Newb in dire straits with my setup (volt booster not boosting?)

[tool]

Hello, and thanks for reading this.

Electricity prices are up and so I've brought back out an experimental vertical windmill I'd bought years ago. It's some 600 watt vertical windmill from Alibaba and it produces upto 24 volts, however the grid inverter I have only accepts 22 to 64(?) volts input. I've tried installing a DC to DC voltage booster, but despite it boosting the voltage high enough, my grid inverter's still reporting a 0 watt output all day long.

Here's a picture for reference:

https://imgur.com/MrWLaCP

I remember asking for help somewhere years ago where I was told that vertical windmills wasn't really worth it and so I abandoned the project, but seeing as my ~600watt/hour server farm is now costing me upwards of $1k/month I'd be plenty happy with any results really.

 

[efficientPV]

I can't say whether it will be worth it. But, a boost converter will try to pull as many amps as it can to produce the output you desire. That places an extra heavy load on the mill putting it into a voltage downward spiral. It only stops when it reaches about 8V or whatever the minimum input voltage spec is. Is this rated at 12V? I suspect the mill is turning at a slow speed as the boost converter is acting as a brake. As the mill seems to never been put to good use, your area may not have enough wind.

 

[OzSolar]

I get it, I really do.

You say it produces up to 24v. What is the highest voltage you've seen it produce unloaded?

Generally speaking small wind rarely works for anyone. When it does work it's with well built properly sited traditional horizontal axis machines. I've been around this stuff for a long time and I've have yet to see a VAWT work.

Then there's the wind speed matter. Expecting a turbine to produce power in wind speed below 10 MPH is the equivalent of a expecting solar panel to produce power at night. There's just not any energy there for it to collect.

Weigh that with how much time and money you want to spend.

 

[tool]

I can't say whether it will be worth it. But, a boost converter will try to pull as many amps as it can to produce the output you desire. That places an extra heavy load on the mill putting it into a voltage downward spiral. It only stops when it reaches about 8V or whatever the minimum input voltage spec is. Is this rated at 12V? I suspect the mill is turning at a slow speed as the boost converter is acting as a brake. As the mill seems to never been put to good use, your area may not have enough wind.

It's rated at 24 volts however with the booster on it's peaking at around 6½ volts DC measured from inside the house pre-booster and ~25 volts post-booster. Without the booster on I believe we measured it to produce ~12 volt AC measured directly from the base of the windmill at similar wind speeds, tho measuring it just now shows that it struggles to get above 7 volts AC.

The wind here's a constant +5 meters/sec or ~11mph so it's rotating at a slow speed, I see it struggling to accelerate when heavier winds come through, could this be due to the voltage booster? I've heard vertical windmills can struggle with rapid changes in speed so I don't know what to expect.

Would it be better to invest in a smaller 12-32volt grid inverter and then get rid of the volt booster as to hopefully let it run at faster speeds and generate the necessary voltage more naturally?

Something else that I'm curious about is that my current grid inverter reports an input of upto 25 volts which should be enough to generate some sort of output, yet it remains at 0.0 watts output. Do I need a battery to balance the load or something?

Update:
My dad came to visit and we tried taking off the voltage booster, which's had the windmill shoot up to twice the rotation speed, and it now outputs between 15-25 volts AC which is a lot better.
For some reason it still isn't enough for my grid inverter to output anything, despite the inverter saying any input of >22 volts should suffice.. Should I opt for a smaller inverter?

I'm looking at this smaller grid inverter from aliexpress, which says it accepts a DC input range between 11 and 32 volts, however it also states that the MPPT voltage is 15-22 volts? Currently it reaches upto 25 volts at times, does that make it incompatible? https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004625620508.html