iboc,
congrats on getting your system up and running.

My previous post was a little premature, we produced a total of 15.309kwh yesterday. I was extremely impressed by how well the whole system performed. We still have some little details to iron out once the snow melts. I need to get the water out of the conduit between the 2 new arrays and run the wire through it. I also need to add in the conduit running up the large array in to the combiner box I mounted on the pole, right now its just hanging wires with the wiring linking the two arrays run accoss the snow and ice on the ground. Its not pretty at the moment, but as long as nobody messes with it its safe. Snow should be melted by this time next month. We also need to wire up our new main AC Breaker box, currently the windmill and solar are run to the 40 yr old fuse box in the basement, which we have the AC Subpanel Breaker box wired to. Finally we need to have our contractor for the windmill come and take a look at it, it doesn't seem to be perform nearly as well as the solar, it appears that it may have been damaged by its little fall durring the installation. I think that maybe the magnets could have been de-polarized by the sudden fall and impact. The fall could also be why we couldn't get it to communicate wiith the remote control. Hopefully we can determine if its damaged and if so, replace it in the next couple months.

iboc,
an fyi here on the skystreams is that they are having problems with them. to my knowledge there hasn't been 1 that didn't have any troubles and i haven't heard of a single 1 that works as advertized. if you're having any problems with it do not blame the guys that handled it as swwp will use that as a reason to void your warranty and let them off of the hook. they did not demagnetize the magnets for the record.

Yeah, we haven't said anything to SWWP about it. When they were putting it up it got about 5 feet off the truck bed and the support cable broke, it put the shaft right through the flat wooden truck bed. I did research the neomydium magnets and found that they weren't subject to depolarization on impact like some cheaper magnets, like the ones I use to play with in school. But it was a little alarming that the remote control unit did not work when they tried to connect to the skystream. It does pump power back to the grid and the winds have been unnusually light in maine lately. The town of saco installed a very large commercial unit at about the same time as un and the so far the average wind speed there since installation has been 5mph, compared to the normal 12mph. Thats part of the problem, but when it does go, it has to go like hell before it starts spinning the meter backward, even with the rest of the house disconnected from the grid except the barn and waterpump which use and average of about 2kwh per day. So I suppose aside from the communication issue all the other problem could be just doe to unseasonably low wind speeds.

welcome to the wonderful uncertainties of wind power. good luck with it and let us know periodically how it's doing as you may windup being a first on the skystream with a working troublefree system.

Well the solar at least is outperforming all of my expectations of the past few months. On a good clear day it may generate more than half our electrical needs. Even the past 2 days when you couldn't even tell where the sun was in the sky and it was snowing in really rotton conditions, the snow continuously melted off the array, it stayed clear of Ice and we generated 2.6kwh on one of those days, the previous day got just 1/2 a kwh, but I didn't expect anything from it. Today its very hazy and its generating 1000w or so, the windmill seems to be doing its part, we are having 40 to 50 mph gusts with sustained winds at 15 to 20. It speeds up and slows down. But I would agree that they dont seem to behave as advertised. It seems to take more than an 8mph wind to generate power and it doesn't seem to shut down in 20mph winds. It actually doesn't seem to generate alot of power until a 30mph wind comes up. Then it really spins and generates what they advertised. I think this may be due to the intermittent nature of the wind where we live and the fact that winds are almost never sustained at 15mph and higher for more than a minute or 2 and it takes time to spin up to a given RPM. This thing isn't really Idea for our application. All that being said, the windmill is generating power today, but it ussually is not sustained long enough to really build surplus energy like the solar power does. Expect more like 400 to 800 watts continuous.

This is why most of the regulars say stay clear of wind, its WAY over hyped. As for expecting power from 8mph, the energy isn't there, wind energy is a cubic function and for ANY wind generator, you will need a sustained 15-20mph MINIMUM to get usable power, anyone that tells you otherwise is just pimping the product

Yeah, I didn't think it would perform well were I live either. I tried to tell my parents Who payed for both systems that they would save more with an all solar setup. We payed more for the wind power than the solar and the solar outperforms the wind by leaps and bounds. But the nice thing is that the wind does generate some power about 15% to 20% of the time and it doesn't matter if its night or day, cloudy or sunny. But it wont save you the advertised 400wkh per month unless you live in a suburb of 1 story houses on the coast or unless you live on a hilltop. We live in a valley that we thought was funnelling the wind, but apparently not as often as my parents had hoped. The solar however, is better than I expected, Im sorry I didn't try to convince them harder, but you live and learn. We should have put the windmill on a 75' to 100' tower. Not a 50' when we have mostly 35' to 45' and a couple 50' trees within the 500' radius specified. You really need about 5 acres of clear land for the system to work as advertised, not just 1 acre.

Just FYI, today is one hell of a windy day. As of noon, we generated 5.273 kwh with solar and there was a thick haze over the sun up to that point which is why solar output is low, but the Skystream is the big surprise, I was expecting that it may generate 1 extra kwh like usual, but we had pumped more than 15 kwh back in to the grid today, if my math serves me correctly, even not accounting for what the house loads were (Im sure they used 2.5kwh at least today) the windmill generated at least 10 kwh so far today, maybe up to 15 kwh!!!! I guess it does work after all.

those conditions are the exception and not the norm, but you are the first that i recall anyone saying they have a working skystream. you are right that more pvs would've done better considering the power generated every month and weighing in on the armortized costs and maintenance.