Domestic Wind Turbines Blog

Archive for the ‘WIND POWER TURBINES’ Category

I am looking at my bill and I use on average about 50 KWH per day…..I dont know if thats high but I want to know what size of an solar power panel should I get or wind turbine to at least cut this in half or more….I would rather want the system to be grid tied.

By the way I live in middle Tennessee we are in zone 4 so we get 4.5 hours of direct sun and I dont now about average wind speeds.

So basically to get 50 KWH in 4.5 hours, you would need 12 KW of panels. At about $10 a watt installed, that would cost you $120,000. I think a wind turbine would be less expensive but you’ll have to check to see if your neighbours will let you have one.

You should work on insulating your home first to try and get your power usage down. If you have airconditioning, you may want to consider running an absorption chiller off hot water from some evacuated tube solar collectors. Running absorption based air conditioners directly off solar heat is a bit of a toss up since small scale chillers are expensive but the solar thermal collectors are cheap compared to photo-voltaics.

Average household used power at the rate of 1.2 kW. Assume 3 people per household, and that is 330000 x 1.2 kw = 400 MW.

But a city has infrastructure, like street lights and business, etc. I’d, at a guess, add a factor of 3 for that, so we get to 1.2 GW

Large wind turbines come in a range of values. The large ones are in the 1-3MW. Take 1.5 MW as an average. But typical usage of a wind turbine is 20%, so we need to multiply by 5.

So number needed is 1200 MW / 1.5 MW = 800 turbines. Multiplied by 5, that is 4000 units.

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I’m trying to find information on solar panels or wind turbines that would be able to power a whole neighborhood, along with how much it would cost.

I went down that road. Roughly you are looking at 12 times the cost of present municipal electrical sources. For example, to heat an all electric home would require $110,000 just for the solar panels, and they would have to cover 1/2 acre of space. Twice the size of a normal city lot. Wind is worse, because sometimes it doesn’t blow for a long time which means a massive battery bank would be required.

After researching this subject I come to have a new respect for our utility companies. Electricity is the best bargain I ever get for only 8 cents per KWH. We are spoiled.

That depends on the wind speed and the wind turbine’s rotor diameter. An 80m diameter turbine can produce a max of 2500 Kw!!!.

Wind turbines that are strategically placed around the would harvest wind energy 24/7 with out using a drop of oil except say for the occasional maintenance crew that has to drive up to the turbine.

Which candidate will push us further and harder in to the new age where we don’t depend so much on foreign oil.

From what I’ve seen Democrats seem to be pushing harder for clean energy than the Republicans have. From what I’ve seen on the 2 candidates, O’Bama seems to be going in the direction I want to see the country go.

If you were to build a solar panel power plant and a wind turbine power plant from scratch, which would cost more to build?

yes

So i have a few questions.
1. How do we human affect wind
or wind turbine power?

And
what can we do to make sure its sustainability?

ANSWER ASAP
thank you very much

The current generation of students and their politically correct teachers seem to believe that wind power is the solution to all of civilization’s energy needs. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, because of the way it works, wind power creates a need for higher carbon emissions than are necessary….

Wind is inefficient and expensive.

Since wind turbines were installed in Denmark the Danish grid used 50% more coal-generated electricity in 2006 than in 2005 to cover wind’s failings.

According to the Copenhagen newspaper Politiken, "The increase in the demand for coal, needed to plug the gap left by underperforming wind farms, meant that Danish carbon emissions rose by 36% in 2006. This has undermined the ‘green’ credentials of Danish wind farms. Meanwhile Danish electricity costs are the highest in Europe. The Danish experience suggests wind energy is expensive, inefficient and not even particularly green." Danish Member of Parliament Aase Madsen who chairs energy policy admits: "For our industry it has been a terribly expensive disaster".

Der Spiegel recently reported that despite all the wind turbines in Germany (more than 20,000) "German CO2 emissions haven’t been reduced by even a single gram" and even the Green Party has recognized the problem.

The German electricity supplier E.ON Netz Wind Report (2005) warned: "Wind energy is only able to replace traditional power stations to a limited extent. Their dependence on the prevailing wind conditions means that wind power has a limited load factor even when technically available.

"It is not possible to guarantee its use for the continual cover of electricity consumption. Consequently, traditional power stations with capacities equal to 90% of the installed wind power capacity must be permanently online in order to guarantee power supply at all times".

The Wall Street Journal explained last September that in order to cover the inconsistencies of the wind power now on the German grid, "Germany’s gas consumption for power generation more than doubled between 1990 and 2007."

In the U.K., the newly installed wind technology is also backed up by gas. Figures released in November by the OECD indicate that "in the past year alone, prices for electricity and natural gas in the U.K. have risen twice as fast as the European Union average". This is good news if you are in the gas distribution business.

In Ontario, Canada, where the government is pursuing the wind power folly, it is estimated it will cost 5 billion dollars for new transmission lines to send wind power to the province’s cities. This will add 30% to every Ontario electricity bill. And that doesn’t cover building and supplying the gas plants to cover wind’s intermittency.

The claim that wind energy provides thousands of jobs is also contradicted by European experience.

In Spain, with 15,000 MW of wind power already operating, each new job in the wind industry has cost taxpayers one million Euros in subsidies and few of these jobs are permanent.

In Spain electricity rates had gone up 30% in two years by 2007, not to mention an increase of 85% in the price of natural gas.

And there has been a huge exit of manufacturing industries that depend on high electricity use. Many of these multinationals have moved out because they found lower electricity rates in other countries. Spain’s unemployment rate is now 14%.

How’s that for a few disadvantages. And, I haven’t even included the arguments of the NIMBY’s who don’t like the sight or sound of wind in their neighbourhoods. Or the new movement that is fighting turbines based on health issues.

Although seen from far I don’t recall seeing power lines leaving the sites of those wind turbines that generates electricity as in the case of water dams. How do they get the electricity to the power company.

Each wind turbine has a transformer that steps up the generator voltage from 480 or 600 V to around 34,500 volts. This transformer is either at the base of the tower, or designed to fit inside the housing at the top of the tower (the nacelle).

Underground high-voltage cables daisy-chain multiple wind turbines and bring the power to a collector substation. This is where the interconnection is made to the local utility or the transmission system.

Modern wind turbines are up to about 2.5 MW each. Even a wind farm with 100 wind turbines is only 250 MW. This is small compared to most modern hydro-powered generating stations.

What sort of appliances do these alternative power sources supply?
Can anyone tell me anything about power supply on barges? Who makes the wind turbines which some use?
I was hoping to get some sort of manufacturer or website to source them.

the marlec http://www.ecofreak.co.uk/products/31/46/Rutland-504-Wind-Charger.html?gclid=COiJrZGNvZwCFV8B4wod8j_LoA has been around a while
for an indepth explanation on how to choose a generator to meet your needs try the Centre for Alternative technology, http://www.cat.org.uk , well worth a visit anyway.
Some people have investigated water turbines if in flowing water like a tidal harbour or large river.

generally they produce 12v dc so any car appliance will work, eg low power TV or PC, lighting, fridge, bilge pumps …

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