Author Topic: Anyone have a wind turbine in a residential area, how well does it work?  (Read 29122 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline uncle_bob

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 2441
  • Country: us
It's not so much the rates that get you but all the other fees.  So the only way for renewable to be viable is if you can go off grid and disconnect completely.  For example, if you don't use a single kwh in a given month, you will still pay a bit over $100 that month.  Basically they'll just charge more for delivery, debt retirement fee, and all the other crap that gets added.

Hi

You save the connect fee if the system you have is adequately sized and adequately reliable to allow you to safely disconnect. Running out of electricity in mid February is ... not good (Yes I've spent time in northern Ontario in February ..).  Generally that gets you into multiple power sources and multiple storage banks. Plus you do a system that is maybe 4X bigger both in storage and energy generation than the "average output" would suggest. You can have several cloudy days in a row or several days with no significant wind.

Your main feed is still far to cheap for this to make economic sense.

Bob
 

Offline ciccio

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 659
  • Country: it
  • Designing analog audio since 1977
    • Oberon Electrophysics
I heat with gas, but they want to ban that by 2030, which is completely insane as people who do heat with hydro are spending $400+ per month. I don't think it's going to happen though but the fact that it's on the table kinda has me thinking I need to be prepared.   I really want to look into wood as supplementary heat, but that may have it's own issues legally too.  Would be super cheap though, you can legally cut trees here (until they stop that too...) I think you just need a license that's like $50.  Think they want to ban wood stoves as well though.  Basically our provincial leader sold off the hydro company and her/her buddies owns most of the stocks in it and is doing everything to force people to pay more so they can't be independent, so it's a big political mess.

I think really the only thing I can expect from this house/property is to go partial solar.  It could probably at least bring me into a near zero usage state where I'm only paying the fixed fees on the bill and maybe the occasional night time usage, where the rates are not as high.   I could also use AC in summer for practically free, as solar would work very well in summer as the days are very long.  I'd probably get like 12 hours of actual solar hitting sun, if more.

Yust for my information, what is the price of one cubic meter of gas and one kWh of power in your area?
I live in northern Italy, the wheater here is not so bad , I do not use AC, my house is not well insulated and in 2015 I paid:
- 712 Euros (1035 CAN$) for 2564 kWh of electricity  and
- 1345 Euros (1995 CAN$) for 1489 cubic meters of gas (used for cooking, sanitary water and winter heating).

Best regards

 Edit: thanks to a previous poster and a Google search I found the rates for electricity in  Northern America: If the data are correct (do they include every tax and other costs?) they are incredibly cheap.. I pay four times those prices.
« Last Edit: June 19, 2016, 03:25:43 pm by ciccio »
Strenua Nos Exercet Inertia
I'm old enough, I don't repeat mistakes.
I always invent new ones
 

Offline uncle_bob

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 2441
  • Country: us
I heat with gas, but they want to ban that by 2030, which is completely insane as people who do heat with hydro are spending $400+ per month. I don't think it's going to happen though but the fact that it's on the table kinda has me thinking I need to be prepared.   I really want to look into wood as supplementary heat, but that may have it's own issues legally too.  Would be super cheap though, you can legally cut trees here (until they stop that too...) I think you just need a license that's like $50.  Think they want to ban wood stoves as well though.  Basically our provincial leader sold off the hydro company and her/her buddies owns most of the stocks in it and is doing everything to force people to pay more so they can't be independent, so it's a big political mess.

I think really the only thing I can expect from this house/property is to go partial solar.  It could probably at least bring me into a near zero usage state where I'm only paying the fixed fees on the bill and maybe the occasional night time usage, where the rates are not as high.   I could also use AC in summer for practically free, as solar would work very well in summer as the days are very long.  I'd probably get like 12 hours of actual solar hitting sun, if more.

Yust for my information, what is the price of one cubic meter of gas and one kWh of power in your area?
I live in northern Italy, the wheater here is not so bad , I do not use AC, my house is not well insulated and in 2015 I paid:
- 712 Euros (1035 CAN$) for 2564 kWh of electricity  and
- 1345 Euros (1995 CAN$) for 1489 cubic meters of gas (used for cooking, sanitary water and winter heating).

