Bergey XL1-24
Tower height 9m. Limited due to national law and regulations. It would have been nice with 12 or even 18m to reach free undisturbed wind.
I used a 3” galvanized waterpipe and an adapter to fit the windturbine. Bergey uses a 4” pipe but I checked with our mechanical designers at work and they said it was OK. We are not likeley to experience 52m/s here in Sweden. The tower is attached to my house at 3m and 6m height. A better solution is a free standing, wire guided tower but it was not possible in my case. The windturbine generates quite a lot of vibrations at 6-8 m/s so rubber vibration-dampers were nesseary at the brackets torwards the house.
In my basement I have a battery-bank of 225A/h. This I use for the PLC that controls my heating system and emergency power for pumps and valves, also for my heating system.
But the best is the possibility to send all surplus power to a water heating element in my water-tank in the basement. It is not enough to warm up my house but I dont have to make a fire quite so often. In the summer the plans are to use the warm water in the tank to help the boiler with the warm-water supply.
Everything works just great. I still have some work to do to ”tune in” the system.
It’s very important to live in a ”windy” area to make this work. In windspeeds under 8 m/s you will only get power enough to keep the batteries fully charged. No surplus power. But over 8 m/s things start to happen very quickly. It’s very wise to buy a wheater-station and measure the wind conditions first.
The installation was very easy. Everyting you need to know is to find on the Bergey homepage www.bergey.com So while waiting for the windturbine to arrive, I could prepare everything. When the windturbine arrived, it was only a 3 hour job to get it running.
All in all a very satisfied customer is
Ulf Hansson
Sweden
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