Thread: Wind power? Anybody skeptical?

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Originally Posted by R Pope

You guys should visit SW Alberta. There are hundreds of huge windmills there, feeding into the grid. Same in Saskatchewan, down by Swift Current. My cousin has a few old Windchargers making electricity for part of his farmyard.
Saskatchewan is windy because Alberta blows and Manitoba sucks!

Not sure I agree, but that's funny!!

We have a bunch of the windmills popping up around the countryside as well. Has to be 50 or so just outside of Shelborn ON, 40 or about on the east side of Lake Huron around the Kincardine area. And six new ones at the south end of Lake Huron at Kettle Point ON. Thing is, if they weren't paying and producing, they wouldn't be building them. It's not the whole answer, but then nothing is, but it's playing it's roll as part of the solution for now.

A guy in our area has started a business of putting up the turbine windmills. I have been thinking about it for sometime and with propane getting higher, and higher it is looking better. When we moved to the country about 13 years there was a guy in one of the small towns around us he had one. I heard it cost $16,000 and at the time if he was generating more then he could use he would get repaid from the power company but they have since changed that set up. If you generate more then you use, you get a credit and it is only good for so long. When he does not need the power he shuts his off, it takes a small amount of wind to get his going.

This year it has cost us over $4,000 to pre pay for this coming season, and that was doing some bargaining with two companies. If I use more then what I have stock piled I’m in trouble. I’m locked in at one company at $2.38 and the other at $2.68. I pre paid at $1.89 plus 7% tax at one company and $1.99 plus 7% tax at another. We will be at 58 degree’s with a sweater. If I could get a turbine windmill I could at least save on electric, which is going up because they said coal has gone up 98% over last year. Hot water heater, electric stove, oven plus one electric furnace. I may have to move in the tree house, and shut the big house down.

Richard

Richard, we have a much milder winter here, where solar panels on the garage roof, would roll back our daily electric bill to pennies. What is popular here right now is solar set ups without the battery back up. What they do, is roll the electric meter backwards when they are producing electricity. The benefit is, no battery systems to maintain, just a radically reduced electric bill from PGand E. The bad part is yes, at night you are using energy off the power company, buit most of that consumption is rolled back during the day. My thought were to run electric space heaters at night during the winter, to lower our natural gas bill(mostly used to heat the house) and use the solar to off set electric from fan, lights etc in the summer.
If our place was bigger, and not in the downtown area, I'd definately look into the windmill option. I'm not so worried about getting off the grid, as I would like to lower my monthly bills. Unfortunately as stated by all, all of these options cost.

Hot rod daddy. There was a guy in the 70's who built a wind generator from 50 gallon drums, cut in half length wise as wind catchers all welded together to form an air wheel so to speak. He then connected the drive shaft to washer and dryer motors and used them as power generators. With the power he produced, it spun his house around(sort of like the top of the space needle in Seattle). It still exists, and the wind turbin still spins today. His house is above Hwy 101 in Novato CA.

Don S.
My Father in Law was working for Toyota Industrial(fork lift division). Toyota was working with a hot electric power entrapaneur(sp?) in Sacramento. She had taken a Porsche 914 and converted it to an electric vehicle as a graduate project. She was helping Toyota with their electric vehicle research. My father in law said, it was a very cool car. He liked that she put the charging plug on a retractable mechanism that sucked it back up into th tail pipe when not in use. I'm wondering if this may be the same Porsche you were refering to?

I saw that he met with Congress today and every news agency in the known universe covered it. Seems like a very intelligent guy from all the interviews I've seen.

We think big in Texas.Ideas are big in Cal.Texans are practical and realist(sp)and we take an idea and make it a reality.T Bone is a very wealthy person but he is also a very generous person.He sees a problem and acts on it.He is not greedy as most of the enegy companies are displaying.I hope we can some how come together as a nation and start addressing our many problems,if not we will lose our Strongest Nation In The World status.If that happens we are headed for disaster.JMO

Originally Posted by ford2custom

A guy in our area has started a business of putting up the turbine windmills. I have been thinking about it for sometime and with propane getting higher, and higher it is looking better. When we moved to the country about 13 years there was a guy in one of the small towns around us he had one. I heard it cost $16,000 and at the time if he was generating more then he could use he would get repaid from the power company but they have since changed that set up. If you generate more then you use, you get a credit and it is only good for so long. When he does not need the power he shuts his off, it takes a small amount of wind to get his going.

This year it has cost us over $4,000 to pre pay for this coming season, and that was doing some bargaining with two companies. If I use more then what I have stock piled I’m in trouble. I’m locked in at one company at $2.38 and the other at $2.68. I pre paid at $1.89 plus 7% tax at one company and $1.99 plus 7% tax at another. We will be at 58 degree’s with a sweater. If I could get a turbine windmill I could at least save on electric, which is going up because they said coal has gone up 98% over last year. Hot water heater, electric stove, oven plus one electric furnace. I may have to move in the tree house, and shut the big house down.

