Howdy from New Mexico

[PetePower]

I guess I'll start with some background--I'm a plumbing, heating and cooling (Swamp Coolers) contractor and can do electrical. I'm not an environmentalist or a green power nutjob, but I am interested in saving money and helping others to do the same.
As a result, I'm building my own wind and solar power system (In New Mexico, there's lots of sun and wind!) (Wind first). My intention is to create a hybrid grid-tie/stand alone system. I'm not interested in buying some $10k-$30K system that wouldn't pay for itself until I'm 125 years old; I want to create a system that anyone can inexpensively duplicate using readily available materials.
So, here's a simple explanation of my design: I'm using the squirrel cage from a swamp cooler, mounted on a vertical axis in a wooden frame. Through a system of belt driven pulleys, I gear up the rotation to spin a 55 to 90 amp car alternator. The output is fed through a DC disconnect to a 110v, 1000w to 1500w inverter which is fed via a pigtail to any AC outlet. If you're familiar with Power4Home or the like, its very similar. Thats fine for a grid-tie system, but if you want it to also act as a backup for periods of grid loss, things get a bit stickier.
Of course, a set of batteries and a charge controller must be added. Also, you're probably aware that in your home's breaker panel, there are 2 "buses", A and B. There is 110v AC between common and bus A, 110v AC between common and bus B, and 220v AC between bus A and bus B (for powering electric water heaters, electric dryers, etc). This system is only powering whichever bus the outlet is connected to. A second identical unit is required to be connected to an outlet on the other bus. A small output system like this won't power everything you own, but as time goes by, additional units (wind or solar) can be added to provide sufficent emergency power.
Finally, I can get to my problem--for safety sake and to fulfill utility requirements, an isolation switch must be installed to prevent my generated power from feeding back into the grid when the grid is down, but still provide power to my home. There are plenty of generator switches available, but those won't work in my application. My home's breaker panel is a 200 amp panel. Does anyone know where I can find an automatic switch for my needs?

[myocardia]

Hi, Pete. Welcome to Nature2Energy. Generating your own power is more expensive, no matter how you do it. It makes no difference whether you use photovotaic panels, wind turbines, gasoline/natural gas/methanol/any other gas generators, producing your own in small quantities will cost you much more per kW/mW than buying it from the people who are in the business of producing it at the lowest cost per kWhr. There is no way around this simple fact, and anyone who would have you believe otherwise is blatantly lying to you, in hopes of dipping their hand into your pocketbook.