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Is Backyard Wind Power Worth It?
eldavojohn wonders: "In the October IEEE Spectrum magazine, I read an article on backyard windmills and their growing feasibility. With the lowest model's price tag, it's about $9,000 and lasts for around 100,000 kilowatt-hours (20 year life), which results in 9 cents per kilowatt-hour. Now, the article mentions that if the market takes off, that price will drop. However, I was wondering what price range the windmills would have to fall to (or the energy rates have to rise to) before I could consider this? Well, the price of the windmills in the article are out of my price range right now. I don't imagine many Americans have $8k-$11k laying around and the current month's rates for energy in my neighborhood are 2.2 cents/kWh for the first 800 kWh and 1.2 cents/kWh after. I was wondering what are your thoughts on being an early adopter of wind energy? Do you think that if enough people bought these windmills, the price per kWh could compete with the local power grid's? Will it ever?"
Are you sure you are reading your bill correctly? Are you in canada or something? I think i pay about 13 c / kwh
e 5_6_a.html ,,
.. the distribution cost is fixed) .. if you are making energy on site you save on both since they aren't distributing that power to you...
here is a list of average prices around the US
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/tabl
1/2 is the distribution cost and 1/2 is the generation cost..(this is only matters if you choose a different energy provider as all you can save is the generation cost
I haven't looked into windmills myself as I'm still living the apartment life, but I've a friend who has read up on the matter some and raves about the vertical axis windmill and all the benifits thereof. Were I in a position to consider it, I'd start with these.
Is .02/KWH right? I just got my bill today and saw that I was billed an "energy cost" of 0.029/kwh for all power over the month + between 2.6 cents and 8.5 cents per kwh depending upon the date (summer/"winter" billing). If my real cost per unit of power is between 5 cents and 10 cents, it's not quite as much of a stretch for spending $9000 on a small windmill.
I think that the power company has been taking lessons from the telephone company in producing their billing statements.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
The big problem with wind power is that on top of that price, you also have to invest in a huge (and very expensive) energy storage system that can supply your entire energy needs for at least a day when there is little/no wind.
I don't think he mentioned going off the grid, which would be a pretty bad idea. He just talked about putting in a windmill. If there is no wind, you just buy from the grid. If you generate surplus energy, you dump it on the grid (to the dismay of the power company). At least where I live the power company is required to pay me for the power I dump onto the grid, regardless of the spikiness or other undesirable aspects of it. Also, staying on the grid and having a generation system provides an emergency backup.
Just build your own, maybe a few small ones or one larger one.
1 000_watt_wind_turbine.html
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/06/diy_
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
If you have reasonable wind resources and reasonable solar resources -- then wind wins by about a factor of 2. I won't touch the renewables issue. The best way to go is to increase your efficiency before you spend money trying to generate your own power -- but people don't like to hear that message.
I just want to know where this guy is getting 0.02/kwh. Indianapolis power and light is some of the cheapest elect in the country (my brother does geothermal heating and they are his power co). IPL charges about 0.06/kwh for residential heating. Maybe the OP is math challenged and paying $0.20/kwh (expensive power).
The question with wind power is as much one of resource as it is economics. It doesn't matter if the turbine is rated at 1M kwh if your available wind is only capable of sourcing 100W. Moreover, the bigger the turbine the higher the cut-in speed. A 30kW turbine needs more wind to start up than a 10kW which is more than a 1.5kW. Also, unless you are in a state (like MN, WI) with aggressive net metering legislation the economics may not work out. Also, write to your congress critter: there's a bill up to provide favorable tax treatment for small (100kW) wind configs. I want that legislation because it shifts the balance for a 10kW at my particular location from "works but not a clear winner" to "no-brainer".
For $9k the poster has to be looking in the 1.5kW range for a turbine. The RMS output for those runs around 300W for say class II to class III wind. If it did the math right 0.3kw * 365dpy * 24hpd * 0.02 $/kwh = $52.56. So pay off would be around 171y.
(At 0.2/kwh that would be 17y which is about the common price -- back of the envelope generally turns out that you get "free" power for the last 1/3 to 1/2 of the turbine life span.)
