I have a few questions about wind power?

3 Comments

1. Rudydoo says:

   October 26, 2009 at 9:57 pm

   Hey Piper, Kristen is quite right on the numbers. We power our entire home with wind and solar power, and we have made plenty of mistakes. If you want to run everything, you will need a herculean sized wind plant, maybe something on the order of 10 kilowatts or more. Ours is a 1kw, but the solar does most of the work here, even though it is more expensive. The question you have to answer first is am I trying to save money, or do I want to get rid of the power company entirely. To cut down your energy bill, I would suggest a wind turbine direct to grid tie system. The wind plant produces whatever power it can and dumps it in your home, if it’s more than you need, it sends the rest out the grid line, and your meter spins backwards. Problem is, if the grid goes down, your wind plant shuts down too, it has to have someplace to go all the time. If you want your own source, you have to have battery storage, and a larger plant, then you are spending more money up front for equipment, but if the power goes out, you probably won’t be aware of it. We have the latter system, and twice last year it provided us with power when the entire county was without, hard to put a price tag on that.

   My suggestion is you do some reading for a while, start with Home Power Magazine, then check out the library. Our home was actually featured in Home Power twice in the past, use their search engine and look for, "small system first." You might decide not to get involved, and that’s fine too, but at least you will be well informed. Take care, Rudydoo
2. Kristen says:

   October 26, 2009 at 9:57 pm

   I don’t believe you can go completely off the grid with just a wind turbine, so other "backups" would be an ok idea, but not necessary. Though it does depend on how much energy you will be able to get from the turbine, you can save from 50% to 90% on your energy bill. Prices for the turbine can range from around $5000 to $30000. Not sure about installing cost, but with some manufactures you have the option of installing it yourself to save some $$. Eventually the amount of money you’ll save with a turbine will equal the cost of purchasing it, thus making it virtually free. Some states will give you a percentage of money back for using an alternate energy source. But there are also some places that have laws in place to where you can not have such structures on your property. Make sure to get all the info you need from your town before pursuing. Here’s an awesome site I fond that has all kinds of information for you.
3. John W says:

   October 26, 2009 at 9:57 pm

   With either wind or solar, you would need a battery bank to go off the grid as both technologies do not generate power on demand but only when the wind blows or when the sun shines depending on which technology. Although solar and wind are complementary (winds tend to blow steadily at night), it isn’t necessary to have one as the backup for the other, the batteries should be sufficient if sized properly. Of course, if you have the right geology on your land, you could do micro-hydro which would be more of a on demand energy source, then you wouldn’t need an expensive battery bank

   If I was to go off grid, I would use solar thermal for heating and cooling (absorption chillers), wind power with a battery bank for power or micro-hydro if available and a propane tank for cooking and as a backup for the water heating, residential heating and absorption chillers (such chillers just need a heat source). The trick would be to find small residential scale absorption chillers, they basically go from small RV refrigerators to 150 ton campus chilled water units with nothing in between due to a lack of market. Solar photovoltaics would be nice but it’s still pricey in comparison to wind power.