Adding Wind Turbine to your off grid solar setup

[SunEagle]

A sailboat is hardly a perpetual motion machine. That is just physics at work. Ever see an ice boat sail into the wind? The faster it goes the more it has to fall off the wind because as the boat picks up speed the apparent wind moves forward and the sail loses efficiency.
A wind turbine driving the wheels of a car directly into the wind is not sailing, it is transferring the power of the wind to the wheels. That is not perpetual motion either.

I believe a wind turbine works fine if the boat is docked. It won't produce that much but should get some type of charge into the battery system. I have seen it done many times around the marinas here in Florida.

[Ampster]

A sailboat is hardly a perpetual motion machine. That is just physics at work. Ever see an ice boat sail into the wind? The faster it goes the more it has to fall off the wind because as the boat picks up speed the apparent wind moves forward and the sail loses efficiency.
A wind turbine driving the wheels of a car directly into the wind is not sailing, it is transferring the power of the wind to the wheels. That is not perpetual motion either.

[nwdiver]

Even funnier was the video of the Chinese farmer who built an EV with a propeller on the front which he claimed generated enough power to run the car.

Not suggesting that works but it's not as crazy as it sounds. Sailboats can sail into the wind with a point of sail called 'close hauled' (just not directly into the wind). There's also a youtube video of a car someone made with a wind turbine coupled to car that CAN sail directly into the wind.

[extrafu]

This guy (https://www.youtube.com/user/JOXHDANNEL/videos) tested a fair amount of small wind turbines. I found his videos to be quite informative.

[Ampster]

.......

A parting "funny": I was on one of the RV forums and a gent was asking for help putting a wind turbine on his RV so he could generate "free power" while driving down the highway.

Even funnier was the video of the Chinese farmer who built an EV with a propeller on the front which he claimed generated enough power to run the car.

[PNW_Steve]

Forgive me if this has already been covered.

I have looked over wind installations ranging from a 400 watt turbine on an 8' mast to the 175' tall behemoths we have in our backyard.

To get clear air you need significant height. The residential installations that I worked around were all 80'-125' high. There is a great YouTube video that really illustrates it really well.
That said, I have friends with sailboats with small turbines mounted on an 8'-12' pole. Did they get good clear air? No... But their wind turbine still makes significantly more power than mine. As I don't have one. It also outperforms their solar all night long.

We have hundreds of wind towers in our area. If we had to rely on them solely for our power we would be screwed. However, they are a great supplement to other methods of generation.

A parting "funny": I was on one of the RV forums and a gent was asking for help putting a wind turbine on his RV so he could generate "free power" while driving down the highway.

[JackB]

I’m interested in learning more about your system.

[Xplode]

OldMech - I'd be interested to know more about your setup. What kind of winds do you get? Are they intermittent and gusting, or sustained? What system did you add? Where is your turbine located geographically? (lakeside, mountains, field?) and how high is it?

Reason I ask is because we have a couple family cabins that are also about a mile in off the road, and we enjoy visiting for weekends, but the In-Laws are starting to spend more and more time there, and it is not uncommon to have a few days of bad weather. The solar system I'm installing will likely not keep up without regular generator intervention. They asked me about wind and a cursory search led me to believe that it's not a good idea, but we are located at the end of a lake where the wind predominantly blows directly in off the lake... so maybe I can squeak out a few hundred Wh a day of wind power?

[OldMech]

Wow... everyone is coming down on the addition of wind... so I HAVE to give my.02 worth...
OFF GRID cabin in the Maine woods, living there full time with my wife. We had 8 300 watt panels and six big lead acid batterries. The system worked like a dream. I was VERY skeptical when she bought the place, but very quickly came to love it...
However...
Maine winters, with a week or more of cloudy snowy weather. It happened to us several times, and we ended up running the generator about every two to three days to keep the batteries charged... That was okay, except that it was a mile and a quarter to the main road, and during nasty storms it was often several days, and once two weeks before we could get plowed out. I was okay with being snowed in a month at a time, but getting gas for the generator was important.
I had a 2000watt wind turbine added to the system... It ENDED our struggle completely. Waking up in the morning on a windy snowy day, dreading trudging through 43 inches of new snow to get to the panels and clean them off... and looking at the controller on the wall as it said FLOAT CHARGING gave me a VERY warm cozy feeling. I no longer had to go out every two or three hours to brush off the solar panels trying to get JUST as much light to them as possible. We no longer had to run the generator.. EVER! Once the wind turbine was online, we didn't start the generator for over a year. We even installed a clothes dryer so we didn;t have to hang our clothes out in the winter. Running the microwave or the deep well pump no longer made me cringe, and my wife bought a small AC unit for the bedroom window. We didn;t have to use it much, but on those 100 degree days it was NICE to have.
I am not saying we no longer had to concerve power. We did, always. We didn't use what we didn't NEED to use. the wood stove was usually enough to dry our clothes hanging over the rail in the loft, and the breeze off the river usually kept us cool ebnough to sleep. But on those LONG winter weeks when we were snowed in, we could sit and play Xbox on our big screen ALL DAY and never once worry about power.

