subject: 3 Negatives About Wind Power [print this page] While wind power can be the perfect solution for your home, it isn't perfect. There are 3 downsides that you need to take into account when planning one of these for your house...
The wind is intermittent - This is the biggest problem with wind energy because it only occurs when the wind is blowing. And unless you have a wind turbine that can take advantage of very low wind conditions you were going to have to rely on the services of a battery pack to be charged and waiting to dissipate when the wind is not blowing. This is not altogether bad though. Using a battery pack to store energy for use in times of low wind is a very successful strategy for employing wind turbine energy at home.
In high winds, they can break - Unfortunately, with wind turbines you can't have it both ways. In other words you cannot have a device that can function very well at low wind speeds and at high wind speeds. While it is technologically possible, it is not practical for small wind turbine device as of yet. Therefore, these devices have to be protected at high winds in order to keep them from destroying themselves. They will furl to keep from destroying themselves if the wind gets to a certain level, but if gusts occur the device cannot predict and compensate for all contingencies, so you do have breakage with wind turbines at high wind velocities.
You have to be in the right spot and optimize what you are doing - The wind turbine that you purchase just must placed in just a right spot to be effective. Therefore, you have to take a lot of data at different points around your house to find out which is the right spot. The way do that is to use a small wind data collection meter called an anemometer. You leave that device strapped somewhere close by to the place you want to put the turbine up for a period of up to a year. Then only can you know if that place will be sufficient in terms of wind average velocity and distribution.
In conclusion, wind power is a great way to make home energy but you need to be cognizant of the fact that it is an imperfect power source and it is best to compensate for those weaknesses in your planning and not have to deal with them later.
