Wind power generators

[Anonymous Poster]

Anyone have any experience with a wind power generator ? I heard you can sell electric back to the electric company?How feasable are they ? How much electric do they produce on average ?

Thanks
Steel

 

[thcri]

Steel,

You are right on selling the power back to the Power Company. In fact there is a Federal Law that mandates it. But, they only have to pay you what they are buying it for. In other words, if you are paying .08 cents per KW they may only have to pay you .03 cents per kilo watt.

There is a large manufacturing plant in our area that is putting up over a 100 of them big wind mills. He plans on supplying electricity for the manufacturing plant and having extra to sell back to the utility.

But them are some real big units. I have also wondered myself if there would be a good residential one to purchase. I am out in the country and we always have wind, but never have seen anything on a residential basis.

Murph

This thread I will watch

 

[CTyler]

If you use a search engine with "Wind Generator" you will find a lot of info and prices. The home owner models don't put out that much power.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Unless you are in a location where there is 15mph of wind at least 50% of the time, you'll never pay for the unit. The windmill craze came around in 1980, and a lot of them were built around here, today only 1 of 10 is still standing.
Windmills have a maintainence factor as well as construction cost to be considered.
Sellback to the utility is more romance than reality. I pay 12cents/kwh, and if I were backselling would only get 3 cents per kwh because that is what my utility claims is their cost of generation. More of the cost per kwh of electricity is transportation than cost of generation.
Storage battery systems are still tremendously inefficient.
There is a plastic injection molding plant that just installed a huge German made unit near Trev's place, and it seems to be turning about 50% of the time. Theri press information indicates a 10 year payback period with sellback included in the figures.
Also bear in mind, unless you are totally disconnected from the utility, most have tariffs that let them charge you for just being connected, and they collect BIG on that.
At this point in time, conservation and energy saving is still the best investment of dollars.

 

[Cacinok]

Steel_Wheels,

First and foremost, you've gotta have the wind. Luckily the govt has taken readings nationwide and the charts are available (e.g., here ). From what I understand you need a minimum sustained average wind of about 12 mph. You find faster wind higher up (obviously). For me 33' up will get me the magic average of 12 mph.

At the above link the largest wind generator needs 7 mph winds to start it and will produce 500 kwh/ month (yes that's per month) at a sustained 12 mph. This model runs between $5,000 and $6600 depending on how you accessorize it.

The best first step to take is to learn to conserve -- I could write commercials /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif Look at your electric bill and if it's like mine it will have your monthly totals. For January we used a little over 3600 kwh. Doing the math w/o conservation we would need a more than 7 of the above mentioned wind generators to power our house. Most of the homes that use wind/solar/whatever alternative power have monthly outputs of between 1000 and 2000 kwh.

So if you want to sell energy back you'll need a windfarm and/or some serious conservation.

Clint.

P.S. Do a search on TBN and CBN for "grid" as in power grid I know of at least two or three other threads about alternative power.

P.P.S. If you are a little more creative and want to build it your self look here where they use a Volvo strut, hub and brake rotor to make a home made wind generator.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Ok......let me ask this..........I have seen wood furnaces hooked up to hot water tanks etc....is there any way to convert wood heat/energy to power a generator ? There is a lot of energy in wood ....any way of rigging up a generator...to use wood for a power source ? Like a small boiler to convert steam to energy ?

 

[Rubintropfen]

I helped a friend who had an off-grid site almost 10 years ago. He wanted to be able to run a few lights in the evenings. He got a used wind generator and 30 foot tower for cheap, and we put it up. Charged some deep-cycle batteries and ran a cheap inverter. Judging by the ammeters it barely kept the batteries charged. It worked for the summer and fall, but the wind generator was destroyed by high winds during a winter storm, and he decided it wasn't worth fixing.

I really like the concept of renewable energy, but I have been unable to come up with an economically sound plan. Check out this document, Why Renewable Energy is Not Cheap and Not Green.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Well yes, steam from wood is doable, and has been done for a couple hundred years. Of course, a pile of wood the size of your house would provide you with sufficient power to run the house for a few days, and you'd need to know how to fire the boiler and operate the generator. Bear in mind steam locomotives fueled by wood stopped every 10 miles for a fresh supply of wood, and stern wheelers towed boats full of wood called luggers.
Now, if you want to go to the cutting edge, and substitute freon for water, it is possible to recover waste heat from your stack on a wood stove, and generate a small amount of electricity. You could also make electric by using a dissimilar joint generation system in a fire, to run a transistor radio.
Back in the 1930s, many commercial buildings in Rochester made their own electricity. As RG&E built it's system they offered a chalenge ~ if any building could generate it's own electric cheaper than RG&E sold electricity, RG&E would pay for their coal. Needless to say, RG&E never paid for anyone's coal, and by the end of the decade, nobody made their own electricity.
Power generation is an economy of scale situation, the more you make the cheaper it is to make per unit. While anyone could make his own electricity, most people wouldn't want to live the lifestyle their capability and capacity would sustain.
I've been close to the make it yourself electric business for over 20 years, and seen systems come and go over that time, and to date the big nasty electric company still has the market cornered. Even peak shaving and load shedding isn't economical when the cost of diesel is over 67 cents a gallon, and that figure allows for the increased cost of demand metering from Big Nasty Utility.

