New and Improved Wind Power

Its good to see Southwest improve their performance in slower speed wind. Kudos.

Having said that you need "straight" and consistent wind for any small HAWT to work and this limits most wind sites to 100 foot towers which are NOT allowed where most people live in urban and sub-urban areas.

If you are looking for small wind power solutions in urban areas, really the only choice are Vertical Axis Wind Turbines with CURVED blades which support any direction of attack and a vertical angle of attack from +25 to -25 degrees for turbulent, twisting and tumbling wind at low and medium wind speeds.. Helical blades also reduce vibration as well as noise.

Even then, if you go for an urban VAWT you need to convince city government officials to let you operate such VAWTS, and it does not make sense unless there is a Feed Law (see http://www.wind-works.org/articles/feed_laws.html)

Getting local government permission to erect a VAWT can take along time. You need to pick one that is quiet as well, under 60 decibels from 5 meters (just like HVAC units on a roof).

HAWTS hunt in such winds, and when they do, their power output drops by as much as 35% to 65% when hunting (in light and medium winds in urban or suburban areas this can be 65%+ of the time of operation). I would suggest anyone to check out www.wind-works.org for more information on this hunting phenomena. There are some good videos there that show just how poorly HAWTS operate in urban areas.

What this means is the annual yield from the small HAWT will be 35% to 65% less than advertised in urban and suburban areas, even on a 100 foot tower,, so the location of your site (no nearby trees or buildings for 1/4 mile in prevailing wind direction) and the height of the site (100 foot tower) is very important to getting close to vendor advertised power outputs.

To really reach a goal of off grid self dependency you will need to employ solar as well as use clean storage like air compression (

WInd power has always fascinated me, but check out this new wind turbine that is coming to market in New York: www.windtamerturbines.com/ It seems to offer a very high efficiency and is low impact to wildlife and humans that live near one.

Alexcis: You need to check your site directly. It is important to
look at solar and wind maps that show what class your area is in,
but it is more important to look at the site yourself because
terrain differences cause differences in microclimates and sun
exposure. For instance, if your land is on the north side of a
mountain, the mountain may block sun for much of the day. The same
goes for large trees in a heavily forested area. And so on. Wind is
much more variable and much more affected by differences in terrain
causing unique micro-climates. You simply have to be onsite
checking the wind patterns over a space of a year to get an idea of
what wind patterns and speeds will be like on your land. Not only
that, but individual spots on your property may have much more wind
on average than the rest of the land. I live in central Spain, and
this area gets good sun most of the year. Because of the large
number of mountain ranges, there are many areas within Spain that
also get good wind. I get a fair amount of wind. In my opinion, it
is always best to go with a hybrid system if you are off-grid (I
have a 1kW Bergey wind turbine and 600W PV system that supplies all
my house electrical needs; of course, I have a small house, all my
electrical appliances are ultra energy-efficient, and my
energy-consumption habits and lifestyle are conservative.) The
sun-wind combo compliments each other. Often when it is not sunny,
it is windy. And you often get wind at night when there is no sun.
As a matter of fact, taking advantage of as many energy sources as
possible is best. I plan to put a micro-hydro turbine in my
seasonal creek in future because the times of the year when I get
both little wind and little sun are those times when my creek is
exploding with flowing water energy. The trick is determining the
balance. If you get lots of sun all year round, and the wind is
strong on occasion, go with a bigger PV array and smaller wind
generator and vic

looking for info, residential wind power, chandler texas, thank you

I enjoyed your article on Windpower. I just installed a 10KW Bergey
on a 100' Lattice tower. I have also just become a Dealer for
Bergey and hope to get very involved in Wind Energy. I have been
happy with my production so far. I havae produced 1050 KWH in the
first 23 days and we have had less wind than usual for
November.There were no problems with installation or start up and
have been no glitches since commissioning on November 2, 2007. I
also must give credit to Ameren Power for their quick response to
my request for inter connect to the grid. They were quite helpful
and cooperative to work with. I had anticipated a less than
enthusiastic response but was pleasantly surprised. I'm looking for
a 8 year pay back on my system with the 50% funding from the State
of Illinois and the recently passed net metering act which takes
place April 1st of next year. Hope this is useful info for somebody
and would be glad to answer any inquires at the E-mail address..
Thanks Dan

thank you john for your comment. you are so right.

