A grid-tie inverter for the rest of us

Grid-tie inverters have become egalitarian today. You no longer need thousands of dollars or a licensed electrician to take advantage of the newest generation of micro grid-tie inverters. These devices let you hook your small wind turbine or solar panel to the grid for around $250-$350 US. In our latest Youtube Video, my colleague Paul Gelling puts one of these inverters through the wringer.

Click here to view the video: Youtube Video

Old Information can be Good Information

If you are interested in making wind turbine towers from schedule 40 or schedule 80 pipe and fittings, some very good information can be found using a very old source: a 1958 copy of Popular Science which I was reading from Google Books:

Brown, S. (1958), "Machined Pipe and Fittings", Popular Mechanics, May 1, pp.197-200.

Its amazing that you can find so many old magazines on Google Books which still have relevancy today. Even using a CNC machine rather than a lathe, many of the ideas in this article are still transferable. I am interested in making a telescoping wind turbine mount inexpensively and found the discussion on telescopic uses of pipe very interesting.

Equally amazing is how much material was in a monthly magazine back in the day. Go buy a Popular Mechanics today and compare it in quality and quantity to the 1958 vintage equivalent. I bought one in an airport and had finished everything of value before the plane reached altitude. Same goes for most other magazines like Popular Science that are but a shadow of their former selves. They mostly help you buy things now rather than make things.

RSS Available

You can now get news feeds which will update automatically when I change my blog at the following link.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/berezin/RrRx

Alternative Energy in Spain

While traveling in Spain for six weeks to study alternative energy and green technologies, I have observed some interesting trends.


I have been staying in a small pueblo named Casas de Benitez. Casas de Benitez has a population of slightly more than 1,000 people, and is flanked with wind generators (called molinetas by the locals) and solar cell farms. Everywhere I have gone in Spain over the past month (mostly in the Castilla-La Mancha region) has been dotted with wind turbines and solar cell farms. I recently drove from Casas de Benitez to Alicante for some sailing, and constantly passed wind farms.

We also passed a wide load on the highway which turned out to be a huge semi hauling three 100 meter blades for a new turbine installation.


This is the area of Spain where Cervantes wrote Don Quixote, and Molinos were used to grind wheat into flower for centuries. As I walked through the narrow streets of Casas de Benitez, vacant lots were covered which grains of wheat drying in the hot summer sun and in preparation for grinding by molinas (not wind powered in this case).



Spain's wind output has doubled over the last three years and will double again before 2010. While we are seeing wind power growth in the US, it is not as dramatic as in Spain. Helping things more, Spain's wind turbines, for the most part large HAWTs (horizontal axis wind turbines), are much lighter than most due to new technology developed in Spain.I hope that wind power in the US will now grow at faster rates. Certainly the gasoline price increases and resultant economic effects will help make the country take a long term look at alternative energy. Hopefully we won't repeat the shortsighted mistakes that were made in the 1970's after the first gas crisis abated and prices dropped.

More information on Spain's wind power growth can be read in this interesting article from MITs Technology Review. I found it very interesting the all wind farms in Spain are linked together and controlled by a central computing facility. Take time to play the interview video (available in several languages) at the MIT website because it is extremely interesting.

Dominican Republic

Just returned from the Dominican Republic. We stayed in Santo Domingo for about a week and had a great time. We stayed with a relative who is working on the new subway project and got to see the country in a non-tourist fashion. I will post a movie shortly on some of our DR experiences.

I looked for wind turbines when I was there but found none. A pilot project was abandoned, purportedly due to "lack of wind". The wind was blowing 10-20 knots north of Santo Domingo most of the time I was there so I want to go back to the DR with some VAWTS and see if they are viable.