 and again used a piece of 1/2" thick plywood to space it properly Finally I mounted both the the Xantrex control box and the battery meter in the available space between components.

After the 2nd trip to the store I finally had pretty much all that I needed to begin connecting the electrical components together via pvc conduit. So the rest of the afternoon was spent measuring/cutting and plumbing the components using pvc The DC250 distribution box did not have a knock-out where I needed it for a 1-1/2" pvc conduit connection, so I ended up drilling out a hole and using the angle grinder to finish it off. I also had to put a matching hole into the rectifier box for routing the DC output to the distribution box.

I was also careful to place some cardboard over the top of the inverter so that wood chips etc, would not find their way inside. So in the end I have 1-1/2" pvc conduit from the rectifier to the DC250, and a 2" pvc conduit from the inverter to the DC250. Spacing the DC distribution box made it easy to put in a straight piece of pvc to the inverter. I will be running a piece of 2" pvc from the bottom of the distribution box into the battery chest, and will do this once I have the chest and batteries in place.

It is actually starting to look like a nicely finished off system pretty close to the original image that I conceived in the digital image above.

We had to work out some final issues and dimensions then developed a plan of attack. We then cut up all of the components and made sure that each surface had a release angle on them. This release angle is needed so that when parts are made they release easily from the mold.

These batteries are 12v @ 105ah maintenance free, sealed and valve regulated using fiberglass matt technology. The 'DT' in the name of the battery part stands for 'double terminal', these batteries come with standard automotive posts as well as a threaded stud for both the positive and negative terminals. The positive stud diameter is 3/8" while the negative is 5/16" diameter.

Not a lot of anything else going on, I have gotten things like copper lugs and shrink wrap so that I can begin to make up all of the battery cables. I got both black as well as red shrink wrap since the S/O cable is black I wanted to positively mark them so that I do not confuse the polarity and mis-connect them. Red will be positive and black negative connections.

You can save yourself a bunch of money by making up your own cables. The cable that I am using for the battery inter-connects is a #2 S/O stranded copper wire, it is very flexible and bends easily, it is widely available as cable that is used for welding, our local Tractor Supply carries it. When making your cables you want them to be as short as possible, but you also don't want the cables pulled straight and tight either, leave an inch or so extra to give them a little slack.

If you do decide to make your own I have learned that there are two kinds of soldering flux available, one which is an aggressive flux that states that it should *not* be used with electrical connections. It looks like the 'standard paste flux' is not an agressive flux and should work fine for use here, so be sure to read the label that is on the flux so that you use the right one!

With some experimenting I discovered that if you applied soldering flux to the inside of the lug (and on the cable) along with 5 lengths of solder (about .050" diameter) that it works out quite well. Four lengths did not seem to be enough solder to properly do the job.

The first photo below shows the lug filled with solder, it is held in place using some vise-grips:

Next using a propane torch heat the lug until the solder melts this should only take about 10-15 seconds, if it takes longer then you are not using enough heat. Once the lengths of solder have melted into a pool, remove heat (mainly so you don't burn your finger tips) and put the prepped end of the cable into the lug but do not push in yet! You have to apply more heat to the side of the lug, you need to do this so the lub *and* the cable can get to the proper temperature. After about 10-15 seconds or so push down on the cable twisting it into the hot bath of solder inside the lug. Once the cable is in, continue to heat for another couple of seconds so that the solder works it's way all through the cable strands and then you're done!

Cool and wash off the excess residue of flux and clean the surfaces with a rag, finish off the cable ends by using some lengths of the proper colored heat-shrink tubing:

Here is a sample of the completed cables, I will be using these cables to connect the batteries in series so one end will go to the (+) end of one battery and the other to the (-) of another:

IMPORTANT POST NOTE: Crimp the electrical connections! Here's Why