Should your wind generator produce AC or DC current? This is a question you may not have asked yourself. Let's look at when you should use an AC generating motor and when you should use a DC generating motor.

Just to clear things up when I talk about an AC generating motor I don't mean an AC motor. An AC motor requires energy to charge up the electro-magnets within in. An AC generating motor has these electro-magnets replaced with permanent magnets. Basically, it's a DC motor that has been rewound so that it produces AC current.

Why would I want to produce AC convert it do DC to store and than convert it back into AC again to use? That seems very inefficient. You'd be surprised. If you plan on mounting your wind generator more than 100 feet or so away from where you plan to store the energy you're going to notice that the readings you get from the wind generator and the readings you get at the battery bank will be different. That's because DC is a very inefficient way to transmit power. You can't transmit high DC voltages so you have to transfer a lot of current which means you need bigger wires. Bigger wires means more money, and you'll still get some loss.

Special thanks go to Nikola Tesla the real inventor of our modern day electronics. You see, AC power can be transmitted at much higher voltages (lower amperage) through wire. What does this mean? Well, you can push a lot more power through that same size wire with AC (think of power lines they're quite small... if they were DC they would be many many times bigger). So you can transmit more power through the wire, but there's another plus as well.

The other upside of using AC to transmit is that it's very efficient. You'll have a lot less loss using AC over DC.

That's not to say you can't use a DC motor for your wind generator. As I said, if you're wind generator is within 100 feet of your home you can still use DC, but any further than that and you should switch to AC.

Also, if you want to squeeze a little bit more power out of your wind generator using an AC motor will cut down on power loss through the wire.

There's nothing really different about using an AC motor in your wind generator. The hook-up has 3 wires instead of 2 and you'll need to use a bridge rectifier to convert it to DC at your battery bank.

Where to find these motors? Well, a company called Windblue makes them. They're very good quality and I highly recommend them... they work great.

If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment.

Would you like to learn how to build a wind generator? Just click the link at the left.

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