# Home wind mills



## loggie (Mar 4, 2008)

Is there anyone out there who is using a windmill for power generation at a farm or home.I have been looking at some systems in the 25kw range I live in an area with a wind factor of 3 according to a map found online.Is there a limit to the size you can put on a farm to sell excess back to the company?Looking for feedback from owners of wind systems,size,costs,rebates, or any informative links. thanks


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## colebrookman (Mar 5, 2008)

Go to http://www.homepower.com/404/.  They have a nice web site and their magazine is great.  You can also buy a back issue and download from the web.  I'm not certain but I think it's harder to sell back power from wind than solar which in many states fairly easy.  Think batteries for excess storage.


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## pdboilermaker (Mar 5, 2008)

I live in Indiana and my neighbor has 5 4.5 kwh  windmills here is the info that I gleaned from him

1.  It takes 3 to run the average house
2.  Plug and play cost is $11k each
3.  Price of the pole alone (30 foot no wires) was $6k, actual turbine is $5k
4.  In Indiana the state will reimburse you for 50% of your cost so rather than $11k each, they paid $5.5k each after the reimbursement
5.  Our power comes from DUKE Energy, they DO NOT pay you for extra power, they give you kilowat credits for when you overproduce e.g. in the fall, spring, and summer (our windy times) you over produce 25k kilowats, in the summer (our not so windy season) you get those 25k kilowats back from Duke free of charge.
6.  Adding batteries would allow you to go fully off of the grid, however, it adds about $16k to the overall cost
7.  If you do not have batteries, and the power goes out in your area the turbines have breaks on them that are applied to stop the turbine from spinning so that you are not back feeding downed lines to shock the repaireman 5 miles down the road (This is required by law).  Of course the irony here is that when the weather is bad and the wind is blowing you could have power from the windmills but are unable to.  If you use batteries, the turbines do not have to have the auto shut off feature


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## Corey (Mar 5, 2008)

pdboilermaker said:
			
		

> I live in Indiana and my neighbor has 5 4.5 kwh  windmills here is the info that I gleaned from him
> 
> 1.  It takes 3 to run the average house
> 2.  Plug and play cost is $11k each
> ...



A ton of good and interesting info.  One thing I'm surprised about is the #7 "brakes" portion - I wonder if they would let you get away with some type of automatic service disconnect - much the same way generators should be wired.  It would cut your house off the grid, but still allow the windmill to put power to your house.  Of course, I suspect the power from the windmill might not be constant enough to run a house directly and you would still need a battery bank to absorb the sags and surges.

Also interesting that you can only get credits back from the power co.  Certainly doesn't lead to any incentive to size the system bigger than your average use.  After several years of net power production, all you'd have would be a stack of relatively worthless credits.  I wonder if they would allow you to sell or trade the credits for someone else to claim?  Probably not.  Seems like I recall someone saying once that local utilities are required to buy back power from net producers - although that may be on a state by state or utility by utility basis?


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## MALogger (Mar 5, 2008)

Check out http://www.dsireusa.org they spell out state rebates incentives and loan programs for all renewable energy. I don't believe it makes a difference to your utility if you are producing electricity by solar or wind, they either will buy it back or not. That website should help you out!

Craig


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## loggie (Mar 6, 2008)

Hey thanks for your replies,some good web sites there.I wonder why some people are putting 3 and 5 turbines up,as it would seem that one big one would be more cost effective and less maintenance don't you think?


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## Redox (Mar 6, 2008)

One turbine you might want to look at is the Pacwind.

http://www.pacwind.net

Leno put one of these on his garage, probably for the novelty.  When you are buying $100k cars, you need to be a thrifty as possible  

Seriously, the vertical axis turbines address a lot of problems very nicely.  If only I lived in more that a Class 1 area...

http://www.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/windpoweringamerica/wind_maps.asp


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## SE Iowa (Mar 7, 2008)

I could not find a price list on www.pacwind.com. Does anybody know what these ballpark for?


