Home Wind-Power Turbines Make Headway 163
Pickens writes "Wind turbines, once used primarily for farms and rural houses far from electrical service, are becoming more common in heavily populated residential areas as homeowners are attracted to ease of use, financial incentives and low environmental effects. Experts on renewable energy say a convergence of factors, political, technical and ecological, is causing a surge in the use of residential wind turbines, especially in the Northeast and California. "Back in the early days, off-grid electrical generation was pursued mostly by hippies and rednecks, usually in isolated, rural areas," said Joe Schwartz, editor of Home Power magazine. "Now, it's a lot more mainstream." Some of the new "plug and play" systems can be plugged directly into a circuit in the home electrical panel and homeowners can use energy from the wind turbine or the power company without taking action. Schwartz says that even with the economic benefits, it can take 20 years to pay back the installation cost. "This isn't about people putting turbines in to lower their electric bills as much as it is about people voting with their dollars to help the environment in some small way," he said."
How green is it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How green is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How green is it? (Score:4, Informative)
In this area, we get about the same amount of yearly rainfall as in places like Santa Fe, New Mexico where the use of adobe is very common. I think it would do quite well.
For cooling, swamp coolers work quite well for us.
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You can add a wind-power turbine to your dwelling. Changing it to Adobe, rammed earth, straw bale, cob, or one of the other dozen or so energy-efficient building materials involves knocking it down and starting over.
I can use a swamp cooler for cooling most of the year, but if it's rained recently it does fuck-all. So in the spring when the temp is flipping up and down, It's A/C time.
The single best thing you can do is simply orient your house properly and build proper overhangs. It's called Solar Situati
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Of course then adding a windmill and or solar after that would be great.
What I really want is for the off switch to be the off switch.
I have to wonder just how much power is being wasted on monitors, TV, DVD players, wireless phones, PS3s, Wiis, 360s....
You get the idea.
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Re:How green is it? (Score:5, Interesting)
We're buying used motors on eBay. Some of us are making our own blades from fiberglass (and some are buying them).
We have created an open source hardware project that makes power. It'll cost me $300 - $400 to make something I think is cool, will pay for itself over time, help reduce my footprint on the planet in an almost measurable way and let me do something creative.
You got a problem with that?
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This type of simple systems are common for powering seaside holiday bungalows.
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Re:How green is it? (Score:4, Informative)
"The BWC EXCEL (http://www.bergey.com/) is a modern 6.7 meter (22 ft) diameter, 10,000W wind turbine designed for high reliability, low maintenance, and automatic operation in adverse weather conditions"
"Prices, which include a voltage regulator, pump controller, or a line-commutated inverter, range from $21,900 to $27,900."
"The BWC EXCEL is most often installed on a guyed lattice tower, which is available in heights of 18 m (60 ft.) to 43 m (140 ft.). Prices range from $7,400 to $12,680. "
SO, *worst case scenario* is 27,900 + 12,680 = $40,580.
Now, Electricity is what, about 10 cents per kilowatt hour? So $40,580 will buy 405,800 kwh of electricity.
In the last 2 months, I used a total of 946 kwhs for my small 2br apartment. Let's say a house'll use twice that, or about 1000kwh per month.
It'll take 405 months (33 years) for the system to pay for itself.
Of course, Your electric bill is more than just 'kwh x price per kwh'. Heck, I pay more in "Power Supply Charges" than I do in "delivery and System charges". All in all, I pay 19.39 cents per kwh. That means $40,580 will buy 209,499 kwh of electricity, and the system pays for itself in 210 months, or 17.5 years.
Of course, that doesn't take into account any future electricity price increases. It also doesn't take into account how, with the right system, you can keep up and running indefinitely the next time there is a grid blackout or winter storm that knocks out the power.
Re:How green is it? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How green is it? (Score:5, Informative)
if the above system seems a bit costly, try this:
$2,590 1 kW XL.1 Turbine, with PowerCenter
$1,595 60 ft. Tilt-up Tower
$450
$1,044 1,500 W Inverter System
$5,679 Total Cost
$5679 = 29318 kwh, which is 30 months payback.
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Indeed. But you don't need to cut yourself off from the gird; and, indeed, in Europe at least, when you have an excess (which you sometimes will) you can sell electricity back to the grid at a preferential price.
Those are some loooooong days (Score:3, Insightful)
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What I calculated was how long it would take (at your current electric payments) to pay off the windpower equipment.