 

[TresCrows]

Yeah, boil water and run a steam engine or turbine to turn the generator just like power utilities. I hope you got a lot of wood---like lot's and lot's and lot's and lot's and lot's of time to keep that boiler stoked.
I think I am just going to order the Mr Fusion from JC Whitney and that kewl new anti gravity skate board. J

 

[Anonymous Poster]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Anyone have any experience with a wind power generator ? )</font>

Yes, I have (had) one on my sailboat. It is a 12vdc unit rated at 60 amps at 28 mph. They are fairly common on cruising sailboats that like to anchor in out of the way places.

This is my second wind generator installation. The first was a dual setup with smaller units that were essentially useless. From my experience, and from talking extensively with other sailboaters who have tried wind generators, I can tell you this:

They are expensive, noisy, and dangerous, and it quickly becomes apparent just how really flukey the wind is.

Being close to one when it gets near its furling speed (the point at which the overspeed mechanism kicks in) can be truly frightening, and on a sailboat you are always close to the d**n thing.

Some models have a tendency to toss a blade once in awhile. People have been killed. A friend of mine had a blade come through the deck while he was asleep. Fortunately, no one was injured in that case. The last time I took mine down, I found dry rot in two of the blade hubs. I haven't used it since.

I suspect that larger farm units would probably turn slower and may be safer. Still, I wouldn't let anyone linger in the sphere described by the blades.

If you install one, you will also need <font color="red"> steady </font> wind, a large (expensive) battery bank, and heavy (expensive) wiring. In the unlikely event that you ever generate enough power to bring the batteries to anything approaching a full charge, you definitely need some sort of (expensive) regulator.

If you are going to sell power back the electric company, you need a very expensive sine wave inverter that can synchronize itself with the power line frequency.

Cruising sailors put up with wind generators because there are few alternatives, other than solar panels with which they are often combined.

The only situations in which I would use one on land would be:

1. A remote living location with no access to the grid, and no possibility of solar panels alone providing enough power.

2. At a remote well for which special pumps that are designed to be directly wind generator driven are available.

Did I mention they were expensive?

SnowRidge

 

[Egon]

Just getting the wood for the boiler would probably take more energy than you'll produce. Then there's the water treatment and condensers and feed pumps and on and on.

Egon

 

[Anonymous Poster]

I was not thinking it would take a full scale powerhouse.... /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gifI could see it cooling towers/dust collection precipitators/slag ponds/coal pile run off ponds/coal/wood conveyor belts/coal pulverizers/water treatment facilities....I think it would be easier to get about 30 miles of steam hose and hook it up to my local power plant.My wife could get her Stationary engineers license /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif. Not to mention tube leaks and hydro tests.... I will just stick with a pot bellied wood stove..... /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[Cacinok]

Steel_Wheels,

Your idea of using hot water is very valid, but instead of using wood you could use the sun to heat the water and then run the water through the flooring like these people did here . Half of their roof heats water to be circulated throughout the house and the other half is solar panels.

Check out the Sterling Engine site to see how the differential between cold air and hot air runs a small engine. Dean Kamen (inventor of the Segway among many other things) is attempting to use a sterling engine to generate electricity. I believe his company is in the early stages of testing.

Clint.

P.S. Think outside the box and you never know what you'll end up creating.

 

[Egon]

Unfortunetly to get effieciency from steam It's almost all or nothing.

There are sites where wind powered generator farms have been set up and been in operation for many years. These units are usually quite large and expensive, really not suitable for the backyard.
Wind power tied into a grid system is; to me, very viable as there is no need for all the expensive life limited battery systems required for an independant system.
For an isolated off grid system it will also work but will require a terrific adjustment in energy comsumming lifestyle.
The first few years of my life were spent in a farming community that had no commercial power. Windmills were a common item used to pump water for the animals.

It has also been alledged that some of these wind farms kill many night flying migratory birds.

Egon

 

[Dozernut]

First off I know nothing about wind generators but will relay some information I was told and observed. A local heavy equipment company had shops in two different towns. They put a windmill generator at each shop. These were mounted on towers that I am guessing were between 50-70 ft. tall. Being that they were in small towns, they were quite the conversation piece. The windmills would sit idle the biggest part of the time. I asked one of the employees of said company and he told me the following. The windmills were broke down quite often and the generating head had to be taken down to be worked on. They had to hire a crane to remove these large heads and it cost them $400 every time the head was removed. Along with the crane and the repairs they were a costly money saving device. Again I know nothing about windmill generators so take this with a grain of salt.

 

[TresCrows]

"It has also been alledged that some of these wind farms kill many night flying migratory birds."---yeah, I think that is true, they are also ugly as sin and an environmental nightmare. J

 

[thcri]

I guess I wouldn't know about the migratory birds. If so then not so good. As far as the view, I actually think they look neat on the plains. To see all the props going in unison. And I look at it this way, hey we are saving earth's resources. There is plenty of wind, it is free and if we can use it, then do so. The alternative is to suck some more coal out of the ground, build more coal burning plants or go nuclear. The United States is way short of Power Generating Plants right now. The other thing is some of the plants are very inefficient and put more crap in the air.

my two pennies

murph