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261
Inverters & Grid Integration / Interfacing wind turbines to the grid
Last post by SparWeb -
Custom-building wind turbines... is hard.  Interfacing wind turbines to the grid... is also hard.
But it is lucrative to come up with a way to grid-tie an inverter, sell the excess energy when the batteries are full.

There are products you can buy, but when they fail things can go drastically wrong.  They're all made in China, of course.  While I'm seeing better products from China all the time, the flood of bad ones hasn't disappeared.  This example might be a good one: https://www.engelecenergy.com/On-grid-Inverters-pl3261504.html
But it doesn't charge batteries.  I want to do both: Keep a battery set charged, and export excess energy to the grid.

My solar panel hybrid inverter does that.  Why can't my wind turbine do that?  I've checked, and my SOL-ARK inverter will not manage the operation of a wind turbine.  It will not accept 3-phase inputs nor will it accept inputs that drastically vary from 50-60 Hz.  While I've been looking for a way to interface my wind turbine to the rest of my RE system, so far all it does is charge the batteries.

A wind turbine bought as a commercially-available unit will usually includes a grid-tie interface, unless the WT is designed solely for charging batteries or running pumps, etc.  Examples include Bergey and Proven, where you can choose from either on-grid or off-grid versions.  Again, if you want both, you need to get more equipment.

Also, their GT inverters are designed for the specific wind turbines they build and sell, not "any" WT.  Since I'm custom-building a wind turbine, one of these would require substantial modifications to adapt it.

What am I to do?

Improvise, I suppose...
262
General Discussion / Re: AI
Last post by SparWeb -
Using Win 11 at work there are annoying things that I'm glad I don't have to deal with at home.
For all the computing advances of the past 10 years, I haven't seen many that improve my productivity, ability to express ideas, or analyze a problem. This computer is running just fine with an i5 CPU and Windows 7, plus plenty of security doodads to keep the unwelcome parts of the internet out.  Software stalled out somewhere in the 2010's, and today engineers are using the same programs they were 15 years ago, just adorned with nicer GUI's (with some dreadful exceptions).

I haven't been keen to adopt too much AI in my daily computing, either.  That said, I'm generally impressed by the ability of Copilot to summarize discussions and meetings, and extract useful lists of tasks to follow up when my colleagues decide to do something.  But you have to get used to the idea of a Microsoft AI listening to every word you say and all the graphics up on the screen...

I have seen some struggling coworkers attempt to cover their shortcomings with AI results, but it's usually obvious and scatterbrained.  People mistake AI for "expert systems" which these LLM's aren't.  They actually have no more insight into how the world works than a 2 year old. 

This will change when AI becomes more sophisticated.  Personally, I think that AI's will remain dumb imitators for a while.  Once developers team up the AI's with robotics and give these combined machines more independence, then in time the AI's may gain the spark of experience to truly understand "right" and "wrong".
265
General Discussion / AI
Last post by Bruce S -
Here's hoping not to start a flame war or anything...
While I like using AI as a search tool, I do not like the idea of forced embedded AI (ie Windows 11 Chrome, newest Mozilla, etc)
I personally run Linux based software at home, but I work in the Microsoft world at work, and not everything works nicely in Linux. I have multiple monitors at work and Windows is plug-n-play since W7; Linux can be a struggle to do this.

Cheers
Bruce S



268
Forum News & Announcements / Welcome to FieldlinesForum! Your new Community.
Last post by eColumbus -
Welcome to the new FieldlinesForum!

This forum was built to follow in the tradition of the pioneers of DIY small wind power, Hugh Piggott, Dan Bartmann and the many others who for the last 30 or 40 years, have made great contributions to the spreading of knowledge about designing and building alternators and machines powered by the wind.

These pioneers have traveled the world teaching small groups of people, especially in poor communities that have no electricity, how to build alternators to be powered by the wind or by water. These guys are still active and teaching today, but we must continue to share this knowledge with the younger generation.

Dan Bartmann, Dan Fink and others started a forum in 2003, that provided a platform where these builders and tinkerers could exchange knowledge about their building and experimenting with different ways to generate power. The Dan’s as they were commonly referred to by the community, kept the forum until 2018. That forum was quite successful as it continued to educate others throughout the community. Unfortunately, recently, the forum vanished from the internet.

We are a bit different than the OLD fieldlines. We have added new boards for important new topics such as off-grid and remote living, 3D printing and other cool stuff. And with the advances in new materials and the technological tools of today, we could try new things and have a lot of fun doing it, but most important, we will learn skills that could be very useful if hard times come.

With this new forum we aim to continue the tradition of experimenting, building, failing and succeeding, and doing all this as a community. As the forum grows, it is my desire that those that come here looking for answers will find them, whatever the topic. And that those answers will help many live better and happier lives.

OK community, let’s get this forum going! Let’s start tinkering, talking and building and sharing our ideas.

Enjoy FieldlinesForum, your new community!

Ed
273
Forum News & Announcements / Re: Test Post
Last post by MagnetJuice -
Try again after taking off your sunglasses!  :D
Let's try some quotes "quotes" - in browser.
Let’s try some quotes “quotes” – pasted from Word.