Have I got this right? (wind turbine)

[rich4]

According to weatherspark.com we have an average annual windspeed of 23kph nearly 13.8mph or 6.4m/s.

Our house is in an exposed location with very little between us and the coast 4 miles away and we get prevailing westerly winds. (no houses or trees in between, just rolling hills)

Looking at the output power of a Tesup 5kw turbine, 6.4 m/s is around 1500w.

So this would generate around 13,000 kwh a year?

Current UK electricity prices are £0.30 a unit so that's 'worth' £3900 a year...

The cost for the turbine kit including an controller, mountings and a mains inverter is £2300

So it would pay for itself in well under 12 months....

Have I got this right? Sounds a bit too good to be true.

Obviousy adding some battery storage would be worth doing too.

 

[Hogheavenfarm]

I would suspect all claims of output unless you can see others getting the same. There are some proven installations that publish data, see www.fieldlines.com and publications by scorag. Many , many variables in wind power, you might have a great spot, you might not, maybe try a cheap "toy" turbine and see how that goes first? Mine will start at 7-8mph winds, but I have 7 blades on it right now, so that limits power in higher winds, I usually switch over to three blades in the winter as the wind speed are usually higher, but its down now getting a better waterproof housing and some welding done.

 

[OzSolar]

Have I got this right? Sounds a bit too good to be true.

I'd listen to what your little voice is telling you. If they have a published power curve I'm not able to find it which is very suspicious.

Keep in mind that you really need to be at least 10m above any building or tree within 100m. In many cases that results in a tower that costs at least 2-4 times or more than what the turbine costs.

To build on what Hogheaven said I can offer that from a lot of field experience with a variety of turbines that you'll be lucky to get 1/4 the kWh's of what the manufacturer states.

Ask Tesup if they can direct you to someone who's has at least a year of experience including data. What and how they respond will reinforce what you already suspect.

Drop any turbine in this calculator and see what it spits out. I got less than 200 watts at 6.4 m/s when I put the Tesup in there.

 

[OzSolar]

There are some proven installations that publish data, see www.fieldlines.com and publications by scorag.

I'm always on the look out for data on installed turbines in the field. There's essentially nothing out there. If you have links I'd love to see them.

One can kind a find a few government studies from many years ago thus none of today's turbines are in them. They didn't supply details that made any sort of positive case for small wind. Plus those studies are pretty much devoid of long term energy data which is really all that matters.

I've scoured Fieldlines.com several times and couldn't find anything. Even posted a question asking for actual data and only got a few responses which was pretty telling. Most of the responses were to offer that it's much more about the tinkering than it is the energy so that explained a lot. In summary: the reason we don't find any decent data about small wind turbine energy production is that most people choose to ignore that detail. AKA "my mind's made up, don't confuse me with the facts"

 

[Sean Very North]

I think you should be looking at the Atlas X7, the UK Tesup site is saying it'll generate upto £130 of electricity in a day.

 

[SeaGal]

LOL.. I'll buy 3 and retire by September

 

[sunshine_eggo]

TESUP wind turbine specifications are outright lies grossly over-stating their effectiveness by more than an order of magnitude.

Please review:

Wind Resources

Rule 1: The power rating of a wind turbine has NOTHING to do with the amount of power you'll get. The amount of power you get depends on the size and efficiency of your wind turbine, and your wind. The power rating of a wind turbine is just its...

diysolarforum.com

Atlas X7:

.46m dia, .79m height. 0.36m^2 swept area.

Wind turbine calculator:

Wind Turbine Calculator [HAWT and VAWT]

The wind turbine calculator finds the power output, efficiency, RPM, torque, and revenue of a wind turbine (either HAVT or VAWT).

www.omnicalculator.com

55W MAX theoretical from the energy available in that mount of wind - 14W of power at 14mph wind vs.

TESUP_ATLASX7_Wind_Turbine_User_Manual.pdf

drive.google.com

482W, which is nearly 10X the total power available in the wind hitting the turbine and nearly 34X the actual.

 

[MurphyGuy]

Looking at the output power of a Tesup 5kw turbine, 6.4 m/s is around 1500w.

Tesup = garbage.

There is no such thing as a quality residential sized wind turbine for under $20,000. And none of them come out of China.

A $2000 wind turbine will never last long enough to make enough juice to pay for itself, let alone the tower and supporting hardware.

These cheap turbines will run for a year, maybe two if you're lucky, and then they will fail and become landfill material. And it will only make about 15% to 20% of what is claimed in the spec sheets. Most won't even achieve 10% of their specs.

 

[Sean Very North]

LOL.. I'll buy 3 and retire by September

Glad to see someone noticed that my suggestion was a joke ?

 

[OzSolar]

LOL.. I'll buy 3 and retire by September

For some reason this reminds of the the joke about the blonde....

A blonde got new windows for her house on credit. The window company sent her bill after bill but never got any payments. Finally after a year of this they sent someone to knock on her door to ask why she hadn't paid for the windows.

