Micro wind turbines

Chris_5339762

Would it generally be simple enough to get these micro wind turbines, put a second immersion into the hot water tank, and just let it rip? With a dump load obviously for when it gets too hot.

The first immersion is done by the solar PV (+ Eddi) but that isn't enough in the winter. There's more wind in the winter, and about 200W of wind power would put about 4kW in 24hrs into hot water. Thats well over an hours boost.

championc

It's far simpler to get a low input voltage grid tied inverter. So have the wind turbine linked through a bridge rectifier into the inverter input. Something like this should be perfect

US $96.97 35%OFF | MPPT 1000W Home On Grid Tie Inverter Solar Inverter 18V 24V 36V Pure Sine Wave 110V 220V AC For 36 60 72 Cells Solar Panel

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mtcbyfy

samdeluxjones

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120429601#Comment_120429601

Grid tied, I have a heat pump so need on demand.

THE ALM

Don't know if somebody on here but will be interesting to see how this Istabreeze performs. Looked a bit sketchy getting it up but fair play.

Istabreeze wind turbine success, sort of... - YouTube

championc

Balancing should never be underestimated

Jonathan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120454139#Comment_120454139

I'm sure the wife is only too delighted getting shouted at on youtube. 😂

unkel

Need to get new blades to replace the broken one. Damn. That adds another 5 years to the pay back time, which was already 25 years. And it's not even up yet. Their location looks perfect though, top of a hill in a very windy location. Will follow this with interest.

samdeluxjones

Should get him on here to post his output.

Got windy yesterday afternoon and woke up this morning to battery 23%. Battery was 100% yesterday at 5pm and normally lasts to 2-3am powering the whole house. The turbine slowed that discharge rate right through the night and now the daylight is charging it up again. Free power all night..

Heating(heap pump) hasn't been on for a week or so which makes a huge difference.

Nelbert

So on a windy night you wouldn't even use night rate for a good portion of the year?

Add that wind speed forecast complexity to the solar forecast thread on charge / discharge battery for the craic!

samdeluxjones

Wind generation for April 32kWh

Solar generation 685kWh

championc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120542150#Comment_120542150

Is there any form of correlation between higher wind days on poor solar days ?

Great to see it's delivering something decent

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120542188#Comment_120542188

Being devil's advocate here and don't want to be a spoil sport but I'm not sure if you can call that decent. One €150 400w panel will produce on average 32kWh per month and will last forever without maintenance and with a simple and cheap setup. Whereas a wind turbine...

bullit_dodger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120544596#Comment_120544596

Yeah, I'd be of the same opinion unkel. That said, while 32kWh in a month isn't great, my total system of 14 solar panels only generated generated 57Kwh last December. So as a direct comparison to solar all year round it'll lose out and it'll never put you off grid, but it'll chip in a decent amount in helping your carbon footprint in the bad months you'd hope. Oct -> Mar should be decent?

I'm hoping Sam that your keeping a track of the monthly figures. Where I am (in a housing estate in south Dublin) a complete non-starter, but I'm curious as to what a year looks like.

unkel

Aye wind should be best in winter. If it produces say 100kWh in both December and January - when solar PV is pathetic, I'll take back my verdict!

redmagic68

Just watched that you tube video and read the thread here. It’s all very interesting as initially 15 years ago when I considered building our house I was hoping to run with a proven turbine supplementing the house but it was far too expensive to follow through on it.

A few observations hear though and from reading.

-The installation and ease of maintenance is going to be an issue for most.

-from the comments in the video they are looking at replacing the bearings in approximately 9 months if I’ve read it correctly?

-the output is there to be seen for sure but doesn’t compete financially with solar in any form. Batteries and load shifting would make more sense. Additional panels and a second inverter to offset poor winter production again would seem to be more viable and convenient.

after our solar install we had an Seai inspection and the inspector mentioned both change over switch and a turbine to supplement what we have which surprised me. So I got interested in turbines again. My background is manufacturing engineering so know the challenges of moving parts, fatigue etc.

I’d love to see this workout and pay for itself and fair play @samdeluxjones for taking it on, I’ll watch with great interest over the coming year to see how it all pans out.

championc

The most important thing, which cannot be underestimated, is to balance the assembled blades. This will reduce wear and stress on the bearing, in addition to stopping vibration.

bullit_dodger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120700858#Comment_120700858

-the output is there to be seen for sure but doesn’t compete financially with solar in any form. Batteries and load shifting would make more sense. Additional panels and a second inverter to offset poor winter production again would seem to be more viable and convenient.

