Ok, you’ve got your wind generator up on it’s tower and everything all hooked up. You attach the final two wires so it will start charging your batteries… only to find out that your wind generator has turned into a giant fan!
I’ve had quite a few people email me asking what’s going on and it’s quite a common mistake. You need something called a wind generator blocking diode for your homemade wind generator.
You see, electricity is like a hose of water. It has pressure and forces it out the end of the hose. The electricity that is in your batteries has a higher ‘pressure’ (voltage) than what your wind generator is currently producing so the electricity flows from your batteries to the wind generator which is what causes it so spin.
It’s an extremely simple fix to make. Just hook up the wind generator blocking diode in line with the wires that run from your wind generator to the charge controller. The diode only allows electricity to flow one way (so if it’s still being a fan after you’ve installed it turn it around) so electricity will only flow from the wind generator to the batteries.
While you’re at it, you should also make sure that you have lightning arrestors for your wind generator so that it’s protected from lightning strikes as well.
A note about the blocking diode. Make sure that it’s rated for at least 30% more Amps than your wind generator can produce at it’s maximum power. It’s not great to run electronic parts right at capacity because there’s a higher chance of damaging them.