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| Just wondering if anyone knows of a small scale wind turbine that may be placed on a roof. Was hoping to generate some power on Main St
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There are a lot of hurdles with wind power right now. My farm has had a wind study done, and it can support (3) 1.5 megawatt wind turbines so I know a bit about this stuff. In addition my uncle has a small residential 5.5 kw windmill at his place and here is the deal with all that.
First, the wind study is replete with bureaucracy. The application is over 400 pages long, requires 3 estimates from wind turbine companies and has a very short time line when that can be done. I am one of few farms that actually went through the entire process, but it was intimidating and daunting...only to have the town say no windmills can be put up. Why, because people here "do not want to look up and see windmills on "their" hills even though my family has paid taxes on these hills for the last 252 years!
As for the residential windmills...its not a viable option. There are no rooftop mounts that I know of, because the vibration from the turbine would rattle a roof apart. My uncles has a pole located just away from the house. It also has a really high pitched whistle to it in gusts of wind. That is annoying! But the worst part is the cost. It cost him 17K and it reduces his 100 buck electric bill by 50%. Now do the math on that, the return on investment is over 28 years away and that is assuming it runs without an issue for 28 years consecutively...a stretch at best.
There is a silver lining. Because of the way the dual meter on his house works, when he is making power, it subtracts the wattage used per month. There is no cash that changes hands...or ever would be. Even if he used no power, and his windmill powered the grid...he would just continue to pile on credits. But since this never occurs, he is actually selling his power back to the power company for retail prices...not wholesale prices! That's a good deal...but still cannot overcome the 28 year pay back period.
So as you can see, windmills have a lot of issues to overcome. They either have to get the initial investment low to be viable (or build it yourself) or you would have to have a home that utilized a lot more electrical driven appliances to make the averages work out.
The truth is, if you want to be "green", the best approach is to conserve electrical consumption as much as possible. New windows and doors will be more of a green investment then a windmill unfortunately. So would drying your laundry outside (there are NO energy star clothes dryers on the market currently) and upgrading your homes furnace would be another start. But atlas all those things lack the "cool" factor or having a windmill whirling in the wind.
Eat lamb...because 50,000 coyotes CAN'T be wrong!
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saw some info on them and i didn't know that they don't start to produce power until the wind is a given speed and that could be only 1/2 of the time that the wind is blowing. I mean the wind could be blowing 2 MPH and power isn't created until 8MPH.
farm report today said that only 3% of our national renuable house hold power came from wind... wood was #2.
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[quote]wallsostone (8/29/2009)
saw some info on them and i didn't know that they don't start to produce power until the wind is a given speed and that could be only 1/2 of the time that the wind is blowing. I mean the wind could be blowing 2 MPH and power isn't created until 8MPH.
farm report today said that only 3% of our national renuable house hold power came from wind... wood was #2.[/quote]
That is true. My Uncles did not produce power at first when the temp went below 32º. The charger he got came from the south west apparently, while here in the North East we get plenty of temps below 32º. He had the computer changed in it, and now it kicks out at 11º instead, but it still does not produce power when it is real cold, so there are some issues still. Another issue with his machine...due to not having batteries, is that his windmill does not produce power when the grid goes down.
Eat lamb...because 50,000 coyotes CAN'T be wrong!
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WE have a sort of... scientist fellow in our town. He's got that look if you know what I mean. He lived in Russia for 10 years working in energy and he's constantly fiddling with projects.
He has mounted on his roof top, a large windmill. I don't know how high it is or the size of the blades, BUT I asked him how much power he saves form it.
He explained that this monster powers his electric golf cart. For all the size and work of keeping this windmill up, it does nothing more than save him gas money so that he can drive his E-cart into town for coffee rather than take the car.
but like I said, he's exactly as you would picture a scientist.
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| I'll agree that power from the wind generators at this point is small and it's going to take forever to recover costs on it. One of the ones I was looking at said it expected a 20 year life, and a dealer I was talking to at the fair a couple weeks ago told me his expected a 20 year payback. Looks like you just get it paid for and it's time for another. Right now I don't think the turbines are going to put a dent in the power consumption of the country, but it's step in that direction. I'm sure over the coming years they will get more efficient and cost effective. Computers didn't start out at $400 and Henry Ford's first cars wouldn't meet current standards. I'm all for them trying to develop more and conserve where practical, but I'm also for using what we've got - coal, oil, nuclear.
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The big windmills are coming here. We just pulled into port a huge ship full of windmill blades and I drive by them daily. It will help.
I still say the greenest power is nuclear power. In the last 30 years nuclear power has killed 52 people including those at the Chernobyl site. Last year alone 58 people were killed in coal mining mishaps while not a single person was killed in a nuclear power plant. We need to start talking apples to apples in comparing green power today (we as in society my friends...not nessasarily us on here)
The Chernobyl site was not nearly the devastation they said it would be, and the enormous amount of power they produce would offset the toppling of millions of trees to clear the way for windmills. I mean that is what it will take to equal the same output here in Maine for windmills to outdo Maine Yankee.
As for the waste issue. No power plants have been built in 30 years, but technology has kept up. The powerplants built today would only produce 10% of the waste our current powerplants produce, and probably would get less if we actually did something to make nuclear power work. The waste issue is not as bad as it appears.
All in all, for the square footage, the mega watts and the true environmental impact, nuclear power is the way to go in my opinion. But you can't really stick one on your roof I might add.
Eat lamb...because 50,000 coyotes CAN'T be wrong!
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| Thank you everyone for all the fabulous information. Conservation is always first and we have done a lot of things suggested here. I guess I will do the solar panels for now and hope for new technologies tomorrow.
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big windmills SUCK!
They have trashed our mountain here. I could show you picks if I go up there again. The once perfect "mountain" has been destroyed by those things. The traffic and the pounding on the mountain alone has beaten the roads to unpassable.
I saw the "lease contract" they sent us. They pay almost NOTHING to the land owner, take all his rights from him, they can sub-divide his farm, post his farm.. build roads you can't use yourself. It's awful.
The Mills are put up but they do the minim they can to get the job done.
Natural gas has moved in to the area as well. They make no claims to your land, rebuild your roads 2 times solid as they were before they came, and donate ungodly amounts of money to the school system.
One school system alone got 2 million from 1 company.
The wind farm in Plattsburg NY has already gotten into trouble. The mills didn't last a year and now new blades are needed. We rented equipment to build new pads for the cranes that raise the parts...and the town isn't letting the cranes back in until they come up with funds to take down the wind mills.
I'd be all about them if they produces there own profits but they don't. So why not just take all that money and let people in the energy business come up with new ideas? oh yea..sorry, the biggest producer of wind related goods is GE... connected to NBC...connected to DC.
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