Sheryl: Actually, the wind map does open but the map is awfully
small. I did some rough scaling and it looks like you are out of
luck as you are in class 1; you would need to be further west (like
Canton) just to get into a class 2 area. Alexcis: We are building
north of Sparks, NV which is somewhere between a class 2 and 3.
Wind power has a terrific capital cost and we are not going to use
it; we will use solar for electric and water heating. But I am not
going to invest in batteries, the grid will provide the off-solar
power. Do some back issue reading of Home Power as they are very
thorough about costs and even systemics of all systems. But start
with knowing your site's solar potential and wind power class, how
much do you want to spend and how much you want/need to be off the
grid. Getting off the grid will require both solar and wind
generation. Here in Tucson, solar water heating saves so much
electric power for a small investment(built it my- self from a kit)
with a 2 year payback. Electric is a long term payback,I figure it
will take 10 years in Nevada. Hope this helps. Lee Olson

Hello! My family is currently building two houses on our ranch
property in Mora, NM. We live in San Diego, CA and are doing much
of our business via email/phone correspondence. Right now we are
currently debating whether to go with solar or wind energy for our
houses. Could you please explain the benefit of choosing to go
solar over wind or vice versa? Any and all help would be greatly
appreciated. -Alexcis Melendez

The problem with solar and wind is in the fails assumption that net
metering actually works, if it did, the power companies would not
need a LAW mandating it. Imagine a scientist came up with a magic
black box that put out no power 2/3 the time, then of 1/3 of the
time it put out too little power with surges of way too much power.
In the real world, that is an interseting novelty, but hardly
useful. That is solar and wind. They put out random amounts of
power most of the time. To be useful, you have to match the power
with the load. The average house uses 1.5 kw/hr, but try running
the average house on a 1.5 KW generator. You can't. By the time you
turn on a microwave and the refrigerator, you are way over 1.5 KW
and you've burned up the generator. You need a power source that
can rise and fall, that can match the demand. To run a house, you
need surges of 10KW down to .5KW. The magic of the grid is its
ability to do this seamingly impossible task. That is the science
of LOAD MANAGEMENT. The more random power generators that get
plugged into the grid by legal mandates of NET METERING, the more
difficult load management will be. Consider, every time the wind
surges, the windmill pumps power into the grid. Perhaps enough to
run two houses. The wind dies. Now your house and the other house
start drawing power from the grid under NET METERING. To the load
manager, he has the effect of 2 homes suddenly jumping onto the
grid out of nowhere. The missing link is the same problem electric
cars have, The battery. To store in the megawatt range is difficult
and expensive to do. To make windmills really work, you have to
store power in the TERAwatt range. The challenge of that dwarfs the
challenges of the Manhatton Project. Sorry, it ain't ready. Not
yet.

Is Wind Power Cost-effective for You? The link to the wind map in
this article does not work. How can I find out whether Hawkins TX
75765 is an effective place to build a windmill?

Genrally speaking I find only about 5%-10% of any publication
useful. Therefore, I peruse many of them. While I'm not cancelling
my subscription to MEN, it never ceases to amaze me at some of the
things I read in your magazine. Apparently you feel that somewhere
between $15,000 and $80,000 for a wind power system is affordable.
While in the large picture (the business or financial picture) it
might be cost effective, it's not particularly useful to the
average person. Unfortunately, there is a very low percentage of
people that have more than enough money and a very high percentage
of people who don't have enough. If it's going to cost me $15,000
plus to save the world, then the world is going to die. Because I,
and the majority of people, can't afford this. Since it's really up
to the majority of people (you know....the ones without alot of
money....) it would be more effective to present articles that us
poor people can find useful.

ABOUT !!June/July 2007 New and Improved Wind Power By Greg Pahl I
would like to see a comprehensive article about the onslaught of
our rural countryside's by mega corporations driven by greed and
subsidized to the teeth by our government.All this crap about wind
power is nothing but another way to factory farm our resources.This
is insanity at its best, and without an end in sight. Gov. Spitzer,
following Pataki's previous administrations agenda,and what's
around the corner??? the threat of eminent domain down our throats,
driven by lobbyists foreign corporations. Sound familiar??? take a
look at some of these websites if you need some heart wrenching
testimony and FACTS about these wind farms and Americas increasing
loss of civil rights. You spout off about saving the land for
future generations? This is another HUGE scam, FREE CHEESE!!! come
and get it, the casualties of war( tax payers) will sit and watch,
do nothing as usual. http://www.windaction.org/
http://www.savewesternny.org/