subject: Do You Need A Low Speed Wind Turbine? [print this page] The development of the low speed wind turbine may be the solution that really catapults home wind devices in popularity.
When anyone buys a wind turbine for their home, obviously they are after producing the most power they can for the least amount of investment. To achieve that goal, you have to match the wind turbine's unique design with the wind conditions where you are going to place the device.
All wind devices are not the same though. Most have been designed to make the most power at higher wind conditions and most will not even start making power until a certain minimum threshold is reached.In fact, the majority of wind turbines that you will find on the market today, that are designed for home use, will not start to make power for you until a minimum cut-in speed of 6 mph is reached.
Unfortunately, most of the country and for that matter, most of the world does not have that much minimum wind. In most of the world, your wind turbine would be sitting idle most of the time if it needs 6 mph to get going.There are wind turbine devices out on the market now, like the Honeywell home wind turbine, that will make power for you at less than 1 mph of wind. Low speed wind turbine devices therefore offer a solution to that problem but that solution comes at a price.
The aerodynamic considerations that designers take into account have to be balanced to optimize the wind turbine's ability to make power. In other words, if the blades are given the aerodynamic properties needed to produce power at very low speeds, then the blades will not do well in higher wind speeds.Extremely low weights and aerodynamic properties that favor low speed wind turbine designs reach a limit at higher wind speeds that traditionally designed turbines have been designed to operate in. If you optimize for low wind, you simply give up power making capability at the upper end of the wind scale.
However, since the majority of the world has a lot more very low wind conditions than it does high wind conditions, a low speed wind turbine is going to serve a much broader market. Especially in urban settings where winds are capricious, wind energy devices that are capable of capturing the energy inherent in very low wind conditions hold a lot of promise for the wind industry and for the world home energy market.
Bottom line is, low speed wind turbine development will allow way more of the world's energy to be harnessed. As more and more devices are made and marketed that will allow the energy in the wind to be captured at very low speeds, prices for them will come down and make them more affordable for a greater number of people, thereby triggering more favorable pricing and even more adoption of these lower speed devices.
