Sunny (and very windy at times) South Africa

[Dylan Wood]

Hi Gents

First time on this forum, so please be nice.

Yes, I am from South Africa, and yes we do have electricity here, though its delivery is a joke. (No, its not due to lions or elephants destroying infrastructure)

Would one of you fine sirs have a look at the link below, it is the month-by-month list of average and peak sustained wind speeds at the airport in my area - I will point out that i live on top a hill, and we have a VAWT, so I am well aware of the hassles associated with these creatures, and the wind speeds are considerably higher than listed below.

What i want to know is, do these wind speed figures match up with what is feasible to make a business out of small wind turbines for backup power when Eskom (the power distributors) do what they call "load shedding" which is a phased 2-hour black out of areas.

Does this seem like a plan? Sorry if I missed anything, doing this post in a rush :)

Thanks

Dylan

http://www.myweather2.com/City-Town/South-Africa/East-London/climate-profile.aspx

[Rob Beckers]

Hi Dylan,

Had a quick peek at your average wind speed numbers (meteo data is generally measured at 10 meters height); they vary between 4.1 m/s and 5.2 m/s. That would put it at the lower margin of being a 'useful' wind speed for energy production (generally that range starts around 5.5 m/s and up).

How useful those wind speeds are for your particular case depends on the cost of electricity that you pay. As a kWh gets more expensive, it become worth it to install a turbine at a lower wind speed. You can take a look at this link (http://www.solacity.com/smallwindtruth.htm) to get a rough idea of what to expect for a certain turbine size and wind speed.

Another thing to keep in mind is that a wind turbine (or solar panels, which could be more cost-effective for your location) won't help you in itself to keep the lights on when the grid goes out. That also requires batteries, and an off-grid inverter. It's the batteries that drive up the cost of making your own electricity, they need to be replaced every so many years, and while other prices have gone down over the years (PV modules being a prime example), the price of batteries has only gone up!

Hope this helps!

-RoB-

[David Sterrar]

Unless I have missed it somewhere else, it is unfortunate to see that the OP did not respond with more information. I would have loved to see whether this would in fact be worth the effort or not. I think that Rob would have been able to narrow down that target point to where it would make sense. :laugh: