Archive for January, 2010
Wind turbine generator for home residential wind power
This video is taken when windmax wind generator is on the 5.9 feet test pole and the wind is 10 mph according to weather channel. the blades performs extremely well and spinning very fast at low noise. imagine much greater performance if this wind generator is at 26 feet high !! The blade diameter is 1.4 meter or 4.9 feet. While at the same wind speed, the old style wind turbine with mechanical furling with 8.2 feet diameter blades doesn’t perform, the blades barely moved. Instead, the wind …
Duration : 0:1:11
New Wind Turbine Design Good for Rural, Urban Environment
Wind power is one of the fastest growing forms of alternative energy in the world. More and more, wind power mills are seen in the countryside, in large wind farms and for the most part, away from city life. But a new form of wind power is now designed to work in an urban environment. VOA producer Zulima Palacio has the story. Mill Arcega narrates.
Duration : 0:2:2
Solar Powered Plane report on Sky News
This Sky News report gives information about a new solar-powered plane that is being tested in Switzerland. It is called Solar Impulse
Duration : 0:2:25
Mini Solar-Powered Car
the Mini Solar-Powered Car from thinkgeek.com $19.99 look at the website that i got it from dum people get at www.thinkgeek.com
Duration : 0:0:37
Good Energy – Solar Power at Home
In the Herefordshire countryside a couple use solar panels at home to heat water and generate electricity and help them to lead the good life.
Duration : 0:5:57
STIRLING ENGINE FRESNEL LENS SOLAR POWER GREEN ENERGY SUN
www.greenpowerscience.com GREEN POWER SCIENCE STIRLING ENGINE AND A FRESNEL LENS 1800 RPMS. HAD TO STOP AS ENGINE HEAT SHAFT WAS GETTING TOO HOT.
Duration : 0:2:34
Live Green Live Free
An example how by designing green from the ground up you can eliminate or greatly reduce your monthly expenses. This was originally a submission to a eco contest current.com/ecospot that didn’t make the selection
Duration : 0:0:55
Would you buy a package deal to wind power your home ?
I mean,one price and includes instalation of ALL compoents, wireing to code, trenching, location, and erecting the wind mill it self.
I’ve been doing a lot of research about residential wind power and I’m not sure what I’d do if I was in the right situation to invest in wind power. The approach you’re asking about is the way I would usually do things, but the costs are so high.
From what I’ve read, the Skystream 3.7 Residential Wind Turbine will cost approximately $5,500.00 USD, but when installation costs are factored in, the initial investment will typically be in the range of $12,000 USD to $15,000 USD. Rebates and incentives will reduce the purchase price in some areas, but that’s a lot of money.
The other option is to build your own turbine to wind power your home. I am not much of a do-it-yourselfer, but the cost savings are just too large to ignore. You can purchase instructions for taking on this type of a project from various sources. The instructions seem to range in price from $10-$50 and they promise the materials will cost less than $200. Even if it takes you a couple of weekends to complete the project and it ends up costing twice as much to build the product, that’s quite a difference in costs!
I don’t know if this has been helpful or not, but I’ll include a link to my Residential Wind Turbine Blog where I’ve been trying to collect data about the various options available.
I’m sure you’ll make the right decision on which way you should go.
What are some disadvantages and advantages of wind power/energy compared to other sources of energy?
Like geo-thermal energy,solar power
Advantages:
- There are no carbon equivalent (CO2e) greenhouse gas emissions once the wind turbine is built, although some are produced in manufacturing and installing the wind turbines.
- Wind has a lower cost per installed megawatt (MW) of generation capacity than some other types of renewable generation (e.g. solar, biomass).
- Wind is a mature and established generation technology, which is widely accepted by energy utility companies (compared with emerging technologies such as biomass gasification/cogeneration, which have more technical risk).
Disadvantages:
- Wind power still has a higher cost per installed MW of capacity than some conventional energy sources (e.g. coal, hydro).
- Power production is intermittent, depending on wind speed (this is also true of solar and marine renewable generation). This means that generation utilities have to either have backup generation (e.g. gas peaking plant), demand reduction systems (e.g. hot water ripple control) or hedging arrangements with other utilities in place to ensure they can deliver power to consumers and maintain the required power quality for the grid.
- Sites that make good wind farm locations (places with bare land and strong, steady wind flow) often are in remote places a long way from major electricity grid connection sites. This means there can be substantial added costs to connect generation sites to the grid.
Comparisons with Geothermal & Solar:
- Geothermal power production is a well established technology (over 100 years old) and can provide high levels of baseload (steady supply) power in large volumes.
- There are a limited number of sites suitable for geothermal power development, even in countries with plenty of geothermal activity (e.g. Italy, New Zealand, Philippines). Not all geothermal wells are suitable for commercial development because a combination of large reservoir, high heat and high pressure is needed to make power in most cases.
- There are companies developing more efficient geothermal technologies (e.g. Ormat) that allow smaller, lower heat or lower pressure wells to be developed.
- The direct heat from geothermal can also be used for industrial processes (e.g. woodpulp processing, timber drying and food processing).
- Geothermal power typically has large startup costs (tens to hundreds of millions of dollars) and for this reason is usually only undertaken by large energy utilities.
Solar:
- Solar has been used for around 30 years in commercial applications (e.g. backup power for telecommunications sites) but has only grown into the mass market in the last ten years or so.
- The cost of making photovoltaic (solar power) panels continues to drop with mass production and competition. Also, new technologies such as concentrating solar thermal and thin-film photovoltaic panels are increasing the choices available to users.
- The solar power market is splitting into two areas: utility solar plant (10MW+) and distributed solar, which includes small rooftop and community installations.
Please help with my solar energy installation?
I have a few volkswagen solar panels, those that they use to keep the batteries charged.
I´m planing to use them in combination with a car battery and a small power inverter with a timer to pump water only a couple of minutes a day to water my bonsais,
I have the panels, the battery, the timer, the power inverter and the pump,
What else do I need to make it work?
A friend told me that I have to prevent the energy from going back or something to shut off the timer when the batteries are charging. Thanks!
That’s a tricky question.
You are going to need one or more diodes connected between the PV panels and the battery, to prevent it from discharging through the panels when the lights are out.
A single car battery typically has a charging current of about 0.8-1 amp, and needs a charging bias of about 2.3-2.5 volts over the top of the battery’s voltage. I assume that since the originally intended purpose of your PV panels is for charging car batteries, that they are sized correctly in terms of voltage and current output.
The diode(s) is another matter. Here are the specifications you are going to want. I have added here an approximate fudge factor.
forward voltage : ~0.8v
reverse breakdown voltage: 30v
leakage current: micro-amp range
forward current: 2 amps. If you can’t find diodes this large(unlikely), you can just connect enough in parallel to get the current capacity you want.
Another problem, is the fact that the inverter will draw a small to moderate amount of current whenever it is switched on, even if the pump is not on. I am not sure how to solve this problem besides just physically turning the inverter off when it is not being used. This kind of defeats the purpose of having an automatic system though….
Mark’s idea of using a 12v dc pump and ignoring the battery and inverter altogether, is a good one.
You might want to talk to a bona fide electrical engineer in RL, and ask him what his opinion is. Electrical engineering is not my specialty……
Good luck with your project
~Donkey Hotei.