1. Someone I know lives on 50-odd acres; his house is about 1/2 mile from the road. As I understand it, the power company quoted him $18,000 to run power poles from the road to his house. Of course, this upfront cost was just for the opportunity to send them money every month thereafter. For that same $18,000 he bought a complete power system including a bunch of special batteries, high tech electronic load and generation management and a diesel generator. I think the generator and batteries came from folks who had installed Y2K panic systems, and never used them. For several years he ran the generator once a week for a couple of hours, now he's installed two solar panels and he has gone all summer without running the diesel, though he will probably have to run it occasionaly during the winter. He has a small wind generator for testing, so far. His major electricity usage is shop tools and clothes dryer. He uses propane for hot water, and propane and wood for heat. He plans more solar panels eventually, and will then use the diesel only for emergencies.
2. According to the World Bank, small amorphous silicon solar panels are replacing kerosene lamps in rural African villages - they cost about the same as two months' worth of kerosene, provide more light than the kerosene lamps previously used, and once paid for cost nothing to run, except amortized cost of replacement every ??? years. This also offers the opportunity to radically change lifestyles in these areas. Evidently amorphous silicon panels are less efficient than the more expensive solar panels but are so much cheaper that they're a better deal. I can easily foresee several families in a village connecting their panels and batteries together, and voila! Instant community power grid, that can grow incrementally.
For the large percentage of people who live outside areas that already have well-developed electric power and other networks, localized community-based or individualized solutions including wind, solar and small hydro can be very practical, and even life changing. This paper notes that:
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
The power that a plant can generate goes by by the square of the wind speed. This is awesome news if the average wind speed on your site is greater than the "rated" wind speed for the plant. It is terrible news if your average wind speed is less. Let me give an example. suppose the rated wind speed for the plant you are looking at is 16 mph. This means that the plant will generate the stated wattage if the wind speed is 16 mph. However if the average wind speed on your site is only 8 mph, you will get only one fourth of the stated wattage.
Not only that, but you have to be careful when looking up wind speed statistics for your site. If you have no wind in 4 days out of 5, but winds of 40 mph on the fifth day, your average will be 8 mph but you will find that the energy your mill generates is less than expected. This is because most mills are designed to scale back or even stop generating in high winds, to protect the mill. Some mills will only generate significant power when the wind speed is in a rather narrow band.
Another thing. Most neighborhoods have large buildings (i.e. two story houses) and tall trees. These obstruct the wind to a great degree. Your mill needs to be well above all of the surrounding obstructions. In my neighborhood this would be impossible for all practical purposes, because we have a number of large oak trees. I'd need a tower well over 100', and my yard is not big enough for the guy wires.
To sum up, if you have constant, reliable winds that average the rated wind speed or better, with very few local obstructions, this can be a good investment. Otherwise you should pass. If you home is on the eastern shore of one of the great lakes, I'd say go for it. The other 99.9% of us will need to try something else.
While power companies may be required to pay you for your excess power, most places aren't required to pay you any more than a trivial, token amount. One fellow said that his local power company charged 14 cents/kWH, but only paid him 2 cents for his power.
Usually, folks just get set up with "net metering", where any power they dump back into the grid is deducted from how much they use. At best, you never pay for power, at worst, you only pay for what you can't generate. With a large turbine, a good, windy week could zero out your electric bill for a month or two, yet you don't have to maintain the battery banks to store that excess energy (or worry about using a "dump load" on your turbine.)
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
I have my electric bill right in front of me now (I'm living in Maine right now). Its 0.0838 / KWH PLUS a delivery charge per KWH. I'm paying closer to 10 or 12 cents most likely. Can't really say becase this damn bill is kinda hard to figure out.
Well, I agree and disagree. First off, in our system there are some minimal provisions for the less powerful. Anti-SLAPP suits, for instance, or free lawyers for criminal cases.
As for the second point, well, sorry. I got a bit off track. I was trying to point out the inherent injustice of all systems of private ownership of natural resources. The conflict in question may be between property owners, but the system of absolute property rights advocated by libertarians is just so crazy I felt the need to point out some of the flaws and contradictions in the system, and how arbitrary it really is.
Based on pure free market principles, if being part of a homeowner's association is part of the contract when you buy the house, tough. Don't like it? Don't buy that house, buy a different house. If enough people don't want homeonwner's associations, they will go the way of the dodo. If they do, well, that's the free market at work and who are you to tell other people what contracts they can and can't sign?
