When we installed our off grid system, the first wind turbine we "flew" was called an Air-X and was from a Flagstaff based company called "Southwest Windpower".
The company has since closed their doors. Too bad really, since they did make some good products. For us, the Air-X was not one of them.
The Air-X is a 400 watt 3 blade turbine which was not really suitable for our situation (although this took some time to realize). We first mounted it on the wall of our shop via a wall mount pole with rubber bushings that were supposed to reduce noise and vibration. It didn't really do that much. You could still hear the turbine whirring away from inside the shop. Actually "whirring" is probably not the best word. I'm not sure there is an adequate way to describe it. It wasn't a terrible vibration but enough to make you wish you hadn't put it on the wall - kind of like a fly buzzing around your head that you couldn't get away from.
It was time to build a tower. You can read that story by clicking "Building a tower", sort of makes sense, huh? Anyway, I got the tower built and mounted the turbine on the top. We pulled the truck into position and hooked the cable that pulled over the "gin pole". Up she went and started spinning right away. Yeah baby! What a sight, more power and fairly quiet too.
We were finally living the off grid dream, however some dreams have a way of turning into a nightmare! As was the case of the "nightmare on Air-X street"!!!
NO, I'm not kidding. What we thought was going to be the final step of getting our system up and running turned out to be the beginning of a somewhat painful learning curve. Everything seemed to be going ok and then Wham! We woke up one morning and the system had completely crashed, and I mean crashed! No lights, no fridge, nothing; everything was out. I checked the system and found that the system voltage was down around 21 volts. For a 24 volt system, that's bad. Fully charged on a 24 volt system is about 26.6 volts according to the battery company. Equalizing, bulking and floating will be even higher than that.
I fired up the generator and got the system up to a full charge. The sun was up and kept the system charged all day. The wind turbine was spinning good and the power held. This was to be short lived. This cycle of sometimes charged and sometimes crashing got to be sort of a routine for us. We decided to get a second turbine (another Air-X) and mount it back on the wall of the shop since we didn't have a second tower. This helped some but was not a perfect solution.
We did make it for a while with this setup and continued on with the learning curve. It's a little amusing now but as I think back, that was not a very pleasant time. As the seasons changed and the higher winds began to blow we found out one of the unique features that was built into this little wonder. This baby had self furling blades. For those of you who have never experienced one of these little song machines, the music is anything but nice. I don't know if others have had the same problem but with the kind of wind we get at our place it was really not pleasant.
Let's see if I can do this justice. Imagine strapping yourself under the hood of a really loud car with no muffler and you can't get away from it; that's what it sounded like when the wind blew really hard. The self furling blades were a pretty neat concept and they seemed to work ok as long as the wind didn't get really cranked up. If it did, the blades would turn a little sideways to allow the wind to slip past. The whole idea was to let some of the wind go by while still allowing the turbine to produce power without tearing itself apart.
If the wind blew too hard, it was much like being next to a freight train and we were in for a rough ride. Sometimes even with earplugs in and pillows over our heads we still couldn't sleep.
The second turbine we had bought used, stopped producing power for some reason; so I just took it down and figured I would try to fix it later. Now we were back to just the one.
BLISS !
One night during a particularly special storm, we again put our earplugs in and covered our heads. At some point everything went quiet. No, not the storm - just the terrible noise. We were grateful for the reprieve and drifted off to sleep. The next day we went out to make sure everything was alright and saw that the wind turbine had no blades on it. GONE! They had completely exploded. YAY! We were so happy, we considered throwing a party. I truly have never ever been happier to see something blow apart! It really was a great moment. We did eventually find the blades - in little pieces, scattered around the property. On to better things. Read about the "Whisper 100", our new turbine.