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Green Home Building Apr 18, 2008
Can You Harness Wind Power or Not?
Find Out if Wind Power Will Work on Your Land
In my series of posts last week related to choosing the perfect land for your green home, I mentioned wind power. Wind power is cool but not all plots of land will allow for decent wind power. If wind power is something you do want to utilize, either right out of the gate or later on, then you need to choose land that works.
Some wind options include wind-powered water pumps or a wind energy generator. To make sure you can utilize this renewable resource here's what to look for:
You need reliable wind - year round if possible, although many are now simply combining solar and wind. Make sure to study the wind patterns in your area. Mapping wind rates and strengths can take up to a year - obviously because it's nice to know what the wind is like year round. But you can take some shortcuts by using the following resources:
- State Wind Resource Maps
- Wind Web Tutorial
- For a somewhat hefty price WindLogics will map your wind for you. It's costly, but is noted as giving an accurate idea of what sort of wind situation you have.
Identify obstructions to wind flow on your land. Mountain ranges, a valley, a forest, buildings, and other obstructions can all distort the wind that reaches your home.
In my opinion, wind is a much more difficult energy source to estimate than solar. The best plan if you'd like wind powered anything on your land is to read a lot of good books on wind power - start with the Solar Living Sourcebook. for some good book referrals. Even better talk with a housing professional who has experience with wind and wind power density.
Want to learn more about wind power?
Wind Turbine Power: Farmers Turning the Wind Into Gold
Inexpensive Residential Wind Turbine—Wind Power—Alternative Energy For Your Home
Home Wind-Power Turbines Going Mainstream
What YOU Should Know About Wind Power!
Can You Use Wind Turbines to Power Your Home?
wind viability
| Russ Bailey | Jul 29th, 2009Hi Jennifer,
I realize this is an old blog but it is a sore point for me.
The turbine suppliers and too many of the writers about wind are not being honest IMO.
Like you point out - see what you annual average wind speed is - at first forget about the fancy chart modifications (bins etc) that the suppliers want to talk about. NRDC has wind speeds for areas available on the net - a good start.
Very few locations in the US have an annual wind speed of over 5 m/s (11 mph). Most turbines are rated at something like 12 m/s (25 mph) which has more than 10 times the available power in it.
I have yet to see any residential turbine supplier talk about capacity factor which is commonly used in commercial turbine discussions. It simply means how much of the time your turbine will be providing the amount of power a power curve projects - that can be as low as 10% of the time or possibly as high as 35%.
If a turbine power curve shows 1000 watts for your annual average wind speed multiply that by 8760 hours and multiply again by the capacity factor. 1000*8760*10% = 876 kWh per year or 1000*8760*35% = 3066 kW per year.
In the case of a 10% capacity factor the return with a 20 cent US power cost would be 175 USD and for the 35% capacity factor 613 USD.
Another point where some suppliers are practically lying is about low speed wind - producing power at say 2 to 3 mph winds such as Honeywell claims - OK great but since there is no power in the wind at that speed who cares!