Renewable Energy: Wind Electric
To get more information about these systems and how a wind electric system might work for your home, please refer below or complete our Contact Form.
Wind systems can serve a wide range of residential clients, from single-family homes to farms. At a good location, these systems are excellent for producing a lot of electricity, particularly in the winter months when the solar resource is low and another form of renewable electricity is needed most.
NY has a good wind resource, although it is more site specific than our solar resource.The first step in determining whether a wind system may be suitable for your home is to look up your wind resource at New York's Wind Mapping site.
Requirements
For wind systems to make good investment, we typically recommend that clients have a wind resource of at least 11 - 12 mi/hr. Wind systems can be built through or independent from the NYSERDA Wind Incentive Program. In order to qualify for the program, you have to have at least 10.0 mph wind resource at the height of the system (which is typically 60-140 ft), and all wind systems must be installed on a minimum of one acre of land.
Characteristics
Wind systems are a reliable, clean form of renewable energy generation. They have an expected life of around 20 years, and are more mechanical than solar systems, and require regular maintenance. At Halco, we build the cost of regular maintenance into our economic calculations for the systems, and offer this maintenance as a service to our customers.
Types & Components
The primary components for a grid-connected wind system is the wind turbine itself, a self-supported lattice or monopole tower, the tower foundation, the load controller, and inverter(s). In our experience, we have worked primarily with 1kW-50 kW horizontal axis turbines (HAT). These turbines have been engineered for a significant period of time and their performance monitored and documented across the U.S. Manufacturers that we typically work with include Bergey WindPower, ReDriven Power, and ARE.
Besides HATs, the other main type of turbine that there has been a lot of attention given to recently are the vertical axis turbines (VAT). These turbines are appealing to the residential market because they claim to be able to use wind when there is turbulence and thus be mounted much closer to the ground reducing costs. These turbines come in several types, two of which are the Savonius (half-barrel) and Darrieus (eggbeater) designs. Presently, there are many new manufacturers of these turbines, but there is very little in the way of documented production data. As such, while we think and hope VATs will be able to contibute to residential renewable electricity production in the future, but we are not currently recommending their use to clients. For more information, please see a recent article summarizing these concerns.
System Sizing
Typically, homes in New York use between 5-30 kwh of electricity per day. If you can provide our staff with the last month to year of your utility bills (depending on your situation), we can assist you in determining your average current electrical usage. Once electrical usage is known, possible system sizes can be determined that would meet 50% to 100% of your needs, depending on available budget and preference. If your home is in the upper end of the above usage range or higher, we always recommend efficiency measures simultaneous to system design and installation. At Halco, every renewable energy system we do is monitored and production is guaranteed.
Costs & Economics
For details on systems costs, the available incentives and financing, and details on system return on investment, payback, cost per kWh, and protection against future energy costs, please see the Wind Electric Economics Section.
