Will One Wind Turbine Be Enough To Power My Home?
Filed under: Alternative Energy Questions, Build Wind Turbine Questions, DIY Wind Turbines
Before deciding to build a wind turbine some people like to ask just how many wind turbines they will need to convert their home to alternative energy. For those that live in a windy area (preferably where average wind speeds exceed 12MPH) a DIY wind turbine is an excellent way to reduce, or eliminate, the power bill. The question that needs to be answered is, will one wind turbine be enough?
That question can actually be a little difficult to answer without first knowing the specifics of the situation.
If you built the wind turbine that is laid out for you in the Green Power Easy guides, as it is specified it will create about 400Watts of power/hour in 20MPH wind speeds. If the wind blew for 10 hours out of the day, that turbine is then capable of producing about 4KW hours of energy every day.
If you calculated your power needs to be around 4KW hours per day, then a turbine built to our specs you may be enough. However there are other things to consider. Even if you need more energy than that turbine is capable of producing, you still may be able to adjust the design to suit.
As stated in the Green Power Easy guides, simple things like increasing the size of the DC motor you use as a generator will allow you to produce more energy with a single wind turbine. In fact if you found a 110-130V DC motor that operated well at a lower RPM (say 1250 RPMS), you could easily triple the power production of a single turbine.
Of course if you do this you would then need to increase the blade diameter to turn the larger motor. The whole turbine will take up more room, and for some, two smaller turbines are still a better solution.
In general when trying to calculate how many wind turbines that you need you should first refer to the Green Power Easy guides. The guides lay out for you the exact steps needed to calculate your energy needs, and they make suggestions on how to alter the design of your turbine to product more power.
If you aren’t yet a Green Power Easy member, you can get your guides by clicking here.