In the summer, my solar produces enough for the house and export. In the winter, it produces about 30% with the rest from the grid.
I want to add a small (1-2kw) wind turbine to the setup. This would provide in the dark winter months and help with the bills.
My questions are,
I would appreciate any ideas/input.
Regards,
Mark
MarkHoltom Please use search to check whther a qurstion has been posed and considered previously:
A Search using the word turbine gives:
https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/1201-intergrating-wind-turbine/12
https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/70-adding-wind-turbine-power-to-charge-my-battery/2
https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/1723-wind-turbine/4
cluelesscris Essentially unless you can find a turbine that matches the GE Hybred inverter DC input specifications you will need to have a seperate inverter for the turbine and a GE AC coupled inverter to use the generation within your GE set up. The AC coupled inverter doesn't care how the AC is generated.
Thank you for your help and answer.
Sadly, I understood one word on three (my ignorance). I wish there were a diagram that I could understand.
Regards,
Mark
A lot of turbines list with their own inverter. But keep in mind a turbine might need other things like planning permission to put it up high enough. Consideration of noise for you and your neighbours etc.
As a side idea have you considering something like Ripple? Investment in wind/solar generation and you get a bill credit
If anyone is interested my refer link is https://rippleenergy.com?ogu=9601&rtrfn=Trevor-H project 3 is about to go live.
MarkHoltom What GE Inveter do you have?
I have the 5kw AC hybrid.
I've always assumed you'd just be able to feed a similar arranged voltage - like the solar string - into the other input on the inverter and it would just accept it as though you'd put a secondary set of panels on.
Obviously finding the relevant turbine / conversion stuff is harder - its a shame its not easier to do as I'd bet a lot of people would like to mix and match inputs, after all, the marketing boomph suggests that Solar / Wind is viable - but very little mention there on about wind.
Certainly would be interesting to know if anyone has a working solution / what they've used - I've found generally its kinda hard to find any "this works with that setup" type of information when it comes to wind additions.
MarkHoltom Then, as I said you will need to find a turbine setup that can supply a DC voltage matching your Hybrid inout requirements. As Timl says this will simply make it look like a solar string.
cluelesscris @MarkHoltom If you check out @hoggy's terravolt site, you will see near the bottom of that page, that he's got another array/inverter/battery that feeds into one of his Givenergy inverter strings, increasing his storage capacity. It seems to me that you would need to put an inverter or some sort of voltage control device somewhere between the wind generator and the inverter MPPT to provide this input with DC at the right voltage and within the MPPT current constraints.
Alternatively, connecting a wind generator to your consumer unit at 240Vac single phase and adding an AC-coupled inverter with battery would also work and may be simpler for the purposes of maintaining warranty. Of course, all subject to planning permission and building control.
There was an interesting piece on the TV this week reporting about wind turbines in the north east. I think this design is much less visually intrusive. If it could be scaled down to fit domestic premises, it might make a better option than a traditional pole mounted.
Thank you.
As far as I can see, the output from turbines is low (like 50v) and from a solar string is high (like 4kw). I don't think that th 5KW inverter would accept this - but again, I am amazingly ignorant of these things.
MarkHoltom output from turbines is low (like 50v) and from a solar string is high
That's why you would need an inverter or voltage control device to match the voltages. There aren't that many people like @hoggy who have the knowledge and confidence to do this matching for themselves. That's why we employ competent contractors to advise on a practical solution to meet our needs. The problem with that is that it then ramps the cost up, especially with something bespoke or niche where the contractor is carrying the risk of it not working as expected.
Maybe in time the domestic renewables market will venture beyond solar to domestic wind, providing assured solutions.
Thank you. The diagram on the Terravolt site seems to show what I am looking for. It explains what others have been saying.
As for the skegness thing, I checked. This is in concept/trial and has no plans for domestic in the near future.
Something like the Ridgeblade system may be suitable, but we'd need planning permission in this country for them.
Cdent Now that is cool!
If anyone finds a UK installer please list them. Not fussed about connecting to the GE system (I couldn't anyway) but the winter generation would really help.
THALL they do look good, I certainly wouldn't mind having them installed. No UK installers yet, probably because of our planning laws and anything "above roof height" needing permission.
Thanks for the vote of confidence @Tim.
So yes I kind of do what your after with your turbine, however you'd probably only need the LV "battery" part of my setup:
This takes the 48V from the Pylontechs and:
If it's daytime - voltage matches the PV Panel array (so 120V - 500V range) so essentially the Givenergy "sees" 3kW of real panels and 2kW of "fake" panels on that string.
If it's dark - the inverter just lifts up the pylontech 48V output to a constant 350V and then sends it out on that string (there's some blocking diodes etc which stops it going the other way back to the panels obviously)
There's a whole other part about charging & discharging and how much power it needs to offer to the Givenergy but that won't apply to a wind turbine.
