By Blair Stephens
We're seeing wind power touted all over the world right now - wind farms are popping up on the plains, throughout Texas and soon, off shore. I even know a lot of local folks who are interested in wind turbines, and wind is a great power source, if you have the right site to handle it.
Just to set the record straight right off the bat, you need at least a half acre, or just under 22,000 square feet of open land and wind speeds that average at least 10 miles per hour or 16 kilometers per hour. Obviously, the higher the wind speed the better.
Depending on your site and power potential, you may opt for a wind power system that ties to the grid, or that powers you separately from the grid.
Off grid systems are used when your home or business are entirely separate from the electricity grid used by most people. This means you can generate all of the electricity you need by yourself. Off grid wind power systems often cost about 30% more than on-grid systems.
Off Grid systems are typically comprised of (somewhat simplified here):
- 1. A wind turbine on a tower that is wired to a control box.
- 2. The control box regulates the charging of a deep cycle battery bank.
- 3. There is an inverter that then draws electricity from the battery bank and converts the electricity to AC - or normal house electricity.
- 4. That AC energy feeds the power of the home as needed.
- 5. You'll also be using various kinds of hardware like fuses and circuit breakers to ensure the safety of the system.
You can also purchase wind turbine systems that are on-grid or grid-tie systems which means that the electricity you generate feeds directly into the grid.
A Grid Tie system actually uses pretty much the same setup:
- 1. A wind turbine on a tower wired to the control box or controller.
- 2. The controller ties into the battery bank.
- 3. The battery bank goes into the grid tie inverter.
- 4. The inverter connects to the utility meter which tracks energy into the electrical grid.
In some instances, there isn't even a battery bank in use, and the system will just tie directly onto the grid. The electric company then offers you credit towards the power you consume - so at the end of the month depending on your consumption and production, you may actually be owed money by the electric company.
Trying to make money from this kind of scenario is often fruitless though as the electric company only pays you a fraction of what they charge for the kilowatt hours you produce. This means your best bet, after assessing your actual power needs, is to set up a system that takes care of your power - and maybe a bit more - just to offset your bill completely.
In many instances though, folks actually install solar panels as well to create a hybrid power system. These work well as, if you think about it, when the sky is overcast and stormy and sunshine is not reaching the solar panels, the wind is likely stronger and therefore pushing your wind turbine harder giving you power through wind.
You may be itching to get started now if you have the right site and you're ready to purchase and install a renewable energy resource but you do need to do a few things before you're ready to plunk down your credit card.
- 1. Make your home as energy efficient as possible! Are all of your appliances Energy Star rated? Have you replaced all your light bulbs with Compact Fluorescent? Have you reduced your ghost loads? If you are truly energy efficient, you may very well be ready to begin since the first step is assessing your power needs.
- 2. Learn more about wind power. You'll need to know how much you need to invest to actually cover your power needs. You need to know the brands, sizes of wind turbines and options out there and you need to know that your site has sufficient wind to power a turbine properly. So become an educated wind power consumer and then you'll be able to move forward into the world of clean wind energy!