Actually, if you look, I assumed a house would use 1,000,000wh (1000kwh) per month. A 10,000w system could make this in 100 hours, or about 4 days. Of course, it won't be running at full power, but even at 1/4 power, it only needs 16 days to make all the power you need in a month.
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The numbers also assume that the mill will not need repair or replacement. That it will last the twenty or thirty years the manufacturer claims. Environments where wind power is feasible are not always the most predictable and benign.
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This doesn't add up; given your sample house at 1000KWh per month usage rate and that a 30-day month has 720 hours in it, generating 10KW over 720 hours yields 7,200KWh for the month - that's seven houses, not one. You weren't planning on just throwing away that extra 6,200KWh for the mont
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Then again, maybe I'm just jealous because my house sits on the leeward side of a ridge, so I get very
Maybe so, but (Score:2)
Of course these days, the people who A) want to show off, or B) don't mind spending to help the environment (or both) probably represent a large and growing market.
And while its true that the money could be "better" spent on a green electric plan from the utility, you still have to trust the utility to generate the amount of windpower they claim. I can imagine living in areas of the USA where I'd prefe
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In the case of these turbines, my guess is that - depending on how you do the math - they are batt
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Does it make a difference about your green spending if it turns out that the turbine, equipment, and maintenance uses more energy to produce (and may not be done with renewable resources) than you can extract during its useful life? Then you're just trading "bad" energy to produce your windmill now so that you can get "good" energy over the next 20 years. The windmill becomes a battery rather than a generator.
Spending a large chunk of one's income on a small turbine that cannot reasonably pay for itself isn't in itself an ecological deficit. But the fact that it takes so long or can't break even monitarily should prompt a shopper to investigate the turbine's energy balance. The thing is that the energy market is so out of whack with being unable to represent environmental costs that there are numerous high-priced energy mechanisms which do in fact have a net ecological benefit despite being a money sink.
This is
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Yeah, I do. Because "building a cheap windmill" != "reducing your footprint", especially if you are making your blades out of materials that are energy intensive to produce (fiberglass), which also produces toxic was
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Define "scam". My Prius has gotten 49.6 mpg over its lifetime (as measured by fuel put in; the on-board computer tracks pretty closely), and I don't live in a "super-densely populated place". Also, the PZEV emissions profile isn't strictly tied to population density.
I'm not saying the Prius is for everyone, but "scam" seems a little harsh.
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Of course people will have a problem with that! This is slashdot, where any green technology that has more than a 12 month payback is immediately shot down as stupid, wasteful, more destructive to the environment, and only installed to one up the neighbors.
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I've been here a long time, but I still forgot that. I'm somewhat surprised by the negative comments.
Re:How green is it? (Score:5, Interesting)
1) A wind turbine won't generate enough electricity over its lifetime
to offset grid usage and the manufacture of itself
That could be true in some situations. Depends on the turbine and the location. When pursuing sustainable energy, it's vital to pick the sort of generator that best fits the local environment. Sometimes that's not wind. Sometimes it is.
2) Wind turbine purchases are just conspicuous consumption of a green flavor
Showing off may be the motive for some people, but all the turbine owners I know sincerely are trying to live sustainably (and are often entertained by the logical contortions HEMI fanboys utilize to claim green equality/superiority).
3) Wind turbine owners are suckered by slick salesmen
The owners I know did extensive research, and almost all of them built their own from kits or scratch.
So you can definitely do wind wrong and lose on carbon. You can also do it right. And there are many benefits to wind power. Even if your electricity is more expensive than the grid's, some people are willing to pay more for what they consider a higher quality product. Fossil-fuel electricity can't stay artificially cheap forever. Distributed generation can be more robust than centralized plants (like TCP/IP).
Plus you get free poultry delivered to your backyard.
Re:How green is it? (Score:5, Informative)
They found that is not the case. Birds hardly get killed by turbines - accidents happen of course, but are rare.
The researchers thought that this is because of the noise those turbines make, even upwind this is audible to the birds at sufficient distance. So they just fly around them. The mortality was as low or lower than around power lines: those also kill birds that happen to fly into them.
This result actually surprised the researchers, in a happy way of course. And the research being done by a.o. animal protection groups gives it quite some credit to me.
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Well, not all windpower generators take their design from 300yr old Dutch models; some companies [metaefficient.com] remember we're in the 21st century. On their website there's a picture of their system on a low-rise apartment building; it's so invisible it could placate the most rabid NIMBY-ite.
