Windmill or Wind Powered Generator

[herdfan]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( More local to south central Minnesota there are mid-sized towers here & there, I understand it's a couple of $100,000 investment and pays off in 10 years, after that you make money. )</font>

Paul
Are these used to power several homes or just one household?
I figured to buy a system just for our home would be in the $40-60K range.
I could pay a lot of electric bills for that amount of money.

 

[herdfan]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( http://www.fieldlines.com/ is also a good source. )</font>

mrcaptainbob
Thanks for the web reference.
Looks pretty good.
Will take some time to dig through it, but should be very helpful.
Eric

 

[rambler]

herdfan, these mid-to-small size systems are for one farmsite, and generally rely upon the electric coop (out here in rural MN all the power companies are actually REA coops originally started by the gov) as a 'battery' for the system. You buy power at retail, & sell power at wholesale to the power company. If you size the system about double - 3x what you use, I believe you get the quickest pay-back, as you can spread the fixed cost over more kwa's produced, but the tower doesn't grow too big (looks like beefy TV anntenna tower) to support an even bigger windmill.

This is different than people trying to produce their own power & be off-grid. You are trying to make a profit (tho small) from the tower, independent of your own power use. It's not a real profitable way to go, but if you have some cash to invest & want to feel Green it can work if you live close enough to the 'Buffalo Ridge' of SW Minnesota, where a lot of bonus wind sweeps down the long prairie from SD.

In the far west of SW Minnesota quite a few of the major wind towers (solid tube, like a new water tower) have sprung up. They are into full-scale power production. Much of the better sites already have leases signed, and there have been problems with companies going belly up & the lease & rights being in limbo....

--->Paul

 

[TBAR]

Water pumping windmills look pretty nice.

http://community.webshots.com/photo/40489315/40492522owMybp

http://community.webshots.com/photo/40489315/57100671SvXOQd


TBAR

 

[MikeIA]

In Iowa, as far as I can tell, only invester-owned utilities are required to purchase your excess power. The cooperatives are not required, so they will fight any attempt to do "net metering".
I would recommend you contact your power company, and get a feeling on how "friendly" they are going to be.

 

[F_22]

<font color="blue"> </font> ( As little as a 1/4 mph average wind speed over the year can have quite an affect on your income. )

<font color="black"> </font> Currently available wind turbines don't generate any power at all until wind speed is at least 6 to 8 MPH. And 12 to 15 MPH is more like what's needed to generate a useable amount of power. Many areas of the U.S. don't see that kind of wind speed much of the time. See maps at: Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States
(1 meter/second = 2.237 miles/hour)

Consumer-sized wind turbines generally aren't worth the high capital investment unless you are in a remote location where it would be prohibitively expensive to physically run service lines in and/or your power needs are very small.