We recently installed a 2.4m diameter turbine at an off-grid community just outside Nottingham. They already had a 5kW solar system feeding a large 48V battery bank,with a diesel generator for backup. At the heart of their system is an SMA SI4850 which creates a virtual 230V grid for the solar panels and diesel generator to “feed” and the houses to consume from. Rather than purchase a grid-tie inverter for our turbine we instead connected it directly to the battery bank via a shunt which allows the Sunny Island to adjust it’s charging algorithms to account for the turbine input.

In April we plan to replace the 2.4m machine with the 3m one we built with Nottingham EWB.

Before the turbine went up the community were using the diesel generator for several hours a day, with the strong winds we’ve been having lately they’ve been able to go for days at a time without running it at all!