Best regards

 Edit: thanks to a previous poster and a Google search I found the rates for electricity in  Northern America: If the data are correct (do they include every tax and other costs?) they are incredibly cheap.. I pay four times those prices.

Hi

As the original post notes, the raw cost of energy is not the whole story on the bill you get. Right now North America is awash in cheap natural gas. The market price is indeed dirt cheap. The local energy companies often do very long term contracts for gas. The result ... your local monopoly company might be paying 4X the market price for raw gas. Eventually it equalizes out ... maybe .... Corruption? Never in the US ... :).

Bob
 

Offline Red SquirrelTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2748
  • Country: ca
Yeah thing is if I did disconnect hydro I'd probably keep gas, could have a gas generator for when I need to top up the batteries, but idealy I'd want to try to size the system in such a way that it's barely needed - which may be hard due to lack of sun light hours for most of the year.   That's when the idea of wind turbine came to mind, as that can work any time of the day, so even if it's not working all day, it can still put power into the system at night.  I may have to experiment with a small one sitting on the ground just to get a feel for it.  Basically if that does somewhat half decent I know that a big one higher up will do better.

But my main issue is lack of property, so reality is I don't think I can really go full off grid.  I think my first step needs to be to do a solar setup, then run some stuff off it, and see how it goes from there.   It's not a question of if it would pay for itself but a question of when (10,20, 50 years?) as the rates go up multiple times a year so the cost is only going to get more and more expensive over time, while the solar will be a one time cost that may require one time maintenance costs every so often.    By the time I get close to retirement I will probably be paying like $500/mo at the rate the utilities keep going up.   But at that point I may just have to move since taxes will be absurd too.
 

Offline uncle_bob

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 2441
  • Country: us
Hi

All the stuff you could put in, wears out. None of it lasts forever. A 20 year payoff really isn't a payoff if the gizmo wears out in 10 years. I've been the gas fired generator route. There is still regular maintenance you have to do. They are most efficient run full blast. That gets you into battery banks and they wear out a lot faster than you would guess. 365 charge cycles a year adds up pretty quick. As the price of gas vs the price of electric (taxes on both) wanders around, there is no way to know which one is likely cheaper.

Bob
 

Offline mtdoc

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 3575
  • Country: us
People install home solar PV systems, (or small wind or microhydro turbines) for lots of different reasons. No grid power or unreliable grid power is one reason.  Wanting independence from the utility company is another.   The "feel good" nature of generating renewable energy is probably a big incentive for many,

It is very rare IME that people do it solely for financial reasons but in the USA - in many places, state or local utility incentives do make solar PV cost competitive with grid power and allow very short payback times.
 

Offline uncle_bob

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 2441
  • Country: us
People install home solar PV systems, (or small wind or microhydro turbines) for lots of different reasons. No grid power or unreliable grid power is one reason.  Wanting independence from the utility company is another.   The "feel good" nature of generating renewable energy is probably a big incentive for many,

It is very rare IME that people do it solely for financial reasons but in the USA - in many places, state or local utility incentives do make solar PV cost competitive with grid power and allow very short payback times.

Hi

One of the "interesting" side effects of a subsidized system (at least around here) is that repairing them may not make economic sense. I've had several neighbors who essentially have abandoned a system when the repair bill came in 10 years later.

Bob
 

Offline CJay

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 4136
  • Country: gb
People install home solar PV systems, (or small wind or microhydro turbines) for lots of different reasons. No grid power or unreliable grid power is one reason.  Wanting independence from the utility company is another.   The "feel good" nature of generating renewable energy is probably a big incentive for many,

It is very rare IME that people do it solely for financial reasons but in the USA - in many places, state or local utility incentives do make solar PV cost competitive with grid power and allow very short payback times.

I would say that until perhaps a year or tweo ago people in the UK installed PV for exactly that reason, financial.

If you own your property and were in a suitable location (south facing I suppose although I've seen many less than optimal installs) you could have solar installed for free by a registered installer under a government grant scheme and then use the feed in tariff which could mean your total electricity spend was zero, saving a *lot* of moeny.

