Some voltage clippers that are designed to protect wind turbines use a combination of resistors and zeners to do it.If you look at most Zeners they can have high voltage but most seem to have very low current limits...
Can you buy a 140 volt Zener that has a high amp/watt rating too
like 1000 watts that will stand up to the power coming out of a wind generator??

 

Why do you think a zener has to dissipate that much power?
Can you show us a schematic?

 

No, a zener can't dissipate that amount of power by itself. To dissipate that power you could use a zener to turn on some power transistors connected to a large heat sink or to switch on some large power resistors (room heaters).

 

You're missing some basics here. How much power?
Do you want this pseudo-zener to dump 10 amps? 100 amps? a thousand amps?
Wouldn't it be better to use the regulator on the turbine to reduce its power conversion rate? Kind of, "un-harness" it?

 

so you think it would be good to use a zener to switch on a resistor of some kind to slow it down..
would that be sufficient to protect the charge controller against an instantaneous voltage
spike,150v, of some kind...
??

 

Selenium are available up to 200 amps at least.

 

I think those are called load dump controllers. Usually something like a zener turns on a transistor and the current is "dumped" into something like a resistor bank or electric water heater. The mechanical design usually turns them away from the wind at a certain speed as well.

 

Do you mean something like this?

 

considering theinertia of the blades and generator, a high sppeed voltage spike from a wind generator is unlikely. and to protect against too high output, just size the blades so the load on the generator can hold the speed down to safe speeds, then the dump load will not be used very much.