Wind turbine

So here's the thing with wind turbines, they work best when they have a clean and constant airflow across them. Also the bigger the turbine, the larger the swept area and thus the greater amount of power generated

This is why turbines keep getting bigger, they're trying to get at cleaner airflow higher above ground level and make the most of that airflow by having a huge swept area

So, back to small turbines. Rooftop turbines have very poor airflow because they're in built up areas. You can look on the internet at any bunch of magical wonder turbines that will promise to power your house even in the worst conditions. But the simple truth is this, if the airflow is crap, then the amount of power generated will be crap, regardless of how good the design is

Slightly larger turbines in rural areas do better but they're still going to face airflow problems depending on where they're located.

Larger turbines also require planning permission, and mention the word wind turbine out loud and suddenly you'll find a mob being organised to run you out of town

Would it not make sense to install solar instead? If you have land then you can install a ground mounted array pretty cheaply and the payback period would be better IMO

Also, I would imagine getting planning permission would be a lot easier

Sorry to clarify... I'm seeing it as complimentary not instead of solar.... I'm thinking of biting in to my winter usage (heat pump only turned on to reheat hot water for best part of 6 months last year).

Using the solar forecast integration with home assistant at the moment to assess how much an impact it would likely yield.... And it's certainly looking very positive for March to October but wind if an aesthetically acceptable option was doable could help take a chunk out of the winter usage.

I certainly wouldn't be jumping on a turbine without setting up a weather station or something on the current shed roof for a while to track wind speed (similar to assessing solar potential at the moment). It would be a good investment no matter whether it proved or disproved a case for a wind turbine.

People , no matter what thread,seem obsessed with,bigger,faster,more power,be it solar,PV, turbines,EVs.

Are we not missing the point, ?

Neighbour of mine has a 20ft turbine and is disappointed with the amount of power it produces.

Don't ask me anything about it, what power it is or his battery setup, sorry don't know much about it.

What sort of money are you talking to build a half decent ground based solar array? I have a large back garden, and the lower half in quite damp, only improving in the summer months. I wouldn't mind giving it up to put down solar panels. It would catch the sun for large part of the day.

Uggghhhhh.... I saw the flat roof mount on their site and assumed it covered off...... Not sure of point of flat roof mount if you're not allowed stick it on a roof.......

I'd have covered the height and other requirements with a roof mount but if it goes on its own pole the distance to boundary is more of a factor.

I thought you could attach a small turbine to your house roof without planning permission?

The problem with those small turbines is that you'd want some kind of pitch management to maximise the power output is poor wind conditions

But that adds a lot of expense, making it basically uneconomical. So we're stuck with the cheapo fixed pitch turbines

I do wonder if those €250 turbines ever work out. I mean they'd probably only generate 100W, but if it's constant then it could meet a fair amount of your houses base load

Sadly not mate.

• The turbine shall not be erected on or attached to the house or any building or other structure within its curtilage.

So basically your prohibited from attaching to any decent fixed structure (house/shed). I know....shower of xxxx the lot of them. I know where they are coming from, but yeah. Still, if your out in a rural setting, I can't see any reason why you couldn't fix one to a shed or some farm yard structure. If the "council" as to come around, are they "really" going to ask to to take down? What in this climate warming world? No I'd say your safe enough....

As for pitch angle optimization, you won't see that on those cheap chinese jobbies. Nearly every one of those reviewed on you tube have poor ratings - basically that you don't get what they advertise. The 500w ones rock in at 150w or there abouts. Now that's (to be fair) isn't bad for the cheap money that you spend, but if you want a decent output I'd probably go with something reputable.

Here's a fun project, get one of those cheap 24V turbines you see on yachts and use it to charge the battery on a laptop. You could probably get a cheap voltage converter to keep everything DC

Then set a timer on the laptop to wake it at the same time every day and start mining bitcoin until the battery runs out

Probably the best payback period of any small turbine, and a simple/cheap setup as well

I think you have to start from the other end, how much power do you need ? As mentioned elsewhere, I'm interested only in staying small scale,on the ground, away from the mains. It's amazing how much modern technology can operate from a 12v dc and 5v USB setup. It's only a hobby, but I would spend €300 max.

