Do you intend to install a home wind energy system? If you are seriously considering home wind energy system, you must try to understand the basic issues involved.
General Information
Your home wind energy system will comprise of a wind turbine-and-generator assembly mounted on a tower, and the related control and other equipment that will be mounted in a separate cabin or housing. Normally permission from local authority and clearance from local building codes may be necessary before erecting the tower and wind turbine on your property. You must also ensure that your neighbors will not have objections to living next door to a wind turbine. After all we must admit that the wind turbine does make some noise and secondly the landscape of the area will have an "ungainly" tower sticking on the skyline.
Next, consider suitability of the location of your house for installing home wind energy system. Generally for installing a wind turbine your house must be spread over at least one acre of land. Also the average wind speed in your location must be at least 10 miles per hour. Bear in mind that nearby obstacles such as hills, or buildings, trees, etc. may increase turbulence or reduce the wind speed cutting down the power available from your turbine.
Type of System to Install
There are three types of alternative home wind energy systems:
- Off-Grid (Stand-Alone) home wind energy system
Generally this system is chosen when your home is not connected to the utility grid or such a connection is not available. Your use of electrical appliances will be limited by the capacity of the energy system you choose to install. - Grid-Tied (On-Grid) home wind energy system with battery back-up
With this system you have unlimited capacity of the grid available; your wind energy system provides you with a low cost energy and you use it at your choice. Energy generated by your wind energy system that is in excess of your requirements can be supplied to the grid (for which you get rebates or payments). When the grid supply suffers an outage, you can still use electric power provided by your wind energy system, within the limits of the capacity of the turbine and your battery bank. This system gives you the best of both the worlds but it is expensive. - Batteryless Grid-Tied (On-Grid) home wind energy system
This is the most cost-effective and environmentally friendly system. This system does not have batteries to store energy generated by your wind energy system. The turbine output is directly fed to the inverter which can feed your appliances or the grid, as the case may be. The only drawback of this system is that in case of an outage of the grid, you do not have a standby supply.
Since there are no batteries the initial cost is less, the system requires less maintenance and on the whole the system has longer life since battery is the weakest link in achieving long life of the system. Also the overall performance of your system may be better without batteries since the inverter is better able to match the performance of the turbine running the system at optimum speed.
Choosing Your System
Typically a turbine for domestic system would be 1 to 6 kilowatt rating but larger systems are also available. The size and rating used depends upon the individual requirements; small systems may be used only for battery charging on boats and small homes; larger systems are used when the on-grid systems are required.
If you are already connected to the grid, your energy bill tells you your monthly energy consumption in kilowatt-hours (KWH). Since the wind energy is seasonal and also variable, you would generally try to install home wind energy system that will provide you about 40-50 % of the monthly energy requirement. When choosing a turbine look for manufacturer's data about monthly or annual energy numbers for the turbine, estimated for the average wind speed you expect or measure at your site. Remember knowing manufacturer's data of expected energy generated at the wind speed at your site is important.
The power available from the turbine varies with the cube of its speed. So a turbine rated at 1000 watts at 15 MPH wind speed will be able to give only about 500 watts at 10 MPH or more than 2000 watts at 20 MPH. If the manufacturer's data is stated at a wind speed different from what is expected at your location, you can make a rough correction in the rating as given above.
We have tried to cover the salient aspects of your home wind energy system above. There are a number of other aspects such as cost, tax breaks or subsidies, etc. that you need to consider.
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