> free poultry
Some companies [avinc.com] are even putting grates in front of their blades. I do find it amusing when people become so concerned about the fauna when you talk about renewables when they never c
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Re:How green is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I'm a practical green. I'm even willing to pay a small premium for green, provided it's equivalent to the non-green alternative. Being in the building industry, where we get greenwashing all over the place, so I tend to be skeptical. The old marketing slogan, "reduce, reuse, recycle" should have has a tag line, "in that order." I can't say I'm living it completely, but where it's practical I'm in. Wind turbines can be a positive source of energy, but they can also be an eyesore. They are also one step removed from the primary source of power - solar. Once we figure out how to efficiently capture and store even a small fraction of the 1200W/m^2 that hits the earth, we'll go a long way to solving our energy problems. It's as close to an ideal solution as can be had, though it's not without pitfalls. Still, I look forward to 40% efficient solar panels with lifetimes measured in at least years, if not decades, which can be bought for less than a penny per kilowatt hour. I'll use them to power my flying car
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If the manufacturer can prove they use renewable energy for most materials and components in the windmill, then I'd buy the eco-friendly argument. Otherwise, the case still has to be made for the green properties
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Anyway, much of the cost of products comes from the embodied energy - materials are free, for the most part, but cost a great deal of energy to extract, refine, and produce. Human costs also factor in, but since most humans spend a great percentage of their money on energy (gas, food[energy to harvest and ship], stuff[ener
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Wind Turbines (Score:5, Interesting)
There is also a big push to put the big corporate wind turbines on the local farms. Those could easily make the difference between making a profit or losing money on a farming operation.
I spent yesterday afternoon and this morning at a local wind turbine construction site where they are putting up approximately 75 turbines this year. The owner of the land said he had been working for seven years just to get to the point where they are putting them in.
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I mean, I guess you could power a f
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The first question that comes to mind is "what is causing all those power failures?"
Locally, the answer would be "gale force winds."
The second question I would ask - having lived on a family farm - founded ca. 1820 - is whether that DIY windmill can carry the load. Tractor-Driven Generators: Producing Quality Power [gov.on.ca]
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Obviously, this only works if your farming operation produces a lot of manure, but most farms that involve animals in some way do just that.
a little extra info (Score:2)
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2) there are provisions such that the buyback is reduced if more people take advantage of it
3) they don't pay you. They simply credit you for the appropriate amount of kWh. If you're below zero at the end of the month, they still don't pay you, and your bill won't actually be zero.
Re:a little extra info (Score:5, Informative)
The other way is to have 2 meters- one for what you use, and one for what you sell to them. Even though they only pay wholesale rates, it would be possible to sell them more than you use, and actually make money.
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Not always true. There are two types of 'buy back'- One (netmetering) uses one meter that can go in both directions. If you are using more than you are producing, the meter goes forward. If you are producing more, it winds Backward. If it ends up at at a higher number at the end of the period (month/quarter/year), you pay for the net amount you used. If it ends up at at a lower number, you do NOT get paid for the extra you gave them. The other way is to have 2 meters- one for what you use, and one for what you sell to them. Even though they only pay wholesale rates, it would be possible to sell them more than you use, and actually make money.
Whereas in Germany, and in some other European countries, they have to pay (quite a bit) you more for every KW/h you sell them than for the ones they sell you.
Actually if you have running water on your land a pelton wheel [wikipedia.org] will typically give you more reliable and cheaper power than a wind turbine.
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Hmmm...
1. Acquire two neighbouring houses
2. Use one house's supply to provide power back to the grid via the other
3. PROFIT!!!
(Not even a "..." in this one!)
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A transformer to get 12V out of the "supply" house and then an inverter to pump it into the "sink" house should work.
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Also important to note, here in the US, is that many states (such as PA) have laws that require electric companies to comply with residential renewable energy metering (aka "backward metering"). This backward metering comes at NO cost to the residential owner to ensure that the meters on their home are capable of accurately recording power sent back on-grid. There are also laws in place that state the electric company must pay the residential owner for the power they generate back to the grid (by su
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You are wrong on this one. In the places I have lived demand is typically highest around 12-4 PM most of the year, largely driven by AC.
Take a look at this [csu.org] which shows peak rate being 11AM-6PM in the summer.
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In most states they pay you the retail price for power up until you reach a $0 bill. Once you hit the $0 bill they pay wholesale prices.
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Could the grid handle everyone pumping electricity back into the grid, especially with such a technology as wind, where the amount of power generated tends to be "bursty". Could this backfire a large percentage (> 25%) of homes started doing this?
