Anyone here use wind power??

[engineereeyore]

I may be moving to the Fort Collins area and I'm looking into alternative forms of electricity and wind power seems to be a prevalent alternative in that area. Just wondering if anyone has any experience with setting it up or using it or anything. Can it be stored easily? How much are the startup cost? That type of thing.

Thanks.

 

[bobsmith1492]

I looked into it once for my dad...

By the calculations I made, using the price we pay for electricity currently and the maximum output the turbine was capable of, it would take 70 years for it to pay for itself.

Throw in a couple of repairs and account for the still, calm times and it would never happen.

I'd look it up yourself, though. I know there are a few companies that sell complete wind setups (google it!).

 

[dkozloski]

If you have a setup big enough to make it worth your while you can connect to the grid and the local power company has to pay you for what you feed to them. This may be a little more than you want to mess with but it's an option. The setup I like is putting an auto alternator on a stationary bicycle to charge a 12V battery. Then connect the battery and alternator to a 12V TV. If somebody wants to watch TV they have to peddle the bike. It's a very sobering experience for teenagers. It kind of puts the use of time into perspective.

 

[bobsmith1492]

Ya, that's the kind of setup I looked into - you want to just sell to the grid. It's not worth it trying to power anything directly (unless you can store it like the old windmill-water pumps) since it's such a fickle energy source.

 

[Zorba]

I agree that you should probably just set it up to sell power back. Because you lose a lot of energy in the storing/recovery process. Might as turn that energy into money as opposed to waste heat.

 

[rgwalt]

I don't know much about the Fort Collins area, but you might want to look into something called Micro Hydroelectric power. Instead of damming a river or stream, it uses the potential to kinetic energy conversion of water dropping over a steep elevation change. So if you own land with a stream on it, and the stream changes in elevation fairly rapidly (or better yet, goes down a waterfall), then you could run a portion of the stream through a pipe and use the flowing water to power a turbine. You can connect this system to the grid to sell power back at low consumption times, and buy power at high consumption times.

I am not sure what magnitude of investment is necessary for this, or if there are any tax incentives that you could take advantage of. You would need to run the economics on it.

R

 

[engineereeyore]

Hmm, not a bad idea selling it back. Completely forgot about that.

Thanks guys, I'll check into it more and see what I can get.

 

[WildHorse]

Here in California the electric utilities are COMPELLED to buy electricity back from people who made investments in wind generators, at a large loss. I looked into this years ago, so I'm not up on the current info. Back then it was something like, say maybe 3 cents per kwh for the consumer to buy from the utility. But the utilitiy companies had to pay something like 7 cents for whatever electricity the organic guys wanted to sell back to them. I was planning to syndicate limited partnership deal in that until I had to start traveling too much & got diverted.

There's a company near my home called Clipper Windpower, Inc. where you might be able to get some helpful info. The generators they sell are too huge, but still, maybe they'd have useful info for the organic guy, couldn't hurt to ask. Maybe they'd at least refer you to something useful.

Read a great book about a guy who had a very successful windpower business in the early 1900s, selling wind powered electrification all across USA before the power line grid was built. I can't remember the title. He said a 3-blade turbine was most efficient, that you could light a match standing behind it in a high wind and the match wouldn't blow out, because the 3-blade config. caught all the onflowing wind.

 

[Calin]

You could use a wind turbine and get totally independent of the grid - but you would need a lot of batteries to store electricity. In the end, think about that: an automobile battery has 12V voltage and some 55Ah current, so the max charge you could store inside would be 660Wh (less than a kilowatt hour).
How could you use a kilowatt hour?
incandescent light (100W) for ten hours
your small 20" TV (at 50W) for 20 hours
air conditioning (1000W or 9000BTU per hour) for an hour
all of the above for 40 minutes

Now, there are losses during battery loading, battery unloading, conversion from DC to AC. All these hamper your generation capacity
But if you can sell back some energy, you are good to go - assuming you use a "time of day" dependant electricity counter (and you pay more for daytime use), you could send 1 kWh into grid for every 4kWh used, and pay nothing.

 

[Calin]

I do not use wind power, but if you have a stream nearby, a simple hydroelectric power generator could be a much wiser investment (possible lower startup costs, dependable production).

Can it be stored easily? Not at all, you need to invest in battery banks, inverters and so on. It can be stored (cheaply) in the power grid, but you need to buy an inverter "blessed" by the electricity company. (for reference, the 12V 55Ah battery has enough energy to heat 10 liters (3 gallons) of water by some 60degrees Celsius, or six liters of water from freezing to boiling. Not of too much use if you really use electricity

 

[PowerEngineer]

The mismatch between power you generate when the wind blows and the power you choose to consume in your appliances, etc. is a big problem. It's also a big problem for utilities that add large wind generator farms into their generation mix. To keep the entire system balanced, there has to be other generation always moving to compensate for fluctuations in wind power. The biggest reason to sell back to your utility is to shift your mismatch problem to them.

One word od caution is that you'll want to follow their interconnection rules. If you don't, then your generation could energize their lines when they think the lines are dead, and might injure line workers.