Totally agree, why are people who say,why bother,if you can just fick a switch, sure your not saving much, even on this thread?

You get either get it or you don't. Thanks, good to see some adults still here.

I'd advise against ever attaching a turbine to the house structure, I've sadly done it. The Vibration would drive you crazy. Good technical points, also of note is K Watts is a DC function. My turbine is AC , connected to a 3 phase rectifier,converting to DC. Strictly speaking when speaking in AC power terms, KVA is used.( Kilovolt amps), considering power facture correction etc.Interesting how many ESB EV charge points,AC only, are marked in K Watts.

It's not that mad an idea now at all. Obviously you'd need to take it handy on some of the dark days in winter 😂

Some simple maths. I live in a small semi-detached house in an estate in a suburb of Dublin. I have 8kwp of solar PV. All south facing, this generates about 7500kWh per year. An average Irish house uses 3000kWh per year so that leaves 4500kWh. Like many people these days, I work mostly from home so the car is mostly at home too. If I could use all that for my EV and it averages say 18kWh / 100km, my house would produce enough for 25k km in that EV, well above the national average.

If every house in the country did the above, and we would erect a few hundred more very large wind turbines (of the 16-20MW variety) and we'd have access to storage (in the form of batteries, pumped hydro, storage in EVs, interconnectors, production of H2, etc. etc.) we would need no more fossil fuels at all (apart from aviation for now)

Sad to witness how many of our young folk leave education, not knowing, or caring ,the difference between an amp and a volt..Yet happy to march to support Gretta.

The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind,with an open one.

Good question, might be sent to philosophy thread, man from Rolls Royce on the radio this morning, saying they are hoping to roll, sorry, out SMR s by 2030.

Essentially Small Modular reactors, flat pack, size of 2 football pitches.

Seems if we don't try to use less,or engage in our own wee solar/ wind projects,the nuclear lobby is here to stay and growing, on the basis of energy security. Fusion reactor record stands at 5 seconds.

Maybe folk are not interested in the technical nuances, but electricity is dangerous, lipo batteries and electric vehicles, turbines,off load and even small pv , can set fire to your house,or kill you.

But I digress,as usual.maybe one answer is "Open " to exchanging ideas, and trying to stay with facts and less on opinions?

It's a really interesting idea to be fair. Probably not well suited to the original point of this thread of "Wind Turbine", but I'd be keen to continue this discussion in it's own thread if needed?

Low voltage house: I really like the theory, but the reality is not-workable in practice. The problem with low voltage DC circuitry is that they are fine for lights/sensors/charging battery operated stuff. Effectively the low power requirements that you mention raisin, but when you think about it the whole wiring would wreck your head in the house. You'd have (in effect) two separate systems in your house then.

Potentially you could have a wall socket in one room incapable of powering a fan heater, that you might want to plug in there because it doesn't have the juice. So you lose that flexibility. What you could do then to give back that flexibility is have both sets of wires going to the socket with different size 3 pin plugs depending on the load requirements for the device.

The low end power requirements wouldn't fit into the larger plug etc. But it'd be a disaster waiting to happen. The whole thing about wiring regs is that they (try) to make it as simple as possible. Introducing that type of solution, while "technically" you could get it to work....in reality, you'd have some muppet kill someone due to not understanding the wiring. You know the type of person I'm talking about here :-) LOL No there's a lot of good thinking gone into this and a 220v standard across the house makes sense, decided at a time when there wasn't LED's etc.

Side point: I often wondered about why we (Europe) picked 220v and 50Hz when the US folk picked 110v and 60Hz. The voltage is easy enough. We're "tight gits" with our money and 110v needs thicker cables to transfer the same power. Thicker cables = more copper = more expense....this is due to good reasons that power delivery where the resistance increases with the sq of the current that make 220v "better"....but I digress.. Never did get a good reason for the 50Hz though. 60Hz would seem to make more sense to me as it maps to the 60 seconds in a minute, so you could sync things easier. I heard it was cause with 60hz the lights don't "flicker" as much, but dunno if that's "really" the reason.