Richard

Richard, in my opinion, you need to step back and examine your quality of life. Going through the winter with the thermostat set on 58 and wearing heavy clothes in the house is not my idea of ideal. I lived a short time in Wisconsin under those conditions and know what it's like. MISERABLE. If I were you, I'd be taking a look at relocating to a more moderate climate so I could enjoy life more. You probably have a well paying job and family in the area, but you have to balance that with what it's costing you to be miserable. Your mental health is at stake.

Wind power? Anybody skeptical?

Let's see...the government is involved. Hmmm....
I need to think about this for 2 nanoseconds.

Originally Posted by robot

Wind power? Anybody skeptical?

Let's see...the government is involved. Hmmm....
I need to think about this for 2 nanoseconds.

We didn't wait for the government, been going around here for 10 years or so..... Maybe it's not the total answer, but it's something. Beats the heck out of paying ridiculous electric bills... on the farm we use solar powered electric fences, been using them for 15 years or so....

Got to learn more about the new solar panels, I have a huge roof with a southern exposure....

Originally Posted by Dave Severson

We didn't wait for the government, been going around here for 10 years or so..... Maybe it's not the total answer, but it's something. Beats the heck out of paying ridiculous electric bills... on the farm we use solar powered electric fences, been using them for 15 years or so....

Got to learn more about the new solar panels, I have a huge roof with a southern exposure....

I need to learn about solar panels, my garage gets sun from the time it rises till sundown, would be a great place for them.

Quick solar lesson: The solar energy falling on one square meter surface perpendicular to the source is approximately 1KW. Therefore, in one hour, the equivalent energy falling on that (perpendicular to the sun) surface is 1 KWh. Solar cells are not very efficient....kind of like a government employee. The ranges are from somewhere in the 7-8% to some of the newer styles that are approaching 20%. Let's use 12% for discussion.

If you have 200 amp service, you have the ability to draw 200 Amps X 220 Volts or roughly 44 KW every hour or 44 KWh. This would take 44 divided by .12 or 367 square meters of active panels. We know from arithmetic class that 1 sq meter equals 10.76 sq ft so our panel is 3950 sq ft. Of course, you dont draw 44KW all the time so your actual required panel size is much smaller. The panel size is dependent upon where you live because there are places where the sun doesnt shine!

A way to calculate the cost of the installation is from an Arizona web page:
First, take number of KWH shown on your bill. Divide that by 30. That gives you your average daily usage. So if you use 700 KWH, that is 23.3 KWH per day.
Take that number. Divide it by the number of full sun hours you get per day on a yearly average. (there are data on full sun hours for your region if you do an internet search) Multiply it by 1.15. That will give you a pretty close estimate of how many watts of solar panel you need. So if you get 5 hours per day, divide 23.3 by 5 - that gives you 4.66 KW, or 4,666 watts. Multiply that by 1.15, which gives you 5,360 watts of solar panel needed.
Average installed cost of solar electric if you do it yourself is around $7 per watt, or $9 if you have it installed by a licensed contractor. That includes the cost of the panels, inverters, wire, mounts, and other hardware. It does NOT include anything else you might need to pay for, like inspections or extra watt meters by the electric company. So that system will cost you around $37,500. A battery based system will cost around 20-30% more.

Remember, if the sun is not shining, you have zero output from your panels.

Hmmm....kinda expensive, isnt it?

and there are government incentives (who pays for these?)

http://www.dsireusa.org/

I don't know, got to try something. Allready getting warnings on what natural gas for heat is going to be next winter....

No matter who gets elected, it's a cinch nothing is going to change overnight.... With gasoline staying high, and natural gas predicted to almost double, gonna be a tough winter up north!!!!

Well, even if you don't have the rubles to buy into a solar panel array, you can most certainly put a dent in your power bill by constructing hot water panels. Run the hot water that is produced during the day into a large container. Pull from the container to do all your washing and showering at night instead of using electricity or gas to produce hot water. A little further engineering could produce some old fashioned radiators. Run the hot water through them with a pump, set a fan behind them and presto, space heat. These panels are very simple and cheap to make yourself.
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects...er_heating.htm
http://www.diydata.com/projects/sola..._collector.php

Going off the grid is just as much about conserving as it is about producing energy.
No way do you need a 200 amp service for a conservative home. An aggressive off the grid home could get by fine on half that, have wind/solar/battery system with a one lunger lister running on used grease for cloudy still days. I think anyone who is handy could build the whole system and get it working for under 10 grand. You could always add more panels as you could afford to.
Also I would look into a pellet stove. People here are heating for $2-$3 a day.
Also you might look into having an energy audit done. Some states have a one time energy grant to help you get more efficient.

why not pass a bill requiring all the blowhards in washington D.C. to daily blow west in unison?? but then again they would blow $100 billion on a study of how 2 to 3 blows daily would be better than one..