Battery Vehicle Society

Probably won't have mine running until September, it was supposed to be this spring

So....does your system still provide power when you have a mains power cut?

Floydster

Unfortunately, it does not generate electricity in a mains power failure
However, what I can say is that we rarely have any power failures in this area and we cannot even remember when the last one was
There was a power surge recently which did switch the inverter off. We had to manually switch it back on (took a few minutes). It could be a problem if we were away from the property

The Inverter manufacturers (SMA) are looking into the feasability of a suitable design that will rectify this problem.

My mains supply is really unreliable, summer and winter. Promised myself that I'd never spend another Christmas or new year playing chess by candle light



Floyster

Thought it was time to give an update on how the turbine is working.

Basically, no major problems. We have had a couple of grid surges but they were easily rectified by manually switching off for a few minutes and then switching back on - easily done (providing we aren't away ).

We have had quite strong winds for the last couple of months (December and January both averaged well over 40kWh daily) so our overall daily average now stands at 24kWh.

We have purchased an Elcat Citivan EV for most of our local trips and John Lilly has built in a 1kWh charger specifically for using when the turbine is "ticking over". Early days yet as we have only had it for just over a week but so far haven't had to import any extra electricity to recharge it

Thanks for the update

What do you mean by "Grid Surges" ?

Nice to see you using it to charge a EV , now thats what you call free motoring

ChrisB

We think the grid surges are when there is a fluctuation in the mains supply. It can be under voltage, over voltage or frequency anomalies (or so says the Windy Boy user manual)

Charging an EV for nothing really appeals to us too

What do the "grid surges" cause then ?? as it seems they give you an issue with the turbine, I'm a tadge confused

ChrisB

Yeah I'm curious too as basically anyone plugged into the National Grid gets them and basically there's seldom any problems other than a lightening strike LOL

We have only had 2 "grid surges" that have affected our turbine in the 9 months of operation. The turbine carried on in "working mode" but was only producing under 6 watts when according to the wind speed it should have been generating well over 1kWh.
On the first occasion we rang our installer who then rang Proven who told him it was probably caused by a grid surge and to go through the normal routine to manually shut the system down, wait 10 minutes then manually start it back up and this should sort it out. This we did and problem was solved.

This happened again last week so that is what we did and again problem solved.

It's not difficult to manually close it down and restart it - just have to follow a sequence of switching off the grid current and the inverter and following the same routine back again. (Don't have to put the brake on the actual turbine).

I'm sure there is a technical way of explaining the situation but we can't tell you what it is

Well done.

I am really jealous. Unfortunately, I checked the wind speed map here and we dont get the minimum average wind speed to make it viable.

What was your predicted average windspeed or what is your post code and I will check (if I can find the link again).

It is probably only feasible to switch to a green supplier for us. PV looks nice but is still so expensive. We are looking at using the rain to fill our cisterns, so that should save about 30-50% of our water.

Rob