I was so impressed and happy with that system, that I am currently working up the necessities to run our farm/house here in Iowa. I WILL be adding wind to the system. In fact, we have so much wind that I could probably go without solar completely. However, I do like the lack of maintenance solar offers, so we will have both, and once set up, I am taking the shotgun out and MURDERING the meter on the power pole...
SO.... I am unsure why everyone comes down on wind, speaking with distaste and even disgust about it???
I LOVED IT! It made our lives a lot easier.

Perhaps, it was more cost effectiveto run the generator? Perhaps, it would have been more cost effective to install more panels, and or batteries? Dunno, I didn;t do those things, I added wind, and it worked like a DREAM!

[zamboni]

I think that for some, WECS is just interesting. Which makes it harder to let go when you start reading arguments against it. Some of us just inherently want to believe it's a good idea. I suppose it's not the first time people have believed an irrational thing because it made them feel good... I wasted much more time thinking about wind power than I should have.

The cubic relationship between windspeed and energy extraction (mentioned in the above-linked solacity page) is what finally drove home Truth for me. Most of us here are familiar with RE equipment ratings and how they never represent real-world conditions. That's not so bad when the relationship is linear; solar panels never make rated wattage but they can get kinda close if you do things right. But with a cubic relationship...that's just...hopeless.

"Hello, my name is Jerud and i used to be addicted to wind turbines."

[asdex]

I have a 500 watt Air-X turbine as well as 2kw of panels. When the turbine is producing on a sunny day the solar controller cuts back it's charging as it senses the higher voltage so not much use. Although with a few days of stormy dull weather it does help a bit to keep the batteries up. Overall not really worth it though. It looks good and makes you feel good looking at to spinning. Also good as a windvane to see which way the wind is blowing.

[J.P.M.]

"Norway remains one of the few countries where electricity is the main heating source. The main heating source for about 73 per cent of the households is based on electricity, either by electric space heaters (48 per cent), electric floor heating (7 per cent), air-air heat pumps (21 per cent) or central heating with electricity."
If you are interested, I found these stats: https://www.ssb.no/en/energi-og-indu...aar/2014-07-14

All of our self produced elec is from water, so its quite green and cheap. It would make no sence to go solar, or wind

Last three months the average price is 12 cents, its cheaper in summer time.

Interesting information. I learn something every day.Thank you.

[mayhassen]

"Norway remains one of the few countries where electricity is the main heating source. The main heating source for about 73 per cent of the households is based on electricity, either by electric space heaters (48 per cent), electric floor heating (7 per cent), air-air heat pumps (21 per cent) or central heating with electricity."
If you are interested, I found these stats: https://www.ssb.no/en/energi-og-indu...aar/2014-07-14

All of our self produced elec is from water, so its quite green and cheap. It would make no sence to go solar, or wind

Last three months the average price is 12 cents, its cheaper in summer time.

[J.P.M.]

Dont know about electrical usage in US, I would guess it would depend on a lot of things, as it is here. A house in Norway tyically uses 20.000kWh/year, which 16k is electrical.

Location does matter, and yes icing and such can happen. In my case, not very often as its close to the sea. Vibration is a concern, and you dont have it on top of your roof.
I have about 100km of nothingness in front of my location.
As I said earlier, I would not rely on it, only more have it as a possible backup e.g. for keeping water above freezing.

I still think its an interesting thing to discuss, altough Hugh says it quite clear:"It

Looks like some of your post got clipped, but I'd suggest that if the typical residence in Norway uses 20 thousand kWh/yr., and 16 thousand of those kWh are electrical (with the remaining 4 thousand kWh/yr. in thermal equivalent or fossil fuel burning equivalent. Given that the annual U.S. electrical usage is approx. 12 thousand kWh per residential unit, if annual electrical usage in Norway is 16 thousand kWh/yr for a typical residence, that would indicate to me that that Norway may supply a lot of residential space heating via electricity.

What does a kWh of electricity go for in Norway ?

[mayhassen]

Dont know about electrical usage in US, I would guess it would depend on a lot of things, as it is here. A house in Norway tyically uses 20.000kWh/year, which 16k is electrical.

Location does matter, and yes icing and such can happen. In my case, not very often as its close to the sea. Vibration is a concern, and you dont have it on top of your roof.
I have about 100km of nothingness in front of my location.
As I said earlier, I would not rely on it, only more have it as a possible backup e.g. for keeping water above freezing.

I still think its an interesting thing to discuss, altough Hugh says it quite clear:
"It