 

[BrownTown]

yeah, you need one of them "break before make" switches so that your generator doesn't set up high voltages on the high side of distibution transformers that could injure repair crews. I'd image these come with the standard setups though. I think having a wind generator would be really cool, but its probably not gonna save you much in terms of money, at best you might break even. If you wanted a simpler system you can always choose to buy "green power" from you local power company. This is required to be produced via wind, solar, landfill gas, etc.. If enough people buy it then the utility HAS to add aditional green generation. Not sure how well this works everywhere, but where I live TVA had methane gas from a landfill, and some solar, but way more people signed up then they had generation so they added a 28MW wind farm. Of course if the power goes out you are still screwed .

On another note (maybe for power engineer), do you know of anyone who had a personal pumped water storage system in order to povide energy during blackouts? I was looking at the numbers, and a small water tower attached to a generator could power your house for awhile. And I bet its alot cheaper than batteries. I was also wondering about using the pressure in the tap to pump water up, then generate energy lettign it run back down. I wonder how man cents/kwh you can get off of just exploiting that pressure?

 

[Calin]

The last question: let's assume you use 10 cubic meters of water every month. Your water comes at 4 atmospheres pressure on the pipeline.
The total energy you could get would be (raising the water to 40 meters) the potential energy: 10 tons of water, 40m, 4 millions Joules, 4 millions Watts seconds, 4000 kW seconds, or some one kilowatt hour (assume a 60% conversion rate, you have about 0.7KWh, so you just saved 10 cents or so)

Assume you use a personal water storage. You built a tower 100m tall, where you can shift up and down 1 ton of water (1000 liters, 300 gallons), or the weight of a small car. The 100 meters would be the length of a football field. The energy stored in the gravitational field would be 1 million Joules - or some 0.27kWh. Put a 60% efficiency of generation, and you end up with some 0.16 kWh (energy that worth a cent).
How big a battery bank you need to store those 0.27 kWh?
A car battery (12V, 55Ah) has a total power stored of 660Wh, so you need half of one.

 

[Calin]

Originally posted by: scott

Read a great book about a guy who had a very successful windpower business in the early 1900s, selling wind powered electrification all across USA before the power line grid was built. I can't remember the title. He said a 3-blade turbine was most efficient, that you could light a match standing behind it in a high wind and the match wouldn't blow out, because the 3-blade config. caught all the onflowing wind.

At most a wind turbine would catch 59% of the ongoing wind energy. There is still wind in the back of the turbine
The most glaring problem with the "light a match" is that behind a wind turbine, the blades trouble the airflow (create vortices). In the end, there would be easier to light a match in the full wind than in the "shadow" of a turbine.
(this is the reason the wind turbines in wind farms are situated at distances up to 10 times their blade diameter - to allow the wind to "smooth out" and recover some speed/energy back)

How big are those vortices? The ones from the towers are big enough that the big wind turbine's blades move in front of the tower, even if this position is unstable (stable would be with the blade behind the tower).

 

[SuperFungus]

What if you ran your hypothetical stream's waterfall into a large, elevated storage tank so that you could time all, or most of your production to coincide with peak usage hours and get a better deal when you sell the energy back and not waste production at off times when the power is already cheap. There would be definate downsides of course, you would have to have a filter to prevent your turbine from getting clogged and the filter would need to be mantained, but it might allow you to a few extra pennies out of the power company. Or what if you ran all your incoming city waterpressure into a tank and then through a turbine before it entered your house, so you'd make energy out of all the water you used. Now that would definately take some careful engineering to make sure that you always had enough water pressure in your house despite the turbine being in your plumbing. anyways just some ideas take 'em or leave 'em, just be glad i didn't bring up the sewage based generator i've been thinking about...

 

[Calin]

I've heard of some "sewage-based" generator - but in fact it used thermal energy in used water (like shower water, and so on) to pre-heat incoming water. The pre-heated water was then heated so to be usable as hot water (this system allows some reductions in heating energy especially in winter - as incoming water is very cold, the heat transfer from the used water is improved)

Anyway, see my previous answer about the energy contained in the usual monthly water use (not much)

 

[BrownTown]

yes, but 1 ton is only 1 cubic meter, thats a tiny volume, in reality the volume would be much higher, and the height would be lower. You could realisticly get several kWh of storage, but thats not nearly as fun . If your gonna actually want good energy storage then buy a diesel generator.

EDIT: also, i wasnt talking about getting the energy out on a normal basis, I was saing that if the power goes out then you could use it to run a generator and power your house till the power is back on. Obviously you would have to use way more water than normal to achieve this, but I was wondering if the cost of water would be small enough that it would be cheaper then having a battery or generator backup that is rarely used.

 

[pm]

I live in Fort Collins. Welcome!

There are several DIY wind power enthusiasts in Fort Collins who are extremely helpful at setting up low-cost wind turbines and giving general advice. They had demostrations at the Fort Collins Sustainable Living Fair a few weeks ago - which was ironic since the fair on Sat. experienced 30mph gusts that demolished several tents.

