More power for the tower

Attaching the wind generator to the Internet tower. (Yes, Cliff is using a safety harness!) ©2009, Eric Fletcher

The tower we erected to provide us with high speed Internet access is too far from the house to run a wire. I had installed a solar panel to charge the batteries, and everything worked just fine until November.

But then dimmer days and cloudy damp weather couldn’t provide enough sunlight to keep the batteries charged.

This year, we were determined to add more capacity—but the months slid by without getting around to it.

Finally—and probably just in time—we were able to get a wind generator installed at the top of the tower.

It would have been more pleasant in warmer weather, and the sun wouldn’t have set at 16:30, but by the time we made our way down in the twilight, the generator was installed—but not spinning in the now-still air.

The installed wind generator with one of the antennas below it. ©2009, Eric Fletcher

I went up the next morning though, and an intermittent wind had it humming away—and adding power to the somewhat depleted batteries. More work is needed though: we’ll need to clean up the wires, add some fuses and some sort of excess load dump before I’ll feel fully comfortable.

However, it sure is nice to look out the back windows with binoculars and see the blades spinning in these rainy and overcast November days!

The wind generator is an AirX 400W unit made by Southwest Windpower, and available at Canadian Tire stores in Canada. The antennas on the tower are all from Ubiquiti Networks. Details about our efforts in erecting the tower can be viewed here.