Zero Is The New Black

I'm in the process of building my first wind turbine and was curious if running it without a load (ie. battery bank) would be harmful to the generators? I'm using a 260VDC 5A permanent magnet treadmill motor as the generator. I'm about ready to put up my tower and wasn't sure if I can go ahead and get it all assembled and put up and then add the battery bank as soon as I can get the batteries. This way I could also see how well it's going to perform on the tower. It's a 60' lattice tower and will be hinged at the bottom but still will be a bit of a pain to lower and raise a lot. I'm really excited about getting this up and running but don't want to damage anything before I even get started.

Also I've heard of people using old electric baseboard heaters as a load dump when the bank gets fully charged. I'm having some trouble locating any of these around here and was wondering if anyone would have any other suggestions on something I could use as a dump? Thanks for all your time.