Re: affordable power for homes

puppet_sock_at_hotmail.com
Date: 07/13/04 

Date: 13 Jul 2004 07:37:20 -0700

"harmony" <aka@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<10f3fjlgqlii2c5@corp.supernews.com>...
> I am looking to take mother nature's help and generate my own power for my
> own house to save on utility bills. it seems a windmill would be a good
> idea; may be two 10kw windmills might do the trick. (we have average 15 mph
> winds in summer). it seems you can't buy a 10kw windmill at less than $30
> grand a pop (installed cost); the payback would be 20 years!!; heck, that's
> not a good deal.

I'm just sort of wondering about your numbers.

$60,000 over twenty years, without even considering interest charges,
maintenance, etc., is $125/mo. Is your electricity bill really so high?
I guess it is in some areas, for people with fairly high consumption.

In addition, you would need to consider standby or storage to make up
for those days when there was not enough wind. Plus, you'd need to deal
with situations where there was too much wind and you needed to "feather"
the turbine or risk damaging it. (Though in many regions such weather
is quite rare, it happens in most places from time to time.) Plus, you
need to consider those two or three day periods when you are "waiting
for a part" or some such thing. So you would need either some backup
generator (or keep your connection to the grid) or monster big
batteries of some kind. This would all add to the capital cost, or
add to the montly costs, and extend the payback time.

Utility experience with large windmills, other than in special
places like mountain passes where wind is reliably in some specific
range of speed, are that they get something like 20 to 30 percent
capacity factor. Part of that is due to the fact they are only
disptached "on" when there is high demand, but part is also due
to the fickle nature of wind. So, you'd need to figure out what
your average use was, and be able to have storage or backup supply
for that for at least several days. Plus generation capacity big
enough to fill up the storage while you were still using power.
Depending on your usage, you might need more than two windmills.

Windmills only really make sense in places where the grid is hard
to access, or very expensive for some unusual reason. For example,
in Ontario, people with very remote cottages may find it cheaper
to put up a windmill. It might cost them far more to put a power
line all the way through the woods to their shack. Plus it would
spoil the view in the woods to have this power line there. I see
such windmills occasionally when I'm hiking the Bruce Trail.

> are there smart practical ideas out there? can the americans get cheap
> imports from the hindus or the chinese on this? i would like 100 pct payback
> not more than 5 years.

For nearly anything you can think of, you run into the same kind of
problems as with wind.

- Such schemes are nearly always only available to "hobby" level users.
  This makes the equipment either very expensive or requires a lot of
  mechanical knowledge and work.
- Such things nearly always require backup by either storage or the grid.
  That tends to increase the price dramatically.
- People tend to forget the cost of maintenance. They tend to forget the
  time and effort required. For some installations there may be issues
  with annoying the neighbours, zoning laws, noise or odor (methane
  cookers for example).
- Reliability of a rooftop or basement appliance requires you to do a
  lot of work that you may be neither equipped nor trained for. Do you
  feature yourself on a ladder making adjustments to a windmill?
  Do you feature your neighbour (you know the one, the guy with the
  kids and the dogs and the ratty old truck) with a huge pressure
  tank of methane in his basement?
- Some things don't scale well. They may work just fine for you when
  you need a temporary thing like a small construction project. In such
  cases you can rent one of those portable gas power generators for a
  week or two and the cost is acceptable. But trying to run your house
  on such would be silly.
Socks

Relevant Pages

  • Re: affordable power for homes
    ... for those days when there was not enough wind. ... enough to fill up the storage while you were still using power. ... you might need more than two windmills. ... It might cost them far more to put a power ...
    (sci.physics)
  • John K. Sutherland demolishes the economics of wind power.
    ... who believe that wind power is a key to any rational social ... If each windmill were to operate at full power for the entire year, ... the operators are obviously assuming that these windmills will ... Similar projects with similar very high costs relative to nuclear ...
    (sci.energy)
  • Re: affordable power for homes
    ... it seems a windmill would be a good ... > for those days when there was not enough wind. ... > enough to fill up the storage while you were still using power. ... It might cost them far more to put a power ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Re: affordable power for homes
    ... it seems a windmill would be a good ... > for those days when there was not enough wind. ... > enough to fill up the storage while you were still using power. ... It might cost them far more to put a power ...
    (sci.energy)
  • Re: Atheists: Americas most distrusted minority
    ... There's some dispute among economists over how ... comfortable worst-case scenario for power generation. ... But wind seems to be an even better alternative. ... But as far as I can tell storage would add perhaps 50% to the cost of ...
    (rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated)
Quantcast