Their website is: http://otherpower.com/

They are a very nice group of people - super friendly - and they own a great magnet shop near CSU where, in addition to getting helpful advice about cheap wind power, you can also buy magnets and play with some of their hands-on science demostrations. I bought a bunch of stuff from them for winding 3-phase motors and their prices are very good. Their magnet shop is:

http://www.wondermagnet.com/main.shtml

They sell wind turbine kits here:
http://www.forcefieldmagnets.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=22_30

Alternatively, an easier way to get into wind power is to just pay extra and buy it from Xcel energy and Fort Collins Public Utilities.
http://fcgov.com/utilities/wind-power.php
http://www.xcelenergy.com/XLWEB/CDA/0,3...-1-2_735_16310-221-2_233_416-0,00.html

Solar is another viable alternative in Fort Collins. Fort Collins gets a lot of sunshine. Solar power particularly attractive after the passage of amendment 37 two years ago: http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=17736 The rebate incentives to put up a solar PV and tie them to the grid are pretty impressive: http://www.xcelenergy.com/XLWEB/CDA/0,3...-2_735_25709-23075-2_233_416-0,00.html. They can cover more than half of the cost of a new solar PV system.

Feel free to contact me via PM or email if you need any advice about Fort Collins. It's a wonderful town - according to Money Magainze, it's the best town to live in in the US. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/2006/top100/index.html

 

[engineereeyore]

Thanks so much for the replies everyone. I'm sorry it's taken a while to post back, but I just had surgery on my back this morning, and I'm a little out of it. Please don't think I'm ignoring you, but I'll probably have to wait until tomorrow or saturday to read all this. Until these drugs wear off, I could probably come up with some really strange ideas after reading your post, so please give me a few days.

Thanks again.

 

[DrPizza]

I've looked at the websites that pm linked to above quite a few times... Excellent material. I've been considering for a few years getting around to building my own windmill, then eventually a couple more smaller ones and using the power myself. I'm not worried that much about the overall efficiency; I just want to do it for the coolness (read: geek) factor.

 

[Agent11]

How does it work when you sell power to the grid? I thought I read some place that they just give you a credit, not a check.

It would be nice to get a check from pg&e every now and then for a change

 

[bobsmith1492]

It'd be normally subtracted from your regular power bill. Chances are slim you'd ever generate more than you used unless you had a whole farm during monsoon season...

 

[Agent11]

Even if you had solar and wind?
I have seen a few 'green homes' that are built around using solar and wind and they look great imho. I imagine if you tried to outfit a 'normal' american wooden home it would be less efficient though.

 

[pm]

Originally posted by: Agent11
How does it work when you sell power to the grid? I thought I read some place that they just give you a credit, not a check.

It would be nice to get a check from pg&e every now and then for a change

The local plan here in Fort Collins is, in my humble, not very good.

No checks.

The website locally is here:
http://www.ci.fort-collins.co.us/utilities/pg-pilot.php

To quote from the page:

Rates and billing?Customers will be billed for net monthly energy consumption under the Fort Collins Utilities "Residential Energy Service" (R) residential rate. There will be no standby charges. Net excess energy generation (in kWh) will be credited to the customer's account on a monthly basis. These credits will be carried over from month-to-month, with any unused credits granted to Fort Collins Utilities (without compensation to the customer) at the end of each 12-month billing cycle.

So no checks coming from the local electric company for us. I was annoyed as well to note that you can pay extra to get power from a "renewable" source, but if you generate power from a renewable source, they credit you at the non-renewable rate. So, our electricity is, I believe, $0.08/kWh (and yeah, this is pretty good, I know), and you can pay $0.12/kWh (or thereabouts) to get "wind power", but if you generate you get credited at the $0.08/kWh rate. So, yeah, they need to pay their bills too - but this is a public utility... I don't see why they can't be a little more generous with their program.

I'm eager to install a solar PV system - but not with the rebates that I can get from the Fort Collins Public Utilities. If I lived about a mile south of where I do, I'd be in Xcel energy and I'd already be running solar PV. Instead, I'm planning out a solar hot water system and may expand it to be a solar hot water system that heats the house using radiant floor heating. But it's still a work in progress... I hope they renew the solar water tax credit - it really makes a huge impact in the cost of the system. If the federal credit is renewed, I am planning on doing solar hot water sometime in the late spring.... still figuring out how I'll route the pipes, and deal with the tanks, but I think I'm going to do it.. if the money is still there as an incentive.

 

[bobsmith1492]

Originally posted by: Agent11
Even if you had solar and wind?
I have seen a few 'green homes' that are built around using solar and wind and they look great imho. I imagine if you tried to outfit a 'normal' american wooden home it would be less efficient though.

It would depend on your source, of course; if you had a massive wind turbine in a windy area, you could make tons of energy; the neighbors might complain, though!

The engineering department here (GVSU) has been building a green house for a large, poor family in GR; the solar water and high insulation should cut down a lot on their bills, but they don't have any power generation (inverters are pretty expensive I believe). Hot water and hot water heating are probably much cheaper means of saving energy via solar power... it saves the whole solar->DC->AC->power company->house->outlet conversion cycle.