Homemade Solar & Wind Power

Part of a growing trend, a Danish family of seven has installed its own wind turbine to produce all the electricity the family needs while reducing its carbon footprint.

Duration : 0:2:26

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Technorati Tags: appliance:, Car, dane, danish, denmark, Electric, electricity, farm, Personal, Power, private, TURBINE, vehicle, WIND, yt:crop=16:9

Hi, I need help finding Six cities with wind power plants and six cities with water power plants. I also need the state that the city is in. Thank you so much for the help :). 10 points for the list!

texas, california, NY…

http://www.firstwind.com/media_center for more First Wind videos about wind energy. The construction of large wind turbines can be a local economic stimulus. Watch one town’s experience when they brought wind power to their community.

Duration : 0:2:42

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Technorati Tags: benefits of wind, economics of wind power, First Wind, local benefits of wind, wind electricity, wind energy, wind mill, wind mills, wind power, wind turbines, windmill

A breakthrough invention that can be placed IN FRONTof any wind turbine can more than triple the power generated by the turbine. This invention is a specially shaped stator developed in our wind tunnel. It has NO MOVING PARTS, is NOT POWERED, and can be used with EXISTING TURBINES.
The stator is shaped in such a way as to create a vacuum as air flows over it. The vacuum draws more air into the the device (in this case a fan), which causes the fan to spin faster. The video proves it works.
With this technology, wind turbines can make the power people want. HAWTs will start at lower speeds and be more efficient. VAWTs will make even more power.
In the video, the actual stator is hidden to protect international patent rights. The stator has a SMALLER DIAMETER THAN THE FAN so it is not increasing the intercepted area of wind. We are willing to show this to any media or accredited organization. We will produce these and also LICENSE THE TECHNOLOGY. This stator can be used on wind turbines, jet engines, vehicle intakes, pumps, and everything else that uses fluid motion.

Duration : 0:7:4

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Technorati Tags: 2500, 5KW, AMPS, battery, blade, Breakthrough, cut, Darius, electricity, energy, ENGINE, green, grid, HAWT, helix, In, Intake, Invention, INVERTER, Jet, License, Power, savonius, speed, Stator, TURBINE, VAWT, voltage, Watts, WIND

(April 16, 2008) Christina Archer, consulting assistant professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, discusses the importance of win power in a clean and renewable future. The Energy Seminar meets weekly during the academic year. For a list of upcoming talks, visit the events page at the Woods Institute for the Environment website.

Stanford University
http://www.stanford.edu/

Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford:
http://woods.stanford.edu/

Christina Archer
http://www.stanford.edu//~lozej/

Stanford University Channel on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/stanford

Duration : 0:56:25

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Technorati Tags: california, Carbon Footprint, Climate change, conservation, Economics, energy, environment, Federal, Government, Intermittency Storage, Leadership, Offshore, Policy, Politics, Re, Regulation, renewable energy, Stanford, Sustainability, TURBINE, wind power

Well, I don’t know much about wind power and I was wondering if I could go completely off the grid with wind power, or do I need to have a backup like solar? How much would it cost to buy a wind turbine and have it installed? Since I’d be making electricity on my own land, would it be free? Can I use wind power for heating my home?

Sorry it’s so many questions.
I meant once I install it, would I get electricity free?

Hey Piper, Kristen is quite right on the numbers. We power our entire home with wind and solar power, and we have made plenty of mistakes. If you want to run everything, you will need a herculean sized wind plant, maybe something on the order of 10 kilowatts or more. Ours is a 1kw, but the solar does most of the work here, even though it is more expensive. The question you have to answer first is am I trying to save money, or do I want to get rid of the power company entirely. To cut down your energy bill, I would suggest a wind turbine direct to grid tie system. The wind plant produces whatever power it can and dumps it in your home, if it’s more than you need, it sends the rest out the grid line, and your meter spins backwards. Problem is, if the grid goes down, your wind plant shuts down too, it has to have someplace to go all the time. If you want your own source, you have to have battery storage, and a larger plant, then you are spending more money up front for equipment, but if the power goes out, you probably won’t be aware of it. We have the latter system, and twice last year it provided us with power when the entire county was without, hard to put a price tag on that.

My suggestion is you do some reading for a while, start with Home Power Magazine, then check out the library. Our home was actually featured in Home Power twice in the past, use their search engine and look for, "small system first." You might decide not to get involved, and that’s fine too, but at least you will be well informed. Take care, Rudydoo

Is it economically efficient to have wind power as your source of electricity?

They are as efficient as the average generators however, air being the sorce of energy, besides maintenance, it’s free and environmentally friendly. Calculate your maintenance and compare it to your electricity bills.

I know it depends on the region and I know that wind speeds aren’t constant so there isn’t a definite number, but on average, how many homes could one wind turbine power. reliable source please. I’m having an argument with one of my friends. He thinks that wind turbines aren’t worth putting up and they don’t produce a substantial amount of energy, of course I disagree.

The output of a wind turbine depends on the turbine’s size and the wind’s speed through the rotor. Wind turbines being manufactured now have power ratings ranging from about 250 watts to 5 megawatts (MW).

A 10-kW wind turbine can generate about 10,000 kWh annually at a site with wind speeds averaging 12 miles per hour, or about enough to power a typical household. A 5-MW turbine can produce more than 15 million kWh in a year–enough to power more than 1, 400 households. The average U.S. household consumes about 10,000 kWh of electricity each year.

Not a car solely running on wind power. It would be like a hybrid car; sometimes it would use battery power, sometimes it would use gas power, and sometimes it would use wind power. On the highway with 60 to 70+ m.p.h winds comming at you, don’t you think somehow we could use that to help power the car?
I’m not talking about attaching a sail to the car I’m talking about wind turbines.

No. Not a practical solution. The weight of the battery to power the electrical portion and the weight of the gas engine would call for a large sail that would not be able to be used in the current infrastructure.

Wind turbines have the evil plastic in their structure. Also wind provides energy, not matter.

Wind power provides very little net energy. It is a non-starter. The use of plastics in wind turbines (as in ALL turbines) is a non-issue and completely misses the point.

Wind energy is a tempting IDEA but a disappointing reality. Wind power is so unreliable and variable that equivalent standby power has to be available all the time, wasting energy. Wind turbine construction is heavily subsidised and the electricity produced (even without allowing for the hidden cost of standby cover) is so expensive it is uneconomical. Power companies only buy wind generated power because they HAVE to by law and they cover the excessive cost by charging us more for ALL our electricity. If it wasn’t for the subsidies (direct grants plus subsidies through us paying more for conventional power) there would be no wind energy in the UK. It is an appalling waste of money that could be better spent on more productive, more economical, more reliable power generation using other technologies.

Tidal power is stronger and totally predictable but receives only a fraction of the subsidy of wind power. Ignoring ideology and looking for a realistic practical solution, we need to be building nuclear power capacity plus clean-burn coal fired power stations with tidal power as a longer term source.