Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

This system has been in place close to 4 years and works quite well.

Did you purchase the solar powered system as a system or did you aquire the parts individually? And that is a nice little genny I would like to see it complete. I really want one even though my winds do not justify one. I only get winds enough for it 3 months out of the year, Winter but that would be when the solar panels would be producing the least. What size prop and at what speed would it cut into your 24 volt system?

Blade overall diameter is 2.4m I think from memory that quoted power production was from 11m/s These style of geni do produce power from quite low wind speeds. My shack is 7km from the ocean and from various parts of the farm i can see the ocean so generally have a fair bit of wind around Not the beans I purchased the solar system as a whole and included 2 extra panels at a later date. The wind geni was a recent purchase i got on ebay a few months ago we have only just returned to the coast from western NSW. I wasnt going to install wind geni as we now are only staying here for a few months before going to Broken Hill, wife took teching position, However I am now considering doing the install anyway as we are using more power here than we used to The problem with wind Geni's is that the chinese supplied rectifier and regulator do not have a good reputation and the gen is not compatible with PL computer unit that controls solar panels PL shuts of panels once batteries are charged however with a wind gen the charge has to be diverted and dumped usually dissipated by an element to air. The electrickery comes out of the wind geni as 3phase and is rectified and regulated to 24v DC for battery bank I will post a pic of chinese controller and you will see what i mean.

pici's of wind geni side view and chinese controller i will try it out before looking at Aussie made replacement as you never know might be ok

Buggar wrong geni pic

Someone is always building a better mouse trap but this might have potential....especially in remote areas that have little lower elevation wind for running wind turbines.

Mile-high power
Full story: Wind energy startups chase mile-high power
If you want to see the future of wind energy, look up.The higher you go, the stronger and steadier the wind becomes - and the more power you can reap from it.
That's why Ottawa-based Magenn Power is building an airship to generate energy from high-altitude wind. CEO Pierre Rivard's helium-filled rotating blimps will hover at up to 1,000 feet - conventional turbines remain suspended at 300 feet - and use fabric sails that transmit energy to the ground via high-voltage cable tethers. The result: A single blimp can power up to five homes.
After many frustrating attempts, Magenn finally developed a working prototype. Today the company boasts that it has secured $5 million from investors and a $1 million renewable energy grant from the Canadian government, plus its first customer, the Sandbanks Provincial Park on the shores of Lake Ontario. The company's 10- to 25-kilowatt airship debuts there in 2009, and a more powerful 100-kilowatt system should take flight in 2010.
Magenn still hasn't put a price tag on its airships, but Rivard expects them to eventually cost about $2,400 per kilowatt generated, on par with conventional wind turbines. Initially, Rivard is focusing on providing power to off-grid operations that rely on pricey diesel-fueled generators, such as mining sites, oil wells and large campgrounds. Provincial officials in Ontario, which has pledged to rid itself of coal-fired plants by 2014, are providing public land to test and fly the blimps. Eventually those officials would like to see Magenn power 4,900 far-flung homes and businesses in northern Ontario that are difficult to reach in winter. - Jennifer Alsever

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/sma ... smb/3.html

I wonder how many .22 bullet holes would it take to let out all the gas!

I saw that one on tv last night it was quite interesting. The downside seems to be the sheer volume of helium required to keep them in service, they reckoned they`d have to increase worldwide production by 25x although it was based on thousands of airships.
Bird strikes,hailstorms,lightning and other stuff could add to the running costs.

These guys http://www.helixwind.com/en/ as well as Aerotecture mentioned previously have done some pretty nice projects here in Chicago with great results. Some people like the Helix design as it promises not to kill birds.

Look what popped up in my backyard this weekend....



Well, it's not in MY backyard... just up the road... what has surprised me is the speed the blades turn... even with very little wind...

Those are so cool. I wish I had the wind over here. How tall is the pole? It doesn't look very tall but it does look stout. I'm starting to here more and more people complaining about the noise that they may make if one is constructed close to their home. I can't picture it being a problem. Let us know if it's the kind of noise that would keep people awake. My ceiling fan noise helps me to sleep!

I saw on TV this week a group of people who had to move/not stay at their homes because of the noise the big ones built near them made. They said for the most you could not hear the noise but when they showed a sound meter it was registering very high noise that was not audible. Many could not sleep.

I hope this is not the norm and it was just from that particular brand of turbine, I think they are a great idea.

There is a guy in Perth that has designed a wind generator specificaly to go on a roof

http://globalclimatechangeaction.org/wind1

Somebode dident like theres they dumped this at the tip its a 48 volt machine

nice score FF