![]() |
|||
Product Design | My Artwork | Living Sustainably | |
Art Engineering | Levitation Kit | Solar Power | Chevy Volt |
Solar Heating | Thermal Windows | ||
Contact | About Me | Solar Hot Water | Solar Mower |
Evaluating my site for a Vertical axis wind generator |
NOTE! In researching roof
mounted wind turbines I have come to conclude based on expert
advice that they are considered impractical. It is easy to
become seduced by the hype and the idea of having a sexy "green
power" device on the roof.
Please read the bottom
of this page to see what I have learned.
March 28, 2010 One of the things I have noticed about the Maine weather since installing our solar power system is that when there's no sun, there is wind - sometimes a LOT of wind. So I figured I would do some research on wind generators. It would be great to offset the loss of solar power with a small 1 to 5 KW wind generator on the same roof top. The first thing I learned was that Maine is not a good place for residential wind systems. But it's all a matter of siting and selecting the right equipment, so I kept an open mind. ![]() |
||||
Our buildings, like most in Maine (known the Pine Tree State) are surrounded by trees. We have maybe a half acre of open land as you can see from the Google map - my workshop building is
the lower right one. The strongest winds tend to blow from the north and the evergreen windrow at the north edge of our property is about 200 feet from the building.
The road is lined by deciduous trees 50 feet to the east and some are as tall as the building. To the west is wide open for
100 feet and the tree line to the south are all less than 30 feet high.
So my site is not optimal for a wind generator of any type - be
it mounted on a tall mast or roof mounted.
| ||||
![]() ![]() |
||||
![]() ![]() |
||||
![]() April 1, 2010 I got the WS-1080 and quickly set up the instruments to test it in the back yard for a week per the instructions. This is to make sure that it all works and the wireless system sends the information properly - it has a range of 100 feet to the base station. I'll move it to the roof when I'm sure it all works right. Both units are battery powered, and the touch screen base station connects to a PC via a USB port. |
||||
![]() ![]() |
||||
April 3, 2010 I connected the web server to Weather Underground's web site, here's my official weather station page, and, and below is the current summary:
|
The weather instrument is visible above the middle of the roof
as a white dot.
I am really enjoying being a "weather geek" , looking at my
weather station data has become an obsession for me. The
more data I collect the less practical a wind turbine seems, but
the process of learning about wind is very engaging. May 1, 2010 Weather station update:
|
The issue now is how to extract meaningful
information from the recorded wind data. If I were to take the
average wind speed per day it would not represent the real
performance for a wind turbine if half the day was calm and the
other half was all 20+MPH wind. So I need to calculate average
wind in smaller increments, I think that 10 minute averages
make sense and hope to come up with a way to put those averages
in a spreadsheet. Then I could input the performance
characteristics of various wind turbines to see if they could
yield a reasonable return on investment that would compete with
solar panels.
|
Wind realities April 18,2010 I have had some email dialog with Mick Sagrillo a wind expert who writes about wind power systems for Home Power and other magazines. He has clarified that most small VAWT units do not live up to the hype in an excellent open letter on the AWEA site. They will not yield a return on investment that is viable if installed on a roof top. Here is a helpful FAQ. Unless the site has an average wind of over 15MPH of good clean wind these units will simply not perform well. Clearly this is not my site, nor is it likely that most roof tops would have the ideal siting for good performance. Ian Woofenden, an experienced wind installer has written an excellent 1 page article that debunks many of the VAWT myths for the June/July 2011 issue of Home Power (p.124) click here to download it. But if I consider wind power as a augment to solar only on days when solar is low or at night then it may have value. It would still be cheaper to put up more solar panels, but I'm hoping a low cost unit may become available. I must admit that I just kinda like the idea of putting up a piece of "wind art" on my roof! I will continue to monitor the wind and at the end of a year I will evaluate the number of hours where the wind exceeds an average of 15MPH and then see if there is a VAWT that has a proven track record that could produce useful power at my site. Mick thinks that this is unlikely and cites the formula Power = Velocity cubed. From this he suggested that if I wanted to generate 400 Watts in 15MPH wind I might need a turbine with a swept area of 300 square feet. That could look like a unit 10 feet wide and 30 feet tall! No so small, and definitely not cheap - nor would something that size be roof mountable or have a return on investment less than 100 years or more at my site. The only other option would be for me to consider leasing a spot in my neighbors large (100+ acre) hay field and install a tower mounted turbine at 60 or more feet from the ground and 250 feet from the trees surrounding the field. Steve Wilke of Bergey Windpower has said , “You cannot change the site, but you can increase the height.” Well, given a choice of site and height - I could do both, but it would get VERY expensive. Updated March, 2011 Well my average wind speed does not look good. Here's a graph of the data logged for the last year from my Weather Underground page: ![]() click on the image to see complete weather data for the period shown
The average wind speed for this period was 4.9MPH.
Note that the maximum wind gusts are significantly
higher than the average wind. A small turbine is able to respond rapidly to sustained gusts and thus
extract usable energy. So the daily average wind
may not be the most realistic way to evaluate wind
sites. Winter is definitely windier and I would
hope that a small wind generator could offset the
reduced solar hours - especially when it blows hard all
day and night. When you look at a fairly average windy day like April 30, 2011 below you see sustained wind of more than 10 MPH for several hours. This often happens on overcast days and at late into the night. But I would need a sustained wind of at least 8-10 MPH most days for a wind turbine to be a realistic investment.
Most small 1-5KW wind turbines require a minimum avgerage
wind speed of 10MPH to be practical and cost over $6000 so
the return on investment is not there compared to adding
more solar panels. So I have to conclude that a wind
turbine on my roof would be a waste of money. It is a far
better investment to install solar panels.
|
|