Wind power questions.

[Bricky Brian]

My son is in the process of rebuilding a croft house near Dorne and is interested in wind power so I am looking for advice on where to start and I wonder if there is a publication with FACs. He would not want a massive wind machine even if it was allowed and I suppose the sort of questions we should be concerned with are as follows:
1. What sort of equipment is required to run lighting?
2. Is it possible to run say a Microwave cooker?
3. Where does one obtain technical details such as, "is the power stored in battery form.
4. What sort of costs are we talking about?
I bet there are dozens of questions to work through but like gardening the planning process is just as exciting at planting.

[Ben Colla]

You're looking at it wrong. The real question's to ask are
1. How windy is the site. If it isn't windy, look elsewhere for renewable electricity.
2. Is it rural or urban. Wind doesn't really work in an urban setting
3. Do you have a wide open area to work with? You need a decent amount of open space to allow the wind to travel smoothly. So, rural again is a requirement.
4. This is one you won't of thought of ..... How high can you legally go? You MUST go at least 10 meters, absolute minimum, and 20 meters would be much preferred. If you can't get to 10 meters you'll just be wasting your time. And that 10 meters is above surrounding trees, not ground level. So if you have 40 meter trees you need a 50 meter tower.
5. do you have grid power? Aim to that first, unless there is an overwhelming urge to go green.

[Bricky Brian]

The croft is half way up a small Scottich mountain so it is windy on most days. Of course beeing half way up a mountain small or otherwise means that there is not a clean line of site because there is ground behind the croft.
It is certainly rural sitting in half an acre.
There could be a 20 meter mast but is one allowed to go that high and does that present problems of stability.
Yes, there is grid power and an overwhelming urge to be self sufficent in energy.
Is there a good book on this subject?

[Ben Colla]

Read everything you can at
http://www.otherpower.com/otherpower_wind.shtml
and
http://guidedtour.windpower.org/en/tour/wres/index.htm
to start with and a lot of your questions will be answered.

[Rob Beckers]

Hi Brian,

Welcome to Green Power Talk!

As Ben mentioned, lots of reading is in order. May I also suggest an article I wrote, titled "The truth about small wind turbines" (http://www.solacity.com/SmallWindTruth.htm). I have also collected more links that may be of interest on this page (http://www.solacity.com/Links.htm). There's a fellow Scotsman who wrote the book about building one's own wind turbine for off-grid use, Hugh Piggott. If your son is interested in the DIY route it's something to check out (http://www.scoraigwind.com/).

To answer your questions:

1) A wall outlet... :nuts:
Sorry, couldn't resist. The point though is that grid power is the cheapest option. By far. Going off-grid, or grid-tied (so you still have power when the grid is down), involves a power source (solar/wind/hydro), batteries, an inverter and other stuff.

2) Absolutely. You can run anything you want, it's a matter of money. So the question is more about how much you want to invest, rather than what's possible.

3) Check out the books on Amazon.com about renewable energy and off-grid living. The user feedback should give you a good idea which ones are worth reading. I don't have a lot of suggestions. For a general overview, and basic explanation on how things work take a look at the "Solar Living Sourcebook". This is nominally a catalog of the Real Goods Company, but it's far more than that (and at the same time gives an idea of what these toys cost).

4) It's been a while since I sat down to do the cost calculation, but my last numbers were around $1K per kWh of energy use per day for batteries (3-day storage). Then around $1K - $4K for an inverter (depends on size needed to run the loads). You also need money for the generation end of things; wind/solar/hydro, cost depends on your resources available and how much energy you need.

Normally one works the other way around: Determine the energy use that you need, and from that follows cost. People living off-grid tend to use far less energy than those on the grid. For example, the average Canadian uses 1000 kWh/month (33 kWh/day). Most people I know that are off-grid are around 125 - 250 kWh/month (4 - 8 kWh/day).

You mentioned having a good hydro source in another message: Hydro is by far the cheapest way to make energy if you have a suitable stream. Sounds like your climate is such that it may freeze in winter, if so you'll need backup (wind for example).

-RoB-

[Bricky Brian]

Many many thanks for all that material. It's 23.25 here in Oxfordshire and I have to disciplin myself to switch the computer of and come back in the morning to start to read everything. So, yet again, many thanks and no doubt I will be back.

[Jack Martin]

Visit http://www.8thsisterenergy.com/post/2010/11/10/Build-a-solar-panel-from-3-pieces-of-string-a-glob-of-clay-and-an-empty-Windex-bottle.aspx. I hope it will answer all of your questions.