Wind generators - Who has one?

[dhermesc]

I'm looking at the possibility of putting up a wind generator to suppliment the power I'm buying from the local COOP. I don't want try to power the entire house, but one that runs in conjunction with the power grid and puts out 1000 or 1500 kilowatts per hour. I don't want to deal with trying to sell to my COOP (they aren't interested anyway) but I do want to try to cut my power bill down (I'm paying almost $180 a month when I don't use AC and my wife uses the "solar powered" clothes dryer).


I was looking at this:


http://www.purplewave.com/cgi-bin/mnlist.cgi?purple311/category/HOME-IMPROVEMENT

Both the 1000 and 2000 watt ones but after I spoke the to the guy selling them he said it would take a $5000 "on grid" control unit (not counting the generator) to do what I wanted - plus installation. Even if it cut my bill in half or a a third it would hardly pay off.

 

[Anonymous-0]

Neighbor has a 10kw Bergy. We thought he was providing all of his power with it and we were interested in one. Found out he only gets about half. Since it is around $65k for one we lost interest. I think you could achieve the same savings if any can actually be had at all by spending the money on improving efficiencies around the house. What you're talking about is equivalent to a hair dryer.

 

[KEB1]

Lets do a little math here. Assuming you're talking about a 1500 watt (not 1500 kilowatts, that would be a huge generator), and assuming the wind blows enough to run the generator at full capacity half the time, you would produce on average 1500 x 12 = 18,000 watt-hours per day, or 18 kW-hrs per day. At $0.15 per KW-hr, the electricity you produce would be worth $2.70 per day.

Of course, if the wind doesn't blow that much, the amount of electricity you produce would be reduced proportionally.

Seems to me it would take an awfully long time to amortize an up front investment of $5,000 to $10,000 at a couple dollars a day. That doesn't even take into account maintenance.

Just out of curiosity, I ran an amortization calculation. At 5% interest, which is pretty cheap for a consumer loan, it would take 23 years at a savings of $2.00 per day to break even on a $10,000 investment in wind equipment. If you had any recurring maintenance costs, that break even period would be even longer.

A wind generator with a large bank of batteries might be a good investment if you were in the position of either wanting an off-the-grid lifestyle, or were located somewhere where you'd have to pay a large cost to have commercial electrical service extended to your property and needed something to supplement an engine driven generator.

There are a couple of wind generators in my neighborhood, but I don't think I've ever seen them actually turning. Don't know the owners, so not sure what the situation is.


Just my observations.

Keith


Keith

 

[dhermesc]

I agree. I was hoping the up front investment would be in the $2000-$3000 range. $5000 for the control unit alone defeats any possible savings even at our current rate of .24 per KW-hr.

I know some people have wind generators and was wondering how they ever make them pay - or are they a "feel good" investment? I know the commercial ones the utility companies are building in western Kansas are extremely expensive to operate are are increasing our rates state wide.

 

[tractormarkb]

I have a 1000 watt wind turbine I bought off of Ebay. When I get a very strong wind it spins. I bought it to maintain my off grid Battery Bank and it does not do the job. I am going to try to put it on a taller post as right now its only 20' in the air. Right now all I have is an expensive wind indicator.

 

[dave guest]

Think Bowling Green, Ohio has some in operation that I have seen. Traverse City, Mich has some I did not see in operation.

 

[buickanddeere]

You need four of these in 48V wired in parallel to charge a 12V battery bank.
The 48V rating is a gale force wind rating, not an afternoon breeze.Four of those generators are required to make an usable amount of power.
The turbines need to be 50+ ft in elevation without trees or buildings upwind.
ebay Item number: 300269946817