I’m starting to think about diversifying my energy prodution. I have a solar panel array (5kWp) on the roof for a year now. I see that adding more panels does not make much sense as the production in summer as is is already hard to consume it all, and in winter the production is rather symbolic while consumption is through the roof.
So I thought of looking into wind turbines. There is plenty of wind the whole year where I live. But, rather then buying a big 5kW turbine which is quite expensive on its own (plus a pole and all the other stuff) I thought, how about using multiple small turbines (up to 1kW) connected together, similar to how solar panels are. Either into one inverter or using microinverters. Does anyone have any interesting links to follow or some experience in similar setups?
I would advise you to have a look at the “Piggott” wind turbine. These are turbine that you can build and assemble from standard components with a bit skill and few friend or neighbors to rise the pole.
They are also more performant than most commercial small scale wind turbine that you can buy.
Even if you end up buying a commercial turbine I would still advise you to get the book, it gives a lot of information about wind turbines, and it’s probably one of the best source of information for small scale turbine available.
One thing really important of course is to have regular strong wind. You can have a have a general idea of the wind in your area using Global wind atlas.
But wind can vary a lot in the same area so before you commit to installing few turbines, if you want to make sure tge investment is worth it, I would definitely advise you to put an anemometer on a pole at 1.5 time the high of the surrounding obstacle close to where you imagine installing the turbines. And wait a few months or ideally a year.
From this data you will know how much energy you can expect from wind turbines.
Thanks for the info and a link to the atlas. looks like in my area the result is: Data for 10% windiest areas 145 W/m² 4.81 m/s Height: 10m
Though not sure I understand the site so will need to read about it more. Thanks for the info about Piggott turbine. I will look into it. I rather DIY something the buy some cheap stuff that does not work.
Maybe form a group with some neighbors and install a big wind turbine near your houses?
There seem to be some promising upcoming vertical wind turbines for small scale use, but AFAIK they didn’t make it to the market yet.
I know a neighbour two houses away is also looking into wind generation. I do like the idea of being self-sustainable and free to experiment. But yeah it is an option if other solutions won’t work.
https://youtu.be/SQKHJm7vd4E?si=RWzpblObcPLNMdIX by coincidence a video explaining up coming innovations for small wind turbines.
That youtuber is pretty much paid advertisement for startups. I would not take this guy serious. I have seen also number of videos about this type of turbine and also some debunks. Harmony turbine is project that has not yet shown results apart from lots of publicity. I will try to find a nice video I saw about it, but yeah I wouldnt put too much hope in that. Specially when something’s featured on that youtube channel.
IMHO the foremost questions are:
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How much space is available?
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Is it a flat place, or a cluttered place? In a cluttered landscape, wind is turbulent. If wind is turbulent, a turbine spends a lot of time turning into wind, and less time producing. Also, good quality laminar-flowing wind is high up then, typically out of reach for a single household. :(
If the landscape is flat, that favours trying with wind.
A wind turbine’s power is determined by the wind speed and the swept area (the square of the radius). Efficiency is determined by flow qualities (laminar is way better than turbulent) and airspeed on the airfoil (long rotor blades are more efficient, but bigger, more dangerous, more difficult to handle, etc).
I second the advise to check out a wind atlas, and see the turbine designs of Hugh Piggot - if not to copy, then to learn what is worth buying. :)
Myself, I rely on vertical solar panels in winter. They do produce a lot less (from November to February, I have to charge my car in town). I have only one experimental wind generator, which is sadly a joke. It’s a vertical axis turbine on a 5 meter mast with an e-bike motor at the top. Wind is collected by an array of stainless steel salad bowls. Due to low swept area and low airspeed, it’s enough to make a few flashlights work. :D
Thanks a lot for the input. I live in NL (so pretty flat) and also have quite some open spaces around the house. This does provide quite some winds (usually north and south) so this is why i tought about it in the first place. As mentioned below, I plan to setup two weather stations in two potential places. I want to monitor it for the duration of the year to have good insight into what winds am I dealing with.
I was just wondering if such idea, of putting like 5-8 smaller wind turbines connected to inverter/microinverter and then to the grid (so autoconsuming or pushing to the grid when not enough consumption). I was wondering if this is something people do as I did not see much when searching the web. Most people use it to charge batteries.
Regarding the connection scheme - I have not come across wind power inverters with multiple inputs. I think they are rare.