It already gives problems in areas like northern Germany and Denmark, where large quantities of wind power are installed. Wind force can drop from 4-6 bft (giving basically maximum output) to zero in a matter of minutes - that is barely enough time for conventional power production to step in, and may result in brown-outs or even black-outs. So yes we are talking about a serious issue here.
Solar has this issue as well, but bar a total solar eclipse even when clouds come, it will take quite a while for a s
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Nuclear is great indeed for a base load: but that's it, base load. It can not easily be switched on or off like a coal or gas fired plant, which can change load in a matter of minutes.
Your idea of using some power dump is nice, but electrical vehicles are not the place. How are you ever going to switch on and off their charging for a start? When the wind falls, these chargers should be switched off. That requires some sophisticated
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Euhm, you are almost totally wrong. Sorry to say it so, but it's the case. Nuclear is great indeed for a base load: but that's it, base load. It can not easily be switched on or off like a coal or gas fired plant, which can change load in a matter of minutes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load_power_plant [wikipedia.org]
Base load (also baseload) is the minimum level of demand on an electrical supply system over 24-hours: the load that exists 24 hours a day.
A base load power plant (or base load power station) is one that is best suited to serving this load because it takes a long time to start up and is relatively inefficient at less than full output. These plants run at all times through the year except in t
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A base load power plant (or base load power station) is one that is best suited to serving this load because it takes a long time to start up and is relatively inefficient at less than full output. These plants run at all times through the year except in the case of repairs or scheduled maintenance.
Which is one very good reason not to use nuclear power for base load: it goes off-line unpredictably and for long periods. Currently, both of Scotland's nuclear power stations have been off-line for more than two months, one for planned maintenance, the other for leaks. In the past three years both have been working at the same time for less than six months total.
Fortunately, we don't need them - we have so much hydro-electric and wind generation that even with the nuclear stations off-line we're still n
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor [wikipedia.org]
A breeder reactor is a nuclear reactor that consumes fissile and fertile material at the same time as it creates new fissile material. These reactors were initially (1950's and 1960's) considered appealing due to their superior fuel economy; a normal reactor can consume less than 1% of the natural Uranium that begins the fuel cycle, whereas a breeder can use much more with a once-through cycle and nearly all of it with reprocessing. Also, breeders can be designed to utilize Thorium, which is more abundant than Uranium. Renewed interest is also due to the dramatic reduction in waste they produce and especially long-lived radioactive waste components.
The only reason we currently don't reuse nuclear fuel and use a once-through method is because Jimmy Carter enacted legislation during his administration to prevent it (due to his thoughts on nuclear material prol
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I suspect that if you include fuel extraction, processing and transport you will see the CO2 advantage nuclear enjoys grow considerably.
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Your idea of using some power dump is nice, but electrical vehicles are not the place. How are you ever going to switch on and off their charging for a start? When the wind falls, these chargers should be switched off. That requires some sophisticated communications, and is quite error prone.
Errr... it's being done already and has been being done for twenty years at least, in the UK. I know this because my firm has recently been involved in rewriting the software which drives it.
Essentially a signal is added to television broadcasts - in amongst the teletext data - which indicates to certain industrial plant when to switch on and off for cheaper electricity. A different signal can be broadcast by each regional transmitter, so you can switch on and off these 'energy dumps' on a regional basi
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it will take quite a while for a spread-out set of solar cells to all become darkened
the same could be said of wind of course. Even better : if you spread out your windmills across europe, energy production would be practically constant-> if the whole of europe(or the whole of the US) would be wind-free, that would be because : the sun would have stopped heating the earth AND the earth would have stopped rotating. (because wind is a side effect of the sun shining and the earth rotating) wind-free zones are very local.
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Re:a little extra info (Score:5, Interesting)
Some issues that a small "Qualified Facility" has to address:
How do you measure the power you're putting to the grid? The standard issue power meters only flow in one direction - they don't spin backwards when you're generating more than you're using. They usually require you to install a special meter that requires routine calibration by a licensed professional.
There's a morass of legal requirements that must be met before you can get paid. Additionally, states have the ability to (and usually do) regulate the profit out of small home renewable energy sources below a certain output level, such as small wind, solar, geothermal, micro-hydro, etc... And above a certain output and you become classified as an "Independent Power Producer" - which opens up a larger can of legal worms. The issues go on and on...
Bottom line - if you're looking at this as a "get rich quick" scheme, I'm afraid you're going to be sadly disappointed. However, it DOES help by taking the some of the burden off of the greenhouse-gas-spewing power plants, and offsetting your own personal load on an already overloaded grid. Make sure you do your homework for your state and take full advantage of any rebate programs or tax incentives offered.
