subject: Micro Wind Turbine: 3 Factors To Consider [print this page] The micro wind turbine is becoming extremely mainstream. Once these devices were the province of the Mother Earth News crowd, but now the urban capitalist is all for buying them and installing them on their roofs in big cities.This is quite a quantum shift in thinking actually. As the green movement and climate change issues have come to the forefront and become the issue both major political parties, people on both sides of the political aisle have bought into the need for renewable energy at home. Even the large utilities, which traditionally have supplied us power from fossil fuel resources, are buying into solar and wind technologies at an alarming pace.
When you are looking into a micro wind turbine for your home, these are the 3 factors you need to consider:
Available wind - the amount of wind you have to work with the course is a key issue, but it is often overlooked. Many people assume because they see the wind blowing outside that a wind turbine will work for them. This is not always the case however. You have to have enough wind available to turn the rotors on a consistent enough basis to make the power you need for whichever appliance you plan to electrify. To do that requires data collection on your part.
The only way to do it is to install an anemometer where you want to possibly put up the wind turbine device and then check for average wind over a couple months-as many as 6 to 9 months would be ideal. That will tell you if you have enough wind to reasonably sustain a micro wind turbine project at your house.
Which appliance and what size appliance are you trying to power - once you have decided how much available energy you have and wind surrounding your house, then you need to decide which appliance you will electrify with the energy you cultivate. Many people use these devices for making power for a set of batteries in case of electricity outage, as well as powering small intermittent devices like freezers. In the latter case of course you need a set of batteries to buffer the system, otherwise you could end up without enough electricity to keep your device powered.
Local ordinance-even though this is changing rapidly, some communities still do not support wind turbines on houses. Obviously the more aesthetically pleasing device will offer greater stability and the community will not be as likely to object. That is why many home wind turbine kit projects use VAWT, or vertical axis wind turbine technology on their roofs.
Summarizing - the best technology with micro wind turbine devices continues to improve and the trends support rapid proliferation of these devices throughout the United States. As more and more people buy the micro wind turbine, the technology will improve and cut-in speeds will continue to drop.
