| By :
Roger Brown
With a wind turbine, a grid tie in inverter, (also called a "GTI" or, a "synchronous inverter"), allows you convert mechanical energy into electricity so you can sell power directly back to your utility. Selling power back to the grid is a great way to monetize your wind turbine. If you send power back to your utility you can actually get paid for it just like you were a fossil fuel generating plant. Your utility is actually required to buy the power from you. PURPA - The "Public Utilities Regulatory Policies Act" of 1978 defined how individuals can sell power back to local utilities. The genesis of this law was the trouble surrounding the 1973 oil embargo and a move back then to cut fossil fuel consumption nationwide. Any power you make at home - wind or solar - can be sold back to your utility. Keep in mind that you won\'t get paid from the utility the same $/kilowatthour that it costs you for the power you buy at your home. When you buy power, the utility will charge you their cost plus their guaranteed rate of return. The utility will pay you their "avoided cost". That means they pay you the $/kilowatthour that it costs them to generate their own power. That real time price can be a lot less in off peak times and a lot more in on peak times. Here is the way the inverter works… Grid tie in inverters take that DC power your wind turbine makes and converts it to AC power the utility sends to other customers. In order to do that, the grid tie in inverter must synch with the same frequency of the electrical grid. That is usually either 50 or 60 Hertz. An oscillator is also used so that the voltage in the line is never higher than the voltage on the utility\'s power grid. The power factor of a good grid tie in inverter is "1" - that means that the current and the voltage are perfectly efficient. The power inverter takes the DC power from wind turbines, solar panels, and 12 or 24 volt batteries and converts it to the AC power that can be transferred directly to the grid and consumed in homes. Furthermore, there is an on-board computer that senses the utility\'s waveform and makes adjustments before exporting power to the grid. If the grid goes down the grid tie in inverter goes down at the same time. In conclusion, the grid tie in converter is an essential component for anyone wanting to sell excess power back to the grid.
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