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Question for you. Southern California Edison installed the bidirectional meter to measure the electricity that I am using and sending back into the grid (3.2 kw netmetered PV system). This meter does spin backwards. They specifically had to remove my one direc
Buying One Myself (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with "being green" or "sticking it to the man". I'm greener than your average bear and have found that "sticking it to the man" rarely works as well as one might have hoped.
Quite simply, I'll be five miles back from the nearest power line. I poked around and considered solar, but the idea of getting power production 24/7 rather than 5 or 6 hours per day closed the deal for me. My property is in an excellent wind zone (Cat 4 thru Cat 6, depending on which map you look at) and I'll be able to provide 120% of my power needs--excellent. Being able to provide all of my own needs and not be dependent on an ever-more-fragile grid is just a bonus that appeals mightily to the geek in me.
Turbines overall are great, though I've become convinced the industry is still at the "hand-built and tuned" phase the automotive industry was once in. It'll need more standardization before it can go mainstream in any significant fashion.
Great technology though.
Ferretman
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Re:Buying One Myself (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Buying One Myself (Score:4, Informative)
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Except that you aren't independent from the grid - you still need parts and tools and supplies to maintain the turbine.
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Homebrew 700 Watt Wind turbine (Score:3, Interesting)
20 years payback? WTF?? (Score:2, Funny)
OK, spotted the problem right here down in the "included with package" list -> "100ft Acme MONSTER turbine cable"
Easier ways to make a much bigger impact (Score:5, Interesting)
If you really want to make a difference, spearhead an energy monitoring and targetting campaign at work. Disclaimer: I am in the business. Typical savings for industrial sites are in the 5 to 15% range, and for commercial sites are up to 25% savings. Find out how much your company spends on energy/utilities and you'll realize that's a big payoff. It's much bigger than installing some 0.5 m^2 swept area windmill that generates maybe 100W 30% of the time, and 500W 5% of the time, and needs an expensive inverter and lead acid batteries with limited life span.
If you are really stuck on doing something at home and you have air conditioning, you can get reasonably inexpensive 800W solar panels (they might generate 500W peak on a sunny day in northern climes) and then you could hook it directly to an old 12V marine air conditioner, with only a single 12V battery to balance the load. Then during really hot days you can generate electricity and use it immediately to cool your house, so you don't have the expense of storing the energy for later, and the expense (and maintenance and inefficiency) of an inverter to get back to 120 or 240VAC.
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Variability and management problems (Score:2)
In addition to the random fluctuations, the timing of these things may not be exactly what the grid needs. I know that in a lot of locations in California, the wind turbines supply their peak generation in
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Some of that power may be sold and distributed to places besides California. Think: Midwest and East Coast. Why there? Well, something about having 75 deg temps + 90% relative humidity at 4am in Houston, Chicago, Washington DC that makes people keep their ACs humming all night long. At least in most of California during the summer, it tends to cool off in the evenings.
Then there is some of the electrical demands placed by some users that do not necessarily depend on human peak usage times (i.e.,
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Conservation first (Score:2)
Not saying wind turbines don't work, but unless you are already using energy efficient electronics and lighting, a
Wish I could actually put one up (Score:2)
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In California, there is a state law that prohibits Cities and HOAs from preventing you from installing solar if their only objection is aesthetics. They can say your roof isn't structurally sufficient, or something like that, but they can't stop you because they don't like the way they look.
Making headway? (Score:2)
Or worse yet, attach your house to the foundation better.
Generator required (Score:2)
There are several problems though.
All of the "off-the-grid" solutions require a backup source of power which means a generator with the kind of fuel that can be stored indefinitely--that is, for a consumer, propane. Diesel and gasoline cannot be practically stored more than 3 months even with preservatives.
Home owners' association says "no" to turbines or anything else that can be viewed from the street or neighbor. Unfortun
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on my workout, i do 60 minutes at 103W, so 0.1KWhr. that the local rates, that's about 0.6 cents worth of electricity. assuming there's someone who is doing that all day every day, that's about 14 cents per day.
i do not think that is financially feasible.
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I think it's only financially interesting to the people who own the gym. Might be able to power the stereo in the aerobics room with power generated by the bike machines....
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No, not really, this is an ancient idea, and has been done at least a couple of time, with probably not-so-great results.
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Those small turbines are just a waste of materials, they can never compete with the big ones, and as such, they will never