What a lot of people got caught out by was the fact that the system was never theirs and they signed paperwork which meant that their roof was leased to the solar company for the pay off term of the system and in some circumstances even longer  so selling the house was very difficult if not impossible because a lot of mortgage companies would refuse to lend on it.

It was/is basically a scam to take advantage of a massively over subsidised scheme to increase the uptake of 'green' energy.
 

Offline uncle_bob

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 2441
  • Country: us
People install home solar PV systems, (or small wind or microhydro turbines) for lots of different reasons. No grid power or unreliable grid power is one reason.  Wanting independence from the utility company is another.   The "feel good" nature of generating renewable energy is probably a big incentive for many,

It is very rare IME that people do it solely for financial reasons but in the USA - in many places, state or local utility incentives do make solar PV cost competitive with grid power and allow very short payback times.

I would say that until perhaps a year or tweo ago people in the UK installed PV for exactly that reason, financial.

If you own your property and were in a suitable location (south facing I suppose although I've seen many less than optimal installs) you could have solar installed for free by a registered installer under a government grant scheme and then use the feed in tariff which could mean your total electricity spend was zero, saving a *lot* of moeny.

What a lot of people got caught out by was the fact that the system was never theirs and they signed paperwork which meant that their roof was leased to the solar company for the pay off term of the system and in some circumstances even longer  so selling the house was very difficult if not impossible because a lot of mortgage companies would refuse to lend on it.

It was/is basically a scam to take advantage of a massively over subsidised scheme to increase the uptake of 'green' energy.

Hi

Those outfits started to go bankrupt left and right over here when the utility companies got the residential "feed in / feed out" rates adjusted. All of a sudden .. no more cost benefit.

We came *very* close to a situation like that back many decades ago. Then it was peak demand based, but the same sort of scheme. The rates changed before the big hulking system (think diesel locomotive size) ever got installed on the factory. The utility claimed it was a "clarification" and not a rate change. Glad it happened before we were on the hook. The system *had* been delivered by then. It sat there in the parking lot for a *long* time before they hauled it off somewhere else.

Bob
 

Offline Red SquirrelTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2748
  • Country: ca
Found all sorts of interesting stats on my city, this may help to see what is viable as far as wind or solar goes.

https://weatherspark.com/averages/28383/Timmins-Ontario-Canada

Typical wind speed is about 7m/sec.

Hours of sun is about 8h at the lowest and 16h at highest.  Of course for those few months where it's highest (like right now) solar would work well but would be mediocre for rest of year.

I looked into those "free" solar installations, but it just screems "catch".  There's always a catch to stuff that's free.  So if I do solar I'd probably buy the system outright.  I think my best bet is to run it to my server room and have it power my server setup, then if I feel it can do more, I can have it power other stuff too.  Maybe the fridge, furnace (gas) and maybe even central air conditioner given the peak sun is when it's hot.   Would just need to find a proper way to feed stuff around the house while maintaining the ability to switch those items between solar and hydro.   Then in the future if I feel the solar could actually do the whole house I can go bigger and have it do the whole house and have a master transfer switch.  Then if I can manage to keep my hydro usage down to 0 for over a year, I could look into canceling... heard that's not even legal in some places though. But I'll cross that bridge when I get there.  I don't really see off grid happening where I am, realistically.
« Last Edit: June 22, 2016, 02:52:27 am by Red Squirrel »
 

Offline uncle_bob

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 2441
  • Country: us
Found all sorts of interesting stats on my city, this may help to see what is viable as far as wind or solar goes.

https://weatherspark.com/averages/28383/Timmins-Ontario-Canada

Typical wind speed is about 7m/sec.

Hours of sun is about 8h at the lowest and 16h at highest.  Of course for those few months where it's highest (like right now) solar would work well but would be mediocre for rest of year.

I looked into those "free" solar installations, but it just screems "catch".  There's always a catch to stuff that's free.  So if I do solar I'd probably buy the system outright.  I think my best bet is to run it to my server room and have it power my server setup, then if I feel it can do more, I can have it power other stuff too.  Maybe the fridge, furnace (gas) and maybe even central air conditioner given the peak sun is when it's hot.   Would just need to find a proper way to feed stuff around the house while maintaining the ability to switch those items between solar and hydro.   Then in the future if I feel the solar could actually do the whole house I can go bigger and have it do the whole house and have a master transfer switch.  Then if I can manage to keep my hydro usage down to 0 for over a year, I could look into canceling... heard that's not even legal in some places though. But I'll cross that bridge when I get there.  I don't really see off grid happening where I am, realistically.

