Sunday, December 27, 2009

What Would It Take To Have A Wind Turbine At My House?

By Peter Hainz

The sole way of knowing if a wind turbine will work at your home is to have an understanding of what the wind resource is at your location. This isn't a question about if it is ever gusty thereit is perhaps gusty during storms, but that's just an observation about the weather. What you need to understand about is the long term average wind speed for your area, or significant climate information, not daily weather.

The quantity of electricity a wind turbine can generate is a consequence of how much wind you can collect. if you can solidly collect middle to high winds, you'll generate much more electricity than if powerful winds are a unusual occurrence only related to thunderstorms. So living in an area with a good wind resource is crucial to the successfulness of your wind system.

And similarly vital is having the ability to access that wind resource. If you'd like to hover down a brook on a raft, you must be in part of the river with robust currents. If you're in a protected cove off to the side and insulated from the stream current, you will bob around a bit, but you won't make much progress down the brook.

Similarly, in order for your wind system to actually generate electricity, your wind turbine must be situated in such a place where it can access the flow of the wind. This is why wind turbines are installed on towers that rise high over the surrounding trees and buildings in an area.

Tall towers are important to get access to the flow of the wind. Installing your wind system on a tower shorter than the area's tree line, or, worse yet, on top of your roof, is similar to floating in a sheltered cove of a brook : you'll sometimes bob a bit but there'll be small forward progress. There's simply tiny energy in low winds that you can convert into serviceable electricity. Do you need kinetic yard art or a wind electrical generator?

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