Owner`s manual

Before assembling the wind turbine the tower wiring must be in place, though not necessarily permanent-

ly affixed. We recommend that you leave at least 30 cm (12 in) of free wire at the top of the tower for

making the electrical connections to the wind turbine.

E. Other System Components

A complete remote power system will include other electrical components such as a battery bank (re-

quired), a solar array (optional), a dump load (optional), and an inverter (optional). The wind turbine and

the other equipment are electrically connected to a “DC-bus” architecture, as shown in Figure 12. The

DC-bus architecture is robust and very flexible, allowing a variety of options for multiple and differing

components. The unifying feature is that all of these components are electrically connected to the posi-

tive (+) and negative (-) DC bus, so they all experience the same DC voltage. The DC voltage of the sys-

tem is largely determined by the state of charge of the battery bank and to a lesser, but still significant,

extent by the charging or discharging rates (the rate at which DC power is being created or consumed).

Charging components, such as wind turbines, solar arrays, and inverter/chargers (powered by a back-up

generator or the power grid), can be added to a DC-bus system with separate charge regulators and

these regulators can operate completely autonomously (e.g., they do not need to communicate with each

other or be coordinated using a central system controller). The separate charge regulators, whether there

is just one or if there are a dozen, will respond to the DC-bus voltage and control their generators charg-

ing current.

When putting together or adding to a DC-bus remote power system there are a few pitfalls to avoid if pos-

sible:

 Battery banks that are too small, so that battery voltage swings too much with high charging or

discharging currents.

 Multiple charge regulators set to the same voltage, so that there is one big step in charging cur-

rent rather than several smaller ones.

 Setting high voltage regulation points too low so that the batteries don’t get fully charged

 Setting the low voltage disconnect (typically part of the inverter) too high so that the battery bank

capacity is underutilized.

 If using both solar and wind turbine power, set the wind charger voltage a little higher than the so-

lar charge voltage to keep load on the turbine whenever possible. This helps keep the turbine

noise level lower.