Need Advice On Wind power

I have been seriously looking into generating power from wind. The main reason is our power goes out due to storms. The reliability of our power company is not great. When our power goes out we do have wind! We live in a good/decent area to generate power. I am told one of the best areas in the state. I decided on wind verses solar due to cloudy days, snow, and bang for the buck DIY 12 volt wind generator. Yes, there is more service involved with wind. I was looking to start rather small with a homebuilt 12 volt system to at least power some 12 volt landscape lights and run 12 volt power into the house for a 400 watt inverter. Side benefit would be alternating stored batteries keep them fresh when Spring comes. Granted this would probably not power our propane furnace, but a step forward though to getting my feet wet! So for the short term for heat is I am looking into fixing a old RV 6000 watt onan generator for the furnace and well.

This is the plans I am looking at for starters
Purchase_Plans

I have a 60 foot tv antenna I dropped this summer that could modified and used. So is that cost is covered. Long term....eventually I would like to build one big enough to power us "partially", and maybe break even with cost in 15 years.

Any good or bad input is much appreciated!

Thanks!

I've seen 400w wind generators at Costco in the spring... for about $400 and you provide the tower. Always seemed like too much hassle for backup power when you can walk over another row and get a 4kw gas generator for the same price.

Probably the same one here. The price must have gone up.

Sam's Club - 400W Wind Generator

I would like to get a Skystream 3.7 but at about $15,000 installed I cant justify it yet. I woud save about $10-$25 a month on electric but over 20 years I am still about $4000 shy of payback. That is if 1kwh stayed at $.10.

Welcome to OTHERPOWER.COM

a good resourse for homebuilt windpower.

also any books or info from Hugh Piggott

Wind power is one of those things that the more you learn about it, the less appealing it is. The upfront cost is considerable, but then after you have it in place, what do you do with the power? Storing it in batteries is very expensive. Relying on it to supply power is always dependent on the wind and how fast the wind is blowing. Most of them have a minimum and maximum wind speed that they can work in. Too fast is very bad for them.

On commercial windmils, they require government grants to build them. Nobody is buying them on their own since they cost so much money. Then maintaining them can be extremly expensive. On a very large windfarm in the SF Bay area, the price to keep them working far exceeded the amount of electricity that they generated.

Eddie

The only thing I can add to what Eddie says is that new studies have shown that the weather conditions which produce the greatest demand for electricity, very hot days with high demand for air conditioning, tend to be calm with little wind.

Another thing Eddie didn't mention and its a big gripe to the mills in SF is that people are always after them for the birds, birds seem to fly into them. PUFF

You should not think of windpower as "backup" power...unless you install massive battery banks and inverters. Most windmills in my area are about $20,000 installed-they are hooked up with special electric meters that will allow the unused generated power to go back into the grid causing the meter to spin backwards so you build credit when your usage is very low. But as mentioned, the return on your money can take 20 years or longer!

I seriously doubt that the unit listed will run a 400w inverter also-They can draw 20 amps on the DC side to get 400w on the AC side.

The biggest problem of wind power is similar to hydropower. They are not flexible enough for the need of the grid. Now hydropower solves it in some case with transforming the energy from kinetical to potential - i.e. pumping water up the hill for the peak demand hours.

Sooo - maybe windmill with a generator and a big water tower to pump the water up when there is a wind and let it go down when you need power???

And I think I posted this one already:

Construction of a 10' diameter wind turbine