I think people solve the problem of multiple generators either with:
- parallel inverters, coordinated among each other (with one inverter or an external controller acting as a coordinator)
- parallel inverters, uncoordinated (each inverter only syncs to the grid frequency and dumps load independently)
- with a battery buffer, so there are parallel chargers but a single inverter
Basing on intuition, I would pick the latter option. I think it might result in a less complex system.
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Swept area and wind speed increase exponentially with size and height. So a single 5kW wind turbine will almost always be more cost effective than five 1kW wind turbines.
As others have said, without the height of a utility-grade turbine, you’ll need to study the wind on your property to find where the wind is strongest and most consistent so you don’t put a turbine in a dead spot. If your property is adjacent to an open field, that’s probably a good place to start.
If I didn’t just talk you out of consumer-grade turbines, I’d suggest checking out these guys: https://windandsolar.com/wind-turbine-generators/
And their Youtube channel, where they explain why their turbines are the way they are: https://m.youtube.com/user/MissouriWindandSolar
And as always, Energy Sage has great advice: https://www.energysage.com/about-clean-energy/wind/small-wind-turbines-overview/
Allegedly more panels is cheaper than small scale wind. It just does not make a lot of sense to have small scale wind due to scaling and very low spread leading to immense prices. (If bought off the shelf)
You could add solarthermal units in order to assist your heating this may be viable but is very specific to your home. There also might be wierd regulations when it comes to wind power depending on where you life.
Solarthermal is something I thought about but seeing how little is produced on the roof now I wonder how much impact it will have. I know the efficiency of solar collectors is about 80% while solar panels are 20-30%, but installation of solar collectors adds more complexity with plumbing and in summer you again have situation where you have nowhere to spend the heat on and need to either close the system (drain it) or cover the collector. Plus it’s not that cheap. It’s mainly reason why we went for solar panels as although solar panels require more space to provide eqiuvalent power, the low maintenance and the fact the energy can be spent on more stuff then just heating water. So I’m looking at diversifying the energy source. Thats why looking into wind.
I’ve been a bit curious about this recently, a good start would be collecting some anemometer data at the location that the turbine would be going up, for finer details on how much power will be generated. They can be a bit expensive so i might do a project at some point making a home made one with cheap components and an open source API for extracting data. Then looking into what your build would be. Vertical wind turbines might be good for suburbia (likely what i would build) and horisontal for larger land sizes that could go up on higher poles. I still need to do more research and prep work so take everything Ive said with a grain of salt, but Im looking forward to working on this stuff over the next few months.
I plan to setup two wind sensors (weather machines) this year to have a better oveview of what is the wind situation throughout the year. One on the roof of the house and the other in place of future workshop.
I watched a video or two on Youtube where an engineering dude (maybe a professor) made cooling fin boxes for his solar panels that made them way more efficient. They had fans inside that would switch on when the temp got high enough. The efficiency was improved so much that it more than covered the draw of the fans running.
I believe that would’ve been Tech Ingredients. Excellent youtuber!
I looked into this a while back and here are some of the issues:
You need good wind.
You need to get the turbines up really high to get good, consistent wind.
They produce a lot less per $ than solar.
They are loud. Loud enough to disrupt your sleep and the nature of your area.
In short, invest in expanding the solar you’ve got and batteries over wind.
I’m aware of the issues (requirenments) with wind turbines. I havent done much research yet but already saw some that are rather quiet, so this is why I was looking into this (sure need to check exactly and compare real life the noise polution). Looking at some yt videos i see that some of the turbines could produce a fair amount of energy. Where I live I have more wind then solar. And as far as solar goes. In the season, my roof produces so much energy I dont have enough to spend it on. However in winter this gets really bad. for example today my solar production was 1.3kWh while usage 25kWh (thats with temp +4C outside). So even if I would invest and put another 5kWp (or even 10) I would produce nothing near my needs. In most sunny day in january my roof production was 10kWh while usage (it was much colder then the day posted above it was -7C) 54kWh. So Expanding the roof array, does not solve the problem as I would never meet the usage of winter and totally overproduce in summer. Batteries sure help with auto-consumption in summer, but this is not longterm storage solution so you can not use the energy produced in summer in winter. Currently legislation here allows me to compensate my usage 100%, so my balance is good as what I produce in summer I consume from the grid in winter, but in next 5-10 years the procentage will be changing as the gov. wants to encourage autoconsumption. To the point where your overproduction in summer will not match the consumption in winter. The problem is there is nothing to consume in winter from solar.