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## Redox (Mar 8, 2008)

Hmm.  They seem to have removed their pricing from the website.  It was there a couple months ago.  If I recall, the 500 watt job was going for about $2500 and the larger ones were about $1000/kw.  Not the cheapest things out there, but wind power is an investment.  These look like they are built better than the horizontal axis machines and are stackable.


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## Burn-1 (Mar 8, 2008)

The Windspire from Mariah Power is another new vertical axis wind turbine which looks pretty interesting. It's $3,995 for the 1.2kw turbine but that price includes the turbine, tower, inverter, and a 5 year warranty.

There are also some pretty big turbines available on eBay, like this one but a grid tied inverter would be about another $12K. Also that one is a Chinese import with probably a small amount of technical support. Sometimes on eBay there are sales of older, smaller grid scale units which have been taken offstream as the technology has improved.


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## colebrookman (Mar 8, 2008)

More food for thought.  http://www.homepower.com/article/?file=HP124_pg12_ATE_4


> When you're choosing a wind turbine, the most important information you'll need to know is how many kilowatt-hours the turbine will generate at a certain wind speed. That one piece of critical information was missing from all the vertical-axis turbine Web sites I researched. If this critical data is not available for a particular machine, rule it out, regardless of configuration. The bottom line: If turbine designers do not provide this most important information, Home Power will not include them in future wind turbine guides. It's not about spinning; it's about generating renewable electricity.



Take your time, investigate well and keep your wallet closed until you are certain.


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## Redox (Mar 8, 2008)

D'oh!  They had the curves as well as the pricing on the Pacwind site.  They seem to have dumbed down the site for some reason.  I remember comparing the curves and noting that some of their designs were better at lower speeds than others.  The only curve I see is in the user documentation of the Seahawk.  I'm pretty sure that they are rated at 28-30 mph and are generating usable current at 12 mph.  Not very useful for me though.  BTW, it's pacwind.net not pacwind.com.


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## mikeyny (Mar 9, 2008)

I have been a member of a forum called the otherpower.com for a number of yrs now. they have a ton of good info on home built wind stuff. You can learn to build your own or buy some stuff from them. It is a great site, very friendly people. a lot like this forum. the same rules apply.  No nonsense, no b.s. just good down to earth info. check it out, join or just surf. 

                                                                                    Mike


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## Troy (Mar 10, 2008)

One more site for a home made wind mill is  http://www.briery.com/wind_turbine/ It might be one of the best builds I've found on the net.


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## renewablejohn (Mar 10, 2008)

loggie

If your site has low wind speed than a multiblade may be more efficient as they generate useful electric at lower wind speeds. The best multiblade I have come across is Turbex which has the added advantage that the heavy generator is at ground level. You can even have multiple uses ie Electric generator, windpump,heatpump, by using a tractor pto shaft as the final connector to whichever driveline you want.

www.turbex.co.za


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## d.n.f. (Mar 10, 2008)

I wonder if those Pacwind would pack a lot of snow???

We get tons of wet stuff and I am not sure this brand could cope.  Think it is great for Cali though.

There is a lot of crap out there and I am just starting to sift through it.  Look for reviews on some of these manufacturers.


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## loggie (Mar 14, 2008)

Renewable John, Thanks for your reply,I have spent a couple hours on the website from the U.K.that you listed in the boiler room,very interesting stuff there.These are great looking windmills with the mullti blades almost a 19th century ranch look and the design makes a lot of sense from a maintenance standpoint,although it must rob a couple horsepower or KW as you in England would say with the long driveline,but I love the idea of having the generator head on the ground.I can see that they would work well in low wind but I wonder how well they would hold up in the high winds as we had 70 mph gusts here last weekend.Do you know of someone using this design in the U.K.?


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## renewablejohn (Mar 14, 2008)

This design used to be all over the UK pumping water with a reciprocating pump rather then the turbex screw pump. Most were erected prewar and you can still see the towers and parts of the wheels all over the country. There is still a full working one less than 2 miles away from me. In high winds the tail forces the blades out of the wind and therefore protects the head.


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## adamant (Mar 14, 2008)

pdboilermaker, great reply.
ant


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