diy solar

diy solar

Small wind turbines no longer worth it?

brandnewb said:
did you see my thread already about cheap chinese junk? If you just wnat to tinker with it then sure go ahead. it's cheap after all. Just do not buy it as an actual power source
Click to expand...

I am just looking for a power source (with no sun), but like 30 watts isn’t bad. A Rasberry PI consumes like 4 watts. 30 watts on average per hour for 50 days is 36 kWh.

The thing that makes the most sense is a generator with remote start, but my budget is pretty done for a while, and that is like a 2-3k investment.

But for it to be worth even trying, I want something that I know can produce something that goes into the battery. I am not even sure if that is possible.
 
rhino said:
Just fyi, the smallest non "toy" turbine I know of is the 7m Bergey. They used to have a smaller one but I see they've gotten rid of that. There just isn't a lot of options below the 10kW range. There was another good one in the UK that had smaller ones from Proven Energy but they went bankrupt after a flaw was discovered in one of their turbine models.
Click to expand...
While Bergey's are certainly not toys they grossly underperform the manufacturers claims. You'll be lucky to get 50% of thier estimated KWH's and 25% is the norm from what I've seen. Stay away from them is my advice from some very painful and expensive personal experience. If you have some personal experience otherwise I'd love to hear about it.

edit to fix a typo
 
Last edited:
Messier11 said:
But for it to be worth even trying, I want something that I know can produce something that goes into the battery. I am not even sure if that is possible.
Click to expand...
Yes there is one. Someone answered in message #62. It might not make it more than a few seasons but so it's up to you to determine if it's worth trying.
 
Here's a classic example in real time of the fallacy of VAWT's. Quite literally a classic example. All the buzz words....revolutionary, makes power in low wind speeds, not effected by turbulence, doesn't need a tower, storm proof, bird friendly, etc so and so forth.

4 years into it and still don't have a working model but somehow are still asking for and getting investors.
 
I 100% buy the argument based on physics by @upnorthandpersonal. Another good analogy is looking at the power a human can produce on an exercise bike. Normally you can get up to 100 watts, and perhaps 200 watts for a hard 30-40 minutes cession.

For a wind to match half of the power I produce on a exercise bike (50 watts), small gusts aren’t enough, there must be pretty much power behind the rotations or extremely fast rotations.
 
Last edited:
OzSolar said:
Here's a classic example in real time of the fallacy of VAWT's. Quite literally a classic example. All the buzz words....revolutionary, makes power in low wind speeds, not effected by turbulence, doesn't need a tower, storm proof, bird friendly, etc so and so forth.

4 years into it and still don't have a working model but somehow are still asking for and getting investors.
Click to expand...

This is another:

Home - Ventana Tek

www.ventanatek.com www.ventanatek.com

Look at those specs...


97.4% efficiency (probably referring to the generator)
3m^2 swept area.
10 mph wind @ 3m^2 swept area only has 160W of power in it... yet they manage to get 1800W out of it...

LOL
 
OzSolar said:
While Bergey's are certainly not toys they grossly underperform the manufacturers claims. You'll be lucky to get 50% of thier estimated KWH's and 25% is the norm from what I've seen. Stay away from them is my advice from some very painful and expensive personal experience. If you have some personal experience otherwise I'd love to hear about it.

edit to fix a typo
Click to expand...
I don't have personal experience but that was the next one on my list to try if I kept going through turbines (African Wind Power and a Kestrel). I have no idea then who makes reasonable turbines under 10kW... luckily I just focus on solar now instead.
 
rhino said:
I don't have personal experience but that was the next one on my list to try if I kept going through turbines (African Wind Power and a Kestrel). I have no idea then who makes reasonable turbines under 10kW... luckily I just focus on solar now instead.
Click to expand...
Thanks for clearing that up. I've been around renewables including small wind for just over 30 years now. IMHO, Bergey most definitely does not deserve it's reputation. There's an odd thing that I've observed, the only people that recommend Bergey's are the ones who have no personal experience with them.

I did the math recently: $15k of PV will easily outproduce a $70k Bergey using it's published numbers but since those numbers are overstated by a factor of 2 it's really $7.5k of PV is all that needed and it will still be working in 20+ years.

FWIW, I was also been around a few Proven's when they were alive. Completely miserable performers, one in particular was set up in Casper Wyoming by the local college for demonstration and monitoring. It wasn't even hitting 15% of it annual energy estimates. So it's not just Bergey that is weaving the tall tales about production.

I honestly believe there is no reasonable turbine of any size or technology for the residential market. The Air 403's knock off's might work for a while but they only make 10kWH's a month if you're lucky which is useless for 99% of your average USA residences.
 
