Ayres Rocks

With some data of our power use patterns collected over the past 2 weeks I’ve crunched some figures and did some more research now that I have a better idea of what our peak power load is likely to be. For starters I’ve upped the main power system specs from 12 volts to 24 volts. This will allow a much larger capacity 1660Ah battery bank and that alone should give us autonomous power for 36 hours should no wind blow.

Switching to 24 volts will also allow a larger inverter of 4kW, and upgrading to this larger inverter means we can run the lights off the same system, rather than installing a turbine and batteries just to run lights. The changes to specifications surprisingly have added very little to the system cost, and by shopping around online I have brought the components for the entire system, using recognised brand names, down under the cost of mains connection. More importantly the components I have selected can be added to in series meaning the capacity of the system can be increased simply by wiring in the additions rather than replacing critical components.

The Bureau of Meteorology website has a great range of historical statistical data which I have been compiling for 18 months or so for the region we are building in. 36 hours with no wind of sufficient strength is as likely to happen as the sun not coming up tomorrow. It’s extremely rare for there to be more than 6 hours of less than 10kmh winds over any 24 hour period. No sufficiently strong wind for 24 hours has never happened.

All I need to do now is take all the data to someone I found locally who specialises in wind and have him re crunch the numbers I have to confirm it will all do as expected.