Natural Living: Home Section - Wind Power

1. Wind Turbine
2. Tower
3. Inverter
4. Grid Tied
5. Off-the-Grid

Video:

Wind Power Video Clip (100MB mpeg, takes 10-20 minutes to download or longer depending on connection speed)

Freiburg Germany Wind Power (10MB wmv streaming)

Wind Turbine

The performance and cost of wind turbines continues to improve. Turbines for home and city usage for home owners or small industry come in sizes varying from 1kWh to 50 kWh models. Large scale wind turbines range from 640 kWh to 4 MWh. A 1 MWh turbine provides enough power for about 300 conventional homes. It would take about 14,000 wind turbines to power the province of Ontario without any conservation measures. A 1 MWh wind turbine costs about $2 million (Canadian). A 1 kWh Bergey XL wind turbine, installed on a 60 foot tower, with an inverter that connects the system to the grid costs about $15,000 (Canadian).

Tower

The higher a tower the better. The typical smaller unit rated from 1 kWh to 50 kWh is usually mounted on a tower from 40 to 200 feet. Several types of tower system exist. The least expensive are the tilt-up style. More expensive systems are mounted on a concrete pad. Larger systems may require a special engineered tower system.

Inverter

The use of an inverter allows DC current to be transformed into AC current. The Trace inverter below is a smaller unit rated at 2500 watts. This unit is being hooked up to the wind turbine using the thick white cable to the left of the picture.

Grid Tied

Wind turbines can be hooked up to the utility grid in a number of different ways. Some wind turbine systems come with the required electronics to hook up to the grid directly. Other systems may require the use of an additional inverter system to convert DC to AC current. Grid connections can be made in a number of different ways. Direct connections through your electrical meter will turn that meter backwards when more energy is generated than used. A "net metering" approach provides two meters so that generated electricity is supplied directly into the grid and measured so that the bill may be reduced by the appropriate amount (or you may be able to get paid for excess beyond what you use in some places).