Connecting your Wind Generator to the Grid.

by Daniel Walsh 31/5/2001

Introduction

You live on a farm on the edge of the electricity distribution grid. You think it might be a good idea to buy a small wind generator and sell the excess electricity to one of the electricity retailers. You are aware that grid-feed inverters are readily available off-the-shelf. What hoops do you have to jump through? Do you need a licence? What price would someone pay for the electricity? Is there any relevant legislation?

At present in Australia, there are no known cases¹ of residential grid-connected wind generators (known as small wind grid-connection). This is opposed to the US and other parts of the world where the practice is far more established (see 'Appendix A'). The lack of present cases may be due to a number of reasons, including the relative slow uptake of renewable energy in Australia and the technical and economic implications and non-technical issues associated with grid-connected wind. However, the focus here is on the non-technical aspects of getting connected, which is currently possible but not as straightforward as may initially appear.

Read the full Article here. (98k pdf file)

Please note that this was written in 2001 and there have been some changes to Inverter models and the SEIA is now known as BCSE.