With energy costs rising as they are today, more people are looking towards using small wind turbines to power their homes. This is an excellent way to reduce your grid power consumption at home but there are a few things to be wary of. If you don't see full scale wind turbines being built nearby, you may want to rethink your green energy strategy, small wind turbines will be much less efficient than large ones.
However, if you still think your location would be suitable for using small wind turbines, do a quick search to find wind maps of your area. These are freely available on the internet and can provide a very good idea about how much power you could generate from the wind. There may be other reasons that you are not seeing wind turbines used in your area beyond having suitable wind resources.
Once you have an idea about the average wind speed, think about the size of turbine that will fit your property. If you have lots of open space, you'll be able to purchase a larger turbine to take better advantage of the available wind. The most commonly available small wind turbines are rated at 250W, 500W and 1000W, but this doesn't mean that they will always generate this amount of power. The rating is generally for a relatively high wind speed, as high as 30 miles per hour. Most areas of North America do not have wind resources this strong.
This means that a 1000W rated turbine may only regularly generate 400-500W of power. Obviously if you want to generate a significant amount of power from the wind, you're going to need more than one turbine. Quite often there is a negative correlation between power demand and wind speed. Many hot, humid summer days come with little wind. This means that in the middle of the day, when power is required the most, wind sources can't provide it. Knowing how to take advantage of this will make your small wind turbine project successful.
Dealing with these issues is the prime concern when designing your home renewable energy system using small wind turbines. Although the outdoor section of the system is the most visible, the real magic happens inside. Components such as charge controllers, batteries and inverters make it possible for you to use the energy generated by your small wind turbine at some point in the future. This means that your turbine can be generating power in the middle of the night that you could use the next day. This is the ideal situation for using renewable energy at home.
Commercially available small wind turbines are not the only way to satisfy the requirements of your renewable energy system. If you like to tackle DIY projects, a wind turbine is not very difficult to build. When you design your own small wind turbine, you can determine how much power it will generate and you can tailor it to your system. This advantage alone makes this project worthwhile for those that can handle it. If nothing available commercially suits your needs, consider this option.
Find out more information about this and more renewable energy topics at the Green Power at Home Blog and Home Energy Focus.
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