I have a willmill that I need to store the power form. How can I store it to run my hole house off it. What all do I have to do to do this.
Thank you ever much if you can help

The windmill can produce only so much power. How many watts at how many volts? The number of batteries will be determined by the output of windmill, those batteries can be inverted to AC to power whatever. Inverting is not efficient. Keep everything 12 volts if possible.
Main thing, how much power does it produce? Manufacturer? Model?

What you have to do is use the windmill to charge a bank of batteries to store the power. How many batteries depends on how muc power you need to run the house. This is not a D-I-Y project. I strongly suggest you consult an energy specialist.

You will need special equipment to monitor the batteries and keep them charged

Check out resources at:

Home Power Magazine: Solar | Wind | Water | Design | Build (http://www.homepower.com)
Xantrex Technology Inc. (http://www.xantrex.com)

A windmill could be hooked directly to some small appliances requiring a motor to drive them, like a water pump in a well that fills a cistern.

12 V is stupid. Too much resistive loss.

Well they are a lot cheaper than solar panels, I mean I can get a windmill kit at 800 watts for the same price as a solar panel at 100watts, so the cost per watt would be much lower

Quote "12 V is stupid. Too much resistive loss."
I love working Remote Areas, and live in an area prone to Hurricanes and power outages,
If you go to sleep at night with the Generator on, and wind shifts, you can wake up Dead.
12 Volts is silent, Inverters are Inefficient, and you decrease actual hours of usable power.
You can charge a battery and still have Lights, 12 volts fans, and communications from your Vehicle. I am a Liacensed Master Electrical Contractor, but would be lost with out the 12 Volt stuff. My Opinion, please don't give a reddie, I didn't, oppinions?
12 Volts does drop fast. Will Need Large wiring.

No reddie. Not warrented.

We have no idea of distances involved and the idea of "whole house" is absurd because if you include the AC unit, you have a very large load.

You can still have the 12V stuff with a 48 V system, but you'd trade some inefficency for the ability to discharge the battery pack to 48/2 volts and still have 12 V out by using a DC-DC converter.

I was assuming a 120/240V system. He can also go grid tie, but in that case you don't have power when the electricity fails.

From PM


i have read your awswer. i don't under stand want you was talking about. i like to run my A/C, Dryer, Stove and Hot Water heater. this is all my 220v.

Please don't use PMs to ask follow-up questions. Use the Answer This Question, Quote User or Post Quick Answer options.

What didn't you understand?

Let me assume it was this comment you didn't understand:


I was assuming a 120/240V system. He can also go grid tie, but in that case you don't have power when the electricity fails.

The system would have to be way too big. An AC system has a 40-60 amp fuse. (40*220) is the number of watts the AC system may need to start. An electric furnace might be 15 KW.

Those kinds of loads are best placed on fossel fuel like propane or natural gas. This reduces the electrical requirements. Solar hot water and or solar heat collection systems are more efficeint.

At this point, I'm assuming this isn't a cabin in the wilderness in which you want to live off-grid. You have to make livestyle changes to do that.

The easiest and best method to REDUCE your consumption of electricity is to not use batteries, but rather dump electricity they you are not using back into the powerline thus making your meter run backwards.

With this system, the line must have power from the utility. Once the utilies side is zero, the system MUST disconnect to protect the lineman working on the lines.

You can have both system, grid tie and non grid tie and the charge controller looks at the inputs and figures out what to do.

Inputs can be generator, solar, wind, utility.

Outputs can be batteries and utility.

So it's like the first priority is to keep your batteries charged.
If the batteries are charged then divert excess power (wind/solar) to utility.

2nd priority is to always have power.
Have utility power - use it
Lost utility power - switch to wind, solar excess to batteries
Loose battery power - switch to generator

I don't have all the cases, but you get the idea, I hope.

The nornal solar systems they are installing here are about 8 KW. One person I know has an 18 KW system.

The utility would really like everyone to be using demand metering. It could be based on the largest amout of power you used in a 15 minute interval in a month.

Thank you for the help. It sound like I'm going to call out someone that put up windmill. They can put it up and do everything that they need to do. It is a to big of a DIY for me to do. Like I said thank you ever much

Thank you. To use the tax credits, some systems have to be professionally installed as part of the requirements.

Good Luck.

KISS