I would like opinion on a situation I am in with my recently installed wind generator.
The tower is 40 ft tall and located 25 ft behind a metal building. The building is 18x20 and the wires from the wind tower go through it to the garage which is immediately in front of it and next to the house.There is a combiner box in the metal building and 400w pv on the roof of it. The inverter and batteries are in the garage. The inverter feeds a subpanel in the basement of the house for backup power and sells back through a panel in the garage through the main 200A panel in the house.
The other night I got up at 4AM to the sound of a thunderstorm. I wanted to see the wind generator spin up in the storm so I went to the back door to watch it. I only watched it for two or three lightning flashes when it was directly struck. I watched it hit and had three very distinct bolts burned into the retina of my right eye for half an hour. I was in the house looking out the back door when this happened and was about 50- 60 ft from the tower. The induction from it mixed up the pixels on my computer monitor and tripped some breakers in the house.
The most damage happened in the garage where it blew the bypass breaker out of the ac side of the inverter panel and fried some relays in the wind gen meter panel. It also ruined my MX 60 :-(.
Now, my wife asked if it would be struck again and if I had thought of lightning before I put it up. Yes I did. Infact I got LA302's for the ac and dc panels and one for the base of the tower which did not blow out but bulged a little. An 8ft ground rod in the center of the foundation of the wind tower is attached to the tower and grounds the dc- wire (dc generator)The guy wires are attached to steel loops in the ground with concrete poured around them. I could improve the ground of the tower by looping copper all around and driving more rods. My wife thinks I should just take it down. I do not wish to have further damage. I don't know if it was a fluke or will it happen again?. It has only been up for a month and whammo ! I don't mind telling you , I'm scared shitless. What are your experiences and thoughts on this subject?
Chuck.