this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2024
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I wish solar made sense where I live, but it's not just "cloudy right now", it's extremely overcast for 9-12 months out of the year. It'll still generate power, but not really enough to offset the cost of the installation. Hopefully solar keeps getting cheaper, more efficient, or both.
It will! And if you've got wind...wind turbines weren't very good & experienced breakdowns, but we're on the verge of a few breakthroughs. Making wind turbines cheaper, more efficient, and less moving parts to break.
Dude, it gets extremely windy where we live. Do private wind turbines exist? That would be perfect!
Yes, but the tall ones are hard to get approval for in most residential areas. Smaller spiral/helix looking turbines can be easier to install if you can find a good spot to place it.
There's some up and coming ideas. The problem with traditional designs is that for them to be efficient and effective, they have to be big. Backyard turbines with less than 10 acres to work with won't cut it. They might supplement things a bit, but they're expensive for little gain.
Looking to the future, that might change. This video goes over some of the options at various levels of development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQKHJm7vd4E
I would add that when it comes to these sorts of things that have yet to see mass adoption, you should be skeptical of any individual thing. However, if there are ten different things, probably at least one of them is going to work out. In fact, that's my general feeling about Matt Ferrell's videos. Good for getting an overview of what might work in the future, but don't be too quick to jump on any one thing.
Frezik is right, there are plenty of small wind turbines. As I alluded to, the tech naturally involves moving parts & has been prone to breakdowns. They're getting better all the time, but the small ones don't produce heaps of power. The big ones do; there is a bigger residential one in my community & it outperforms the solar panels 8:1. It also broke down in the first year of operation, and a crane had to come in & take the turbine down, to be shipped to TX for (thankfully under warranty) repairs.
I like to see everything getting better, I think I feel more comfortable with solar panels & reducing needs, increasing insulation.
I can't Google what I remember seeing, but they're working on very efficient & tough ones that just spin in place. Mounted to the roof of your house. It's kind of like that vid posted below, but not, the fins looked like 2 ribbons.
I saw some that had spiral turbines used on the side of the highway somewhere years ago. That type of design would be a lot less space constraining. I doubt my HOA would be cool with me installing an enormous fan in my front yard. There might be some alternative designs that would be acceptable though. I'm going to look into it. We're completely off the grid except for electricity & internet, so becoming self-sufficient with our electricity needs would be awesome!
Much less reliable for a number of reasons. There are a lot of weird mechanical stresses I'm not smart enough to understand.
You could maybe rig one up with a car alternator and a older turbine design. But that may take some effort and if you want to be real redneck about it.
I've come to learn that the typical wind turbine design just doesn't work on a micro scale, that you would need to have in a residential area. (Even on a farm, the wind turbine would need to be pretty big to even be worth installing and maintaining.) I've learned about a few advancements in wind power.
The Challenges of a Wind Turbine on Your Home
How Can a Wind Turbine Be Motionless?
How We Solved the Home Wind Turbine Problem
Not to mention differently shaped so it doesn't annoy the the neighbours as their house is cast in shadows