I don't actually think that you can be forced into a homeowner's association against your will if it wasn't in the contract, but if it was and you don't like it, well, why did you sign the contract? This is the part that bugs me, I guess, and why I felt compelled to bring the issue of non-property holders into the debate.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
There is a large difference between personal property like clothes or a wallet and real property like natural resources. You have taken the argument down to the most basic level, power, so let's look at that first. No one has the "right" to do anything. A right can't be taken away, otherwise it is a privilege, and everything can be taken away, by nature (or God, if you like) if not by man. This cruel condition is what we as a species were fighting when we got together and started forming civilization.
So if there are no inherent rights, where do rights come from, and what do they mean? The whole concept of rights revolves around society, around other people. If you were alone in the world, you would no more think of rights than a fish thinks of water. Alone without society, your power is your only right. In order to form cooperative societies that benefit all more than any could benefit himself alone, we all have to give up some of our rights. I give up my right to hit you in the face or take your things because you do the same for me.
So all rights are arbitrary, agreed upon by society because they benefit everyone. And all rights involve giving up some kind of freedom as well, so the exchange had better be worth it. In the case of violence, pretty much everyone can agree. The same goes for personal property. However, private property is a harder sell. Too many freedoms are lost by too many people for too little gain by too few.
Most people would agree that the things a person works for should be there own, and this is often used to justify private ownership of natural resources. However, in order to labor on a piece of land and thus call it your own, you need to keep others off it, and this happens before you have the justification for doing so.
So private ownership of resources can not be justified from first principles, only as an arbitrary privilege granted by society. A privilege granted very unfairly, I might add, as most resources are owned and controlled by people who labored very little for the privilege. Therefore, society has all the justification it needs to impose any kinds of limits or qualifiers on the ownership of private property, from having to pay taxes all the way to having to paint your house a certain color. If you don't like it, you con't have to own property.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
There are legitimate reasons for HOAs. Any time you share a wall, an HOA is absolutly necessary. That being said, the idea that HOAs will go the way of the dodo if people don't want them doesn't fly here in California. We have laws that limit property taxes. So, the local governments have started taking the Ben Franklin approach to increasing revenue. Basically they figured out that 'A penny saved is a penny earned.', so, they now require new development projects to form an HOA if they permits. This means that for each of the houses built, they get to tax at the old maximum rate, but they do not supply the services that those taxes would have supplied in the past. It is basically a run around the tax laws.
Due to this, the number of houses per capita that are available that are not in an HOA is artifically limited. In fact, here in California, builders that successfully get houses built without an HOA, advertise that as a selling feature of the house.
Read this month's magazine from http://www.homepower.com/. Also you can read this: http://www.homepower.com/files/beginner/WindPowerB asics.pdf to get the basics of wind power.
In my opinion. If you're looking for financial benefits. Forget it. This isn't a buy it, set it up and forget it kind of thing. You also need to factor in the cost of maintenance. You'll need to start looking at the appliances you have. Does that old fridge you have need to go because its such a pig when it comes to electricity? How about that washer and dryer or the furnace that heats your home? Oh, and don't forget that air conditioner. Replace those filament bulbs with energy efficient ones too. Don't forget the cost of the batteries when they decide to give up. You think the wind is going to be there all the time? You'll need them for that and when the main power grid decides to take a break for a few hours.
Thinking about selling off the excess power you make to the utilities? Yea, sure. They don't pay you anything for that power except to maybe offset your bill when your meter runs backwards. Even then, most put a limit as to how much you can contrubute to the grid. I think here in California, Southern California Edison puts a limit of 10Kw (someone will correct me if they changed it). The average family home that hasn't taken steps to get energy efficient appliances and lighting uses 5Kw/h on up. If you get a system, only get a size that will generate what you need. Any excess is just waste and you won't make any money from it. Sorry but the power companies don't want you making a profit off of them.
If you want to do this because you'll feel better that you're consuming green energy and you're interested in the technology. Then go for it and you'll have the bragging rights that most people don't.
Just my 2 bits.
Specks
Batteries not included
basically wind costs about $1.50 per watt rated power at the moment, not sure what that is in actual average power in average wind conditions (whatever they might be...), but it sounds pretty darn cheap to me. My house needs about 1kw average power, so $1500 * (rough guess out of my ass) 2 (rated = 1/2 average power) = 3-4k, my electric bill is over 1k per year, so this will pay itself off in a few years.
add on a decent inverter $1k+, battery storage for a day or so $2k, and I'd be mostly off grid for about 6-7k, payoff time, 5-6 years.
watch "the money masters" on google video