Hi

The server room has another solution:

Swap out the servers. At least in my case, The PowerEdge servers are a couple of years old. I could cut the power by a lot, simply by going to the newest and greatest. Six or seven servers become two or three. The remaining machines each pull < half what the old ones did.

Bob
 

Offline Red SquirrelTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2748
  • Country: ca
They're already mostly high efficient Supermicros.  The new ones don't draw more than 100w out of the wall, less than workstation with video card.
 

Offline uncle_bob

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 2441
  • Country: us
They're already mostly high efficient Supermicros.  The new ones don't draw more than 100w out of the wall, less than workstation with video card.

Hi

The big savings here was moving things to virtual machines and shutting a bunch of them down. Getting the servers under 30W does help as well.

Bob
 

Offline Red SquirrelTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2748
  • Country: ca
Yeah most of them are VMs.  Home environmental control and firewall is separate, and currently mail is separate, on an old server, I still need to migrate that over and decommission that server.    What uses the most power is the workstations, because of the video cards.  I try to keep my gaming machine off when not in use.

I'm thinking if I go wind or solar the most realistic thing I can probably expect is to power all the servers off it, but not the whole house.
 

Offline LabSpokane

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1899
  • Country: us
Yeah more I read on it seems it would not be worth while.  Though would a VAWT work better in a residential setting?  They are generally way less efficient though. 

VAWTs are also horribly unreliable. 

As far as small turbines go, the wind power guys call anything under 20kW, "recreational wind."  Those tiny turbines make sense on sailboats. Once you spend enough on a tower to get clean air, you might as well put a decent sized wind turbine up as well. But none of that matters unless you have reliably high wind, and most people don't.
 

Offline uncle_bob

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 2441
  • Country: us
....
 But none of that matters unless you have reliably high wind, and most people don't.

Hi

Quick way to check (at least in North America):

Do you routinely see giant tractor trailer rigs with turbine blades driving around the area?

Are the local farms / forests all sprouting giant towers with turbines on top?

If not, you likely don't have "good wind".

Bob
 

Offline Someone

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 4509
  • Country: au
    • send complaints here
Here is a general breakdown on my monthly electric bill.Also in N.Ontario. For reference I own a typical house 1600sq/ft, gas heat winter and central air in the summer.

I had a metered usage of 389.19kWh last month, the nice hydro people billed me for 417.66kWh. The total bill for the electricity I actually used was a measly 42 bucks, then there is delivery charges $22.28, regulatory charges $2.76,hst $8.73 which brings my electrical portion of my monthly bill to $75.87 almost doubled that portion in taxes and bullshit. But wait there is more, water consumption $4.37, Basic service charge $24.05 and sewage charge $17.62 and the debt retirement this brings my total bill to $121.91.
I thought your (Canadian) supply charges were high, but it includes water which changes things a lot! Here in Australia for your 400kWh/month you'd be looking at a total of around $195 AUD per month including water/sewerage/delivery (not including gas delivery, which would add more).
 

Offline uncle_bob

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 2441
  • Country: us
Here is a general breakdown on my monthly electric bill.Also in N.Ontario. For reference I own a typical house 1600sq/ft, gas heat winter and central air in the summer.

I had a metered usage of 389.19kWh last month, the nice hydro people billed me for 417.66kWh. The total bill for the electricity I actually used was a measly 42 bucks, then there is delivery charges $22.28, regulatory charges $2.76,hst $8.73 which brings my electrical portion of my monthly bill to $75.87 almost doubled that portion in taxes and bullshit. But wait there is more, water consumption $4.37, Basic service charge $24.05 and sewage charge $17.62 and the debt retirement this brings my total bill to $121.91.
I thought your (Canadian) supply charges were high, but it includes water which changes things a lot! Here in Australia for your 400kWh/month you'd be looking at a total of around $195 AUD per month including water/sewerage/delivery (not including gas delivery, which would add more).

