Connecting inverter to mains

Hi,
I want to build my own wind turbine and connect it to the mains supply in my house, I saw a man on television who got his meter to wind backwards by doing this.
I obviously need an inverter connected to the ring main, but is it safe to do this while still recieving power from my power company?
I looked at using a pure sine wave inverter from a caravan or boat, but am not sure how I would get the inverter's output in phase with the mains supply.
Thanks for any advice Adam

Adam Chapman wrote:
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The guy would have had a special meter, called an export meter.
I suggest that you read this:
http://www.good-energy.co.uk/gyo_home_fact_file_ans
-- Sue

in message
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You want a "grid tie" system. There are plenty of inverters designed for this purpose. The trick is the power you generate has to sync to the power grid.
Connecting to your grid is a local legality enforced by your power company. Depending on the local laws the power company and politicians will decide if you can run your meter backward, (net metering) or have a special meter installed so they can pay you for what you put onto the grid at the legally agreed rate (avoided cost) or whatever other profit motivated agreement your power companies lobbyists were able to wrangle the politicians to write into local law.
In most cases, if you are on the grid, the economics of paying your investment back for local power generation equipment are pretty dismal.
Looking at it another way, generating enough energy to offset the energy used to manufacture your power generation investment----the payback for that is in the 4-6 year range. Paying back the financial investment and putting the extra energy used to manufacture your investment back into the grid-----slim to none.
Turn off lights, get CF bulbs, buy more insulation, dont run the AC and heater so much if you want to save the world.
Peace dawg

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ups.com...
I'm doing it mostly for fun. I've been fiddling with the aerodynamics using CFD code from an old uni project. I have little knowledge of electornics, hence my visit here.
Post #18 at http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/4482 mentions a method but without a diagram it's hard to understand, there seem to be a number of types of "H-bridge". Can anyone make sense of this? Like the poster there, I would struggle to afford the commercially available grid-tie inverters.
Also having difficulty finding out what the optimal speed is for a permanent magnet generator, but will keep looking.
Thanks