Generally I would agree with you, it can't compete with solar especially in the March -> October timeframe. It's not even close I think. However, in the Nov - Feb, it gives a comparable and substantial input which could equal or exceed a decent sized array. My 7.5Kwp array did 130Kwp in Jan gone. I could see a turbine do 5Kwh/day easy enough.

I think fiscally it's not an easy thing to get a positive ROI even in 10 years, but that's not why many of us are here. There's a lot of satisfaction in producing your own electricity. If I had the land, I'd have a turbine and not just one. Probably 3 different ones geared for different wind speeds.

@samdeluxjones any chance of any update on your outputs? I'm not expecting huge bumper yields from May with the glorious blue skies we had, but like others I'm very interested in your deployment.

unkel

@bullit_dodger - I'd be the same. Provided at least that I could do the maintenance myself (of which I am not so sure).

bullit_dodger

I think a lot of those micro-turbines (the ones 2Kw and below) are fairly hands off. Many of them like the Ista were originally setup/designed for a marine environment so built fairly sturdy, with corrosion in mind too. I guess like anything though with moving parts, bearings etc will go eventually - but I think it would be a matter of greasing it up every now and then.

Alas, a semi-detached in south Dublin City means never a runner. 😥

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120703240#Comment_120703240

At least you are sensible. I knew it wasn't really a runner, but stubborn me tried anyway 😂 But we are hobbyists and it didn't cost me anything and I learnt a few things, so I am glad I did it anyway.

samdeluxjones

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120701009#Comment_120701009

Yea It's been dismal even though we have had a lot of wind on the south-east coast here during the good weather.

Problem is the sun charges the battery before 11am and that then shuts off the turbine until 7-8pm every day.

I turned it off myself a few days I knew there was going to be constant sun as I was getting BMS errors because battery might drop to 99% as we were turning on everything and turbine would spin up to 3-400W in the strong breeze.

One evening the wind didn't drop overnight the battery was 31% following morning before the sun started charging it again so we have done a few 24hrs with zero import. My baseload is 5-600W.

samdeluxjones

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120700858#Comment_120700858

Bang for buck solar is hard to beat and my wind system will take a long long time to recoup but it's there to supplement my high winter energy usage.

It has done 7kW in 24 hrs in April, If it can do that or a bit during Nov, Dec, Jan & Feb I will half my heating bill for those days on wind alone.

Chris_5339762

We inherited a small wind turbine from a deceased uncle and several years ago we just used it to charge batteries, before taking it down in the middle of a large storm (helped by my forecasting of an hour long eye to the storm).

I don't even know what power it outputs, maybe 200 - 300W but the thought is there to just feed it directly into an immersion heater and pop it into the hot water tank... or a fancy dual 240V/48V immersion, but those are very expensive.

If it even provides 3 - 4kWh per day, that is the radiative heat losses of our water tank easily sorted plus probably a few kWh extra. Should cut out the need to heat the water much during the winter.

There is no payback time REALLY for this as we inherited the turbine.

slave1

How would the immersion element handle the variable load with a "direct feed"?

ColemanY2K

Getting a real itch for wind having watched the instabreeze video install in Kilkenny :)

DC999

Samdeluxe posted his stats over winter. Track back a few pages maybe. That's when it comes into it's own of course and solar is on the floor and need more juice for likes of heating.

ColemanY2K

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120907391#Comment_120907391

ya i saw it, very interesting. been watching toys for watts on youtube as well. the instabreeze heli 2.0 produced 7kW over a 9 hour period with wind speeds of 25kph to 30kph and gusts of 50 or so kph, that's a decent return. the i1500 in the same test produced about half that.

four i1500's would contribute significantly to most peoples needs in winter. a total outlay of about 2k on the turbines alone ain't bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCHIS2Bq1_4&t=1s

SD_DRACULA

Another windmill https://thearchimedes.com/products

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121117302#Comment_121117302

Looks cool but if they even get the most basic stuff wrong on their pretty webpage, I don't have much faith in the product...

"The 1.5 meter diameter with a rated power of 700 Wh and a maximum of 1 Kwh"

SD_DRACULA

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121117646#Comment_121117646

Yeah I was thinking the 1500 model might be max power/watts or even kwh per year but looks like it might be 1500mm diameter 😂

Still they seem to be realistic about their numbers at least and not like the Chinese crap that promise you the sun and the moon and gives you 5% of that ha.

Pretty useless to us city boys anyway with min 5m/s to start producing almost nothing: