75 comments on Wind and Heat Pumps: A Winning Combination
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75 comments on Wind and Heat Pumps: A Winning Combination
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Small scale installations have the advantage of being cheaper and higher volume. These two properties make a product more likely to be caught by the river of mass production, mass marketing, and mass competition.
I don't know why windmills costs so much damn money, when I've seen dozens of designs that were built from scrap, old hard drives, etc, that were dirt cheap. If someone comes up with a way to mass produce a 1KW wind turbine and energy storage system that pays for itself in under 3 years, it will sell like hotcakes.
It's pretty difficult to build a residential wind turbine which works at any reasonable efficiency.
One big point is do NOT attach one to your house, unless you have a proper survey done.
The vibrations from them can do serious to the structure, and can also cause a lot of disturbance.
Far better is a stand alone turbine, for two reasons: they obviously avoid the structural problems mentioned above and the further they are from the house the less disturbance, but they can also be built higher.
Wind has a surface effect, so the higher the better, as you get a lot more power.
They don't build those 80 meter high towers for the fun of it - they are far more efficient.
Some of those roof-top jobs get as little as 4% or so of rated power on average.
Home-built wind can work out in rural areas, where you can put a dedicated wind turbine at a good height and distance from your house, and particularly where grid electricity is not available.
Backup will still cost you a lot of money though.
So first ask yourself an obvious question, which surprisingly many do not seem to ask:'Is it consistently windy where I live?'