I am however (after all that waffle) unsure if such a device exists for a turbine. You may be better with an AC Coupled arrangement (I don't believe the Hybrids are clever enough to simply charge up if something else is exporting power, the AC Coupled do as that's kind of the whole point)
I basically went to all that trouble as I had some stuff laying around & also wanted to up my Hybrids low 2.6kW battery only capability to 5kW. The bonus being as it's all sat on the DC side it makes no odds to G99, DNO etc...the fundamental AC export limit is unchanged.
Cdent Looks like they would sit about the same height as a chimney though?
Just realised my other problem would be I would have to get 3 phase to my house. Because the DNO are only interested in the paper total output rather than a real total output..... I would love to add a wind solution though.
THALL you may indeed be right, would need to look into it further
Cdent They look like a good solution but I'd be worried about noise as the whole roof would be thrumming at the speed of wind!
hoggy I don't believe the Hybrids are clever enough to simply charge up if something else is exporting power
They aren't, but anyone with home automation could monitor their grid export from another renewable source and divert the surplus to hybrid in a timed (now) charge. Evidently, you'd need some feedback damping in the control circuit to ensure that it only starts to divert once there's a reasonable amount of surplus and that the diverted power left a small surplus still being diverted. Anyone trying to get this "right" would understand just how good the Givenergy inverters are at matching inverter output from PV/battery to meet house demand.
Tim I'm sure you'll get used to it eventually, might even send you to sleep 😂
Tim i thought that the case although i had no real way to check. It seems odd that the one hold up with AC Plants is cross charging which ironically the Hybrids can't actually do then?
As an aside to my experiments to date, I am trying to source a ahem..."supposed GE Clone" (out of curiosity more than anything if the price is right such as to fudge 1 way only AC charging of my Franken system archaic batteries) - the wonders of Alibaba and the distinct lack of care for Copyright Infringement...
hoggy I'm kinda interested in the need to voltage match the strings, more from an understanding of "how it works" than anything here... cos surely if you had 2 sets of solar, on 2 different parts of your roof - potentially even different numbers (or even specs) of panels, they won't generate the same voltage? So how / why would you need to match the string if you were providing an alternate source. Is it more about efficiencies of the inverter / conversion than anything?
Reason I ask, I only have 1 input on my GE-HY3.6 atm, VPV1 - shows voltage going up from 2.5V overnight, to 360V during today, but VPV2 shows 0.2V overnight up to 44V) - if they needed to be sync'd etc... ?
TimI I think the issue is to ensure that if you are feeding energy into the MPPT, it is within the voltage range (and current) that the MPPT can handle. So, something like 120-150V to wake up and as much as you like up to 550V but limited to 13A (or 16A depending on inverter). When it comes to throttling throughput, it's outside my knowledge. People post about moving the voltage and current crossover to manipulate the power output, but I don't really understand this. I do understand that if you vary input impedance, you can affect the input parameters, but exactly how this works is outside my competence.
Tim Ah, that'd make sense that it can't really do much with low voltage / or high voltage low current. I know from what Iv'e read on wind stuff, you need to be able to dump excess generation, I get that side of things, I'm just struggling to see why no-one could make a simple conversion / plugin system that works with solar inverters... I have the ideas, but not enough knowledge to do it myself 😃
Thread Derail apology!
TimI to clarify, it's not matching voltage between 2 separate PV strings, it's matching voltage with the same string it's connected to - which is then connected to the Givenergy Inverter.
In my case String 1 is a normal bunch of 9x 340W panels
String 2 is an identical string of 9x panels with this magic box (& batteries) connected between them & the GE Inverter.
It operates as pass through essentially (I can disconnect the battery and it just carries on as if the magic box isn't there) but because it can voltage match it can add in more "virtual PV" to the string - the same as if I had an extra 2.5kW of panels attached to the 9 real ones on that same string.
The GE is none the wiser, all it sees is anywhere between 0 & 5.5kW string of panels (if I want) - I did suggest to GE that a similar magic box could be built for Gen1 people to boost the output of their batteries (basically looping back to the GE Battery) but then Gen 2 kind of negates the need. (Although I can still beat Gen 2 by 1.4kW Discharge)
For how it knows when to hand out additional power there is yet another CT on the incoming supply. If I'm exporting, it sucks up power from the panels (so the GE just thinks it's a bit cloudier than it really is) likewise if i'm importing it pushes out power (so the GE thinks it's sunnier than it really is) - it does however mean my panels often show 2.5kW of solar at 11pm but has required no input from me since i fitted it over a year ago.
hoggy Aaaaah, now that makes more sense, so in theory anything could be fed at the second string (so long as its in bounds of the inverter) - the GE would just accept it as solar / input and go wiht it, no matter what/where it comes from.
TimI I think "anything" might be a stretch but yes you could add certain things which work / play nice with solar MPPT trackers to it - however in this example a wind turbine directly is not one of those things. (Voltage swings, OCV spikes, turbine stalls caused by the tracker....)
hoggy Yes, wasn't literally meaning anything... should have phrased it better... any suitable input if its on its own, it doesn't have to match anything else... (within the tolerances of the inverter) 😃 Not sure thats much better... oh well. lol