OzSolar said:
I honestly believe there is no reasonable turbine of any size or technology for the residential market. The Air 403's knock off's might work for a while but they only make 10kWH's a month if you're lucky which is useless for 99% of your average USA residences.
Click to expand...
That's good to know.. I had high hopes for the Kestrel since it was considerably higher quality than the AWP. Right now you can grab a blade and pull and push it when you are facing the alternator head and entire head moves.. which it should never do and can hear it scraping then inside the alternator head when turning.. I haven't taken it apart to figure out what happened.. but it was nice when it was running. The controller for it was also of very high quality.
 
rhino said:
That's good to know.. I had high hopes for the Kestrel since it was considerably higher quality than the AWP. Right now you can grab a blade and pull and push it when you are facing the alternator head and entire head moves.. which it should never do and can hear it scraping then inside the alternator head when turning.. I haven't taken it apart to figure out what happened.. but it was nice when it was running. The controller for it was also of very high quality.
Click to expand...
It's a bummer to have to keep beating the "stay away from small wind" drum but for some reason some really smart people continue to get sucked into all sorts of completely unbelievable schemes.

Sounds like both the yaw bearing and the rotor shaft bearing are gone. No harm is tearing into it and trying to fix it. Your local motor rewind shop might surprise you for how cheap they could fix them for. They are set up to remove and replace those types of bearings and probably wouldn't take them two hours.
 
OzSolar said:
It's a bummer to have to keep beating the "stay away from small wind" drum but for some reason some really smart people continue to get sucked into all sorts of completely unbelievable schemes.
Click to expand...
I think the only reasonable way forward is to get a consensus on where diameters reach the tipping point from small to maybe usable.

We'll never get there though on a n individual case by case basis as urban settings, with their local conditions, vary too much.
 
sunshine_eggo said:
I got into it with him via FB comments. He was posting silly videos that indicate he completely fails to understand voltage and current, or he's actively trying to mislead. I suspect he believes his own BS and it's the former... :(
Click to expand...
You have known for a long while now that I am not sure that I know what I am talking about.

I certainly do not operate on FB.

If you would care to pitch in? I do have dome great news over in the VAHT thread. And if it turns out to be bullockws then thats ok. I am just hopeing for some scrutiny,
 
brandnewb said:
where diameters reach the tipping point from small to maybe usable
Click to expand...
It’s not a threshold- there’s numerous factors.
Plus, for small-scale single rotor wind generators I think it’s like panels- you need to have like 150- 300% of what the math says to barely scrape by (if that) in winter at the shorter-day latitudes. So for a single mast single user in probably 95% of terrain/wind in the world there’s nothing between the very small scale cup/vane wind gens and the ‘small’ big wind generator mentioned above that is only 30% effective… that’s why big wind farms are mostly on high ridges with some on open plains, and many on the oceans.

The key ingredient is steady wind. Not a theoretical threshold.
 
Messier11 said:
I am just looking for a power source (with no sun), but like 30 watts isn’t bad
Click to expand...
I can get into the '30 watts ain't bad' stance. But if it requires a totally unproven 6 bladed wind turbine to spin at redicilous speeds then no. It's just too unsafe. Sure if you have a huge ranch and have no cattle and or family and neighbors then I guess it should be ok to place a few if not many of those. Personally I would never feel save surrounded with trigger happy blades.
 
terrango said:
I did it the other way.
Sirby, to be honest a small turbine does work if your not requiring a lot of performance from it. I have 2 6V batteries hooked up to my turbine and there was enough to keep it charged even in winter at -30C. All I was running off my batteries (200 AH each) were lights and 6 cameras. Now my turbine has obstacles in its path, this was intentional as last year when I put my turbine up, I was really only testing my mount to see if it would stand up to the harsh winter. Well its still standing! My 400W turbine runs almost every day even with trees in the way. Yes I have plans to increase the mast from 27 ft to 40 ft but that is next years project as I wanted to increase the turbine size (shortage of supplies currently). I am hoping to test a 2 KW turbine for a year and see how it works. If it performs good then ill be adding more in the future.

If you just need a small unit to run cameras, a small turbine will work fine as long as you have wind in your area.
If you have lots of sun, i would suggest adding a small solar panel to work with your turbine as the wind is not there everyday.
I will be posting my turbine setup in a new thread this month with photos, costs and results after 8 months of use.

Hope that helps.
Click to expand...
OK good point.

you see it's all about the angle of attach (our point of view).

Now for me a turbine should fry small batteries like those but for another perhaps not.

good addition to the show.
 
I briefly worked with a form in VT Northern Power that designed and built wind small wind turbines (Northwind 100s). Long before the company built the HR2 and HR3s that were popular. Many of the engineers were off grid at one point and many had tried wind. Across the board they all were of the opinion that small home scale wind was not worth the effort based on their experience. The engineers who made out best were the ones that built heavy duty towers in good locations as they ended up ripping down the wind turbines and leasing the tower out for cell antennas.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

P
AWP wind turbine barn find, hydro prognosis, and what to do with my A.R.E. turbine
Replies
0
Views
247
Ptom
P
Alexander
Are small wind turbines really worth it?
Replies
3
Views
584
Alexander
Alexander
Alexander
Are small wind turbines worth it?
Replies
5
Views
600
RaySE
RaySE
T
Seplos Mason 48 volt 135 AH DIY kit - Build and operation report
Replies
12
Views
3K
lrogle
L
Back
Top