Hi

If indeed a "disconnect" takes you off of water and sewer that is even more fun. I've been the "well and septic" route. There's a ton of cost involved. If you think you have fun now, file for a septic filed and see what hoops they make you jump through. Maybe not a big deal if you live on five acres. On a normal home lot in a city or town ... yuck ...(yes I could have spelled that slightly differently)

Bob
 

Offline Red SquirrelTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2748
  • Country: ca
I heat with gas, but they want to ban that by 2030, which is completely insane as people who do heat with hydro are spending $400+ per month. I don't think it's going to happen though but the fact that it's on the table kinda has me thinking I need to be prepared.   I really want to look into wood as supplementary heat, but that may have it's own issues legally too.  Would be super cheap though, you can legally cut trees here (until they stop that too...) I think you just need a license that's like $50.  Think they want to ban wood stoves as well though.  Basically our provincial leader sold off the hydro company and her/her buddies owns most of the stocks in it and is doing everything to force people to pay more so they can't be independent, so it's a big political mess.

I think really the only thing I can expect from this house/property is to go partial solar.  It could probably at least bring me into a near zero usage state where I'm only paying the fixed fees on the bill and maybe the occasional night time usage, where the rates are not as high.   I could also use AC in summer for practically free, as solar would work very well in summer as the days are very long.  I'd probably get like 12 hours of actual solar hitting sun, if more.

Yust for my information, what is the price of one cubic meter of gas and one kWh of power in your area?
I live in northern Italy, the wheater here is not so bad , I do not use AC, my house is not well insulated and in 2015 I paid:
- 712 Euros (1035 CAN$) for 2564 kWh of electricity  and
- 1345 Euros (1995 CAN$) for 1489 cubic meters of gas (used for cooking, sanitary water and winter heating).

Best regards

 Edit: thanks to a previous poster and a Google search I found the rates for electricity in  Northern America: If the data are correct (do they include every tax and other costs?) they are incredibly cheap.. I pay four times those prices.

Here is a general breakdown on my monthly electric bill.Also in N.Ontario. For reference I own a typical house 1600sq/ft, gas heat winter and central air in the summer.

I had a metered usage of 389.19kWh last month, the nice hydro people billed me for 417.66kWh. The total bill for the electricity I actually used was a measly 42 bucks, then there is delivery charges $22.28, regulatory charges $2.76,hst $8.73 which brings my electrical portion of my monthly bill to $75.87 almost doubled that portion in taxes and bullshit. But wait there is more, water consumption $4.37, Basic service charge $24.05 and sewage charge $17.62 and the debt retirement this brings my total bill to $121.91.

Hopefully this was illuminating to our European brother and sisters. I have no problem paying for what I use its all the other shit they tack on that I have no control over no matter how much I conserve our shift usage times. My utility lets me compare my usage to others in my neighborhood and compared to my typical neighborhood usage you would think no one lived in my house. Christ a lot of them are getting $800-$1k+ utility bills I don't know if they are running grow ops or what.

Oh and it doesn't matter how much we conserve they just jack up the price to cover lost revenue.

http://www.640toronto.com/2016/04/14/the-price-of-hydro-slated-to-increase-in-may/

Red Squirrel get out and vote for anyone but liberal in the next provincial election get rid of these crooked incompetent ass's. The liberals keep getting in by buying votes like public sector unions, teachers etc. Do the math on voter turn out and the popular vote they got and coincidently its pretty equivelent to the size of the public sector. The goverment is illegitimate with only 19% of the popular vote and should be dissolved and a new election called.

And this year they even raised all the rates because we conserved too much.  :palm: And they have other rate increases planned that are outside of those existing rate increases.

And don't worry I never vote conservative or liberal, they're both corrupt. Right now I'd even go as far as picking conservative over liberal just to get Wynne out.   Too bad NDP gets so little votes that they are basically irrelevant but I vote them anyway.  They always win where I am.

Where I am water/sewer is separate from hydro though, but the delivery fee is also much higher, I think it's like $70 or so last I checked.
 