Her reply was "the salesman told me that they'd pay for themselves"

 

[OzSolar]

There is no such thing as a quality residential sized wind turbine for under $20,000. And none of them come out of China.

With some confidence I can state that that there is no residential scale wind turbine made for any price that will pay for itself before it will need repairs that cost more than than the value of what it produced since it was installed. Let that sink in.

 

[Sean Very North]

With some confidence I can state that that there is no residential scale wind turbine made for any price that will pay for itself before it will need repairs that cost more than than the value of what it produced since it was installed. Let that sink in.

How are you defining "residential scale" ?

 

[OzSolar]

How are you defining "residential scale" ?

10kW or less

 

[Sean Very North]

Proven (apart from the 15kW) (now Kingspan), Evance (now Britwind), previously Iskra, which sadly failed primarily due to lack of government planning foresight. All are sub 10kW turbines that have historical easily recoup their investment. Given the recent energy price hikes the ROI is a fraction if what it used to be.

These aren't 2k turbines, but they are all sub 10Kw.

 

[rich4]

I'd listen to what your little voice is telling you. If they have a published power curve I'm not able to find it which is very suspicious.

Keep in mind that you really need to be at least 10m above any building or tree within 100m. In many cases that results in a tower that costs at least 2-4 times or more than what the turbine costs.

To build on what Hogheaven said I can offer that from a lot of field experience with a variety of turbines that you'll be lucky to get 1/4 the kWh's of what the manufacturer states.

Ask Tesup if they can direct you someone who's has at least a year of experience including data.

Drop any turbine in this calculator and see what it spits out. I got less than 200 watts at 6.4 m/s when I put the Tesup in there.

The output data is in the install manual on their website. They show 5kw in a 13m/s wind which is a very strong wind and in thier tests, I would assume they use perfect turbulance free wind. While I doubt most manufacturers power figures, it does show that at more usual wind speeds, output is 20% rated power.

 

[rich4]

TESUP wind turbine specifications are outright lies grossly over-stating their effectiveness by more than an order of magnitude.

Please review:

Wind Resources

Rule 1: The power rating of a wind turbine has NOTHING to do with the amount of power you'll get. The amount of power you get depends on the size and efficiency of your wind turbine, and your wind. The power rating of a wind turbine is just its...

diysolarforum.com

Atlas X7:

.46m dia, .79m height. 0.36m^2 swept area.

Wind turbine calculator:

Wind Turbine Calculator [HAWT and VAWT]

The wind turbine calculator finds the power output, efficiency, RPM, torque, and revenue of a wind turbine (either HAVT or VAWT).

www.omnicalculator.com

View attachment 140435

55W MAX theoretical from the energy available in that mount of wind - 14W of power at 14mph wind vs.

TESUP_ATLASX7_Wind_Turbine_User_Manual.pdf

drive.google.com

View attachment 140436

482W, which is nearly 10X the total power available in the wind hitting the turbine and nearly 34X the actual.

Hmmm does look like total marketing BS! I did think it was a bit too good....

 

[OzSolar]

Proven (apart from the 15kW) (now Kingspan), Evance (now Britwind), previously Iskra, which sadly failed primarily due to lack of government planning foresight. All are sub 10kW turbines that have historical easily recoup their investment. Given the recent energy price hikes the ROI is a fraction if what it used to be.

These aren't 2k turbines, but they are all sub 10Kw.

Easily? I would love to see some data to support this.

 

[rich4]

Tesup = garbage.

There is no such thing as a quality residential sized wind turbine for under $20,000. And none of them come out of China.

A $2000 wind turbine will never last long enough to make enough juice to pay for itself, let alone the tower and supporting hardware.

These cheap turbines will run for a year, maybe two if you're lucky, and then they will fail and become landfill material. And it will only make about 15% to 20% of what is claimed in the spec sheets. Most won't even achieve 10% of their specs.

Yep, kind of what I had assumed. Then I read the Tesup manual and saw their figures and thought I'd ask here! As expected, Tesup are talking bollox...

 

[rich4]

I think you should be looking at the Atlas X7, the UK Tesup site is saying it'll generate upto £130 of electricity in a day.

View attachment 140429

wow! That really is some statment! £130 a day! So do they mean generated and sold back to the grid or just electricity you haven't needed to buy! Big difference. We get £0.12 max a unit for generated electricity and it costs £0.34 a unit to buy. So this thing makes either 1,000 units a day or maybe 'only' 382 units. Even 382 units is 16kw per hour.... Not bad for a 7kw unit which even by their chart would need a constant storm force wind... I'm might just ask them how they came to that figure....

 

[Sean Very North]

Easily? I would love to see some data to support this.

I own both a Proven 6 and an Evance, both have paid for themselves, the Proven many times over.

Perhaps you'd like to backup your "with some confidence I can state that that there is no residential ..." opinion with some data ?