subject: Low Speed Wind Turbine: Solution To The Energy Crisis? [print this page] The low speed wind turbine will be the solution to the energy crisis that is vexing the world now. Having the ability to make power in extremely low wind conditions will bring on an era of many more rural and city dwellers as well taking advantage of wind energy and that will make the devices much cheaper and affordable for all.
Low speed wind turbine technology requires a combination of light weight materials and aerodynamic properties that favor "pick up" at very low speeds. And, when I say low speed, I mean less than 1 mph.
Now, most wind turbine kit devices designed for the home will not start making power until the wind has reached a certain threshold, like 6 mph, usually. That means if the wind is less than that threshold, it will not make much power, if any at all.
First and foremost, if you are looking into the possibility of installing a home wind turbine then you need to carefully consider the wind resources that you have available. The wind at your home and the microclimates that are embedded at different spots around your house are all different and deserve some data collection attention.
To get this right, you have to drill down to the atomic level, so to speak. You have to understand how the wind flows in patterns on your roof, or wherever else you are thinking about installing the wind device. You also need to get a clear picture of what the wind speeds are at peak and on average there.
Armed with that information, you can then assess whether you need a low speed wind turbine or whether a traditional one that is typically a lot cheaper will do alright for you. If you can do okay without having to buy the more expensive low speed wind turbine, you may be able to extract more energy from the wind, overall.
All that being said though, the true long-term promise of wind turbine technology is really the low wind conditions that dominate the world. Located there is the majority of the wind energy to harvest and right now 99% of the wind turbines out there are not capturing the energy juice inherent in those low wind areas.
By making wind energy devices efficient at producing power in those low wind conditions, manufacturers would very quickly expand their market. Many more people around the world would be able to install small home wind turbine devices that could capture the latent power in those mild breezes. That is when we will realistically have a chance of moving to a renewable energy culture.