Offline andrew.kowalski@mail.ru

  • Newbie
  • Posts: 1
  • Country: pl
Re: Anyone have a wind turbine in a residential area, how well does it work?
« Reply #44 on: August 04, 2016, 02:15:33 pm »
I'm not sure if it's a good idea. The obstructions of the residential area will get the effect close to zero. You also have to keep in mind the soct of the tower. Maybe, it's a nice solution for a farm.
 

Offline max_torque

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1272
  • Country: gb
    • bitdynamics
Re: Anyone have a wind turbine in a residential area, how well does it work?
« Reply #45 on: August 05, 2016, 11:28:57 am »
In dense urban areas, the only wind energy recovery system that works and is viable is one where the buildings themselves are used to focus the wind energy onto the turbine.  Ie large, tall apartment blocks with a channel through the middle to gather the winds and drive them through the turbine.  Unless you are incredibly lucky, existing buildings are unlikely to have been build in a suitable layout.  Local wind survey with an logging anenometer may turn up a particular location in your property where there are focused low level winds.
 

Offline Red SquirrelTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2748
  • Country: ca
Re: Anyone have a wind turbine in a residential area, how well does it work?
« Reply #46 on: August 05, 2016, 04:55:09 pm »
My hydro bill equal billing plan just shot up from $170/mo to $270/mo.  Recently got central A/C but that's not even factored in the last billing cycle.   I definitely need to seriously start thinking of something.   Solar would work well for maybe half the year and cover for A/C if I can fit enough panels, but in winter the days are too short.   I actually saw a house that had a small wind turbine, I'd almost be curious to knock at their door to ask them how well it works for them.  The one I see at the community lake is almost always spinning at a decent rate even when it seems there's not much wind, but it's also in a flatter area. There's a couple buildings but they're maybe like 50m away if more.   There's too many trees in my area I think though.  It's one thing to put the tower over the roof tops but another thing to clear the trees.  You need to clear obstructions by a half decent amount too to get away from turbulent winds. 
 

Offline uncle_bob

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 2441
  • Country: us
Re: Anyone have a wind turbine in a residential area, how well does it work?
« Reply #47 on: August 05, 2016, 04:59:56 pm »
My hydro bill equal billing plan just shot up from $170/mo to $270/mo.  Recently got central A/C but that's not even factored in the last billing cycle.   I definitely need to seriously start thinking of something.   Solar would work well for maybe half the year and cover for A/C if I can fit enough panels, but in winter the days are too short.   I actually saw a house that had a small wind turbine, I'd almost be curious to knock at their door to ask them how well it works for them.  The one I see at the community lake is almost always spinning at a decent rate even when it seems there's not much wind, but it's also in a flatter area. There's a couple buildings but they're maybe like 50m away if more.   There's too many trees in my area I think though.  It's one thing to put the tower over the roof tops but another thing to clear the trees.  You need to clear obstructions by a half decent amount too to get away from turbulent winds.

Hi

If you think you already have fun dealing with regulations, just go and see what that permit for a 300 foot tall self supported tower involves :)

Bob
 

Offline Red SquirrelTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2748
  • Country: ca
Re: Anyone have a wind turbine in a residential area, how well does it work?
« Reply #48 on: August 05, 2016, 09:29:06 pm »
That's the biggest issue, I doubt they would allow it.  We are legislated to death these days, and extorted of our money because anything you try to do to avoid paying money to these cartels is probably illegal.  Whether it's energy, or food, etc.

What seems like the most realistic thing would be a wood stove powered steam turbine, but issue with that is it does require quite a lot of machining skill to build one, and it's not my expertise at all.  And even wood stoves, governments are often hinting at the idea of banning them.  They are already doing this in Quebec.
 

Offline mtdoc

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 3575
  • Country: us
Re: Anyone have a wind turbine in a residential area, how well does it work?
« Reply #49 on: August 05, 2016, 09:35:42 pm »

What seems like the most realistic thing would be a wood stove powered steam turbine

Nah. If you want wood-powered electricity production, a wood gasification powered generator is the way to go.  More efficient and it burns cleaner than a wood stove, so I doubt there would be any risk of them being banned.
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf