Watch this before you buy a wind generator, My personal experience, and what to look for

Watch this before you buy a wind generator, My personal experience, and what to look for

In this video I will be sharing a few of the things I've learned from buying and using wind turbines. Like, what designs to stay away from and what designs to buy. Also how important is the tower, and how big of a wind generator should I buy? All these questions and more Ill answer on this video, be sure and like, subscribe, share, and comment.

[veggitarianredneck]

Catch me live every Sunday @5:00 mountain time

[iss]

Where I live there is almost no wind. So I decided to grab it and spin it by hand while watching TV. At least I am not wasting my time!

[FrancisdeBriey]

I agree 150% ! Wind turbines are very marketable because most of people are not engineers and dream of harnessing wind which "seems" so full of power and therefore provide a lot of energy .As you point out, the power output is the SQUARE of the diameter, and for this reason high power is achievable only with big diameters ! And this requires also to be exposed to strong wind which means you need to put your turbines quite "high" in the air. For all these reasons your little 300-800 USD chinese turbine at 3m at the end of your property will produce ... 30W, 50W max ?... and not the Watts anounced, which refers to peak power under a storm !

[georgedoherty]

Kenny, I was a moderator on Navitron for over 12 years and we got more complaints about Ista breeze than any other lump
They were a joke. I remember them starting off in Turkey and our members buying these pieces of junk with only one bearing on tbe front. We has some good laughs but you Kenny are doing yourself no favours pushing ista breeze.
Xmork and Yenzhou Shenzhou are excellent Chinese 2kw lumps. I have been flying Yenzhou Shenzhou since 2005 and the same 2kw x 120vdc model since 2008 24/7.
As for AirX, They are pretty toys, I have tbe Marine model with silly point blades on a box in my shed for years. Try a 2kw x 48volt Xmork Kenny. Tbe furling mechanism is brilliant and very safe.., ,
Fieldlines are a very good forum.
Good luck.

[RoisinSlater]

I'm looking at getting off grid. I have a cleared location close to a lake with high winds and a one story cabin. I was reviewing the choices and don't need planning as my home is central on the land without and trees etc and the wind blasts me from two sides. I'm not an electrician so thus was helpful.

[talismanskulls]

Its funny because I figured out how to make one without modifying much at all when I was a kid. I noticed when i took one of my toy cars that had those cheap little battery powered motors that if i pushed it manually across the floor, the lights came on. One of those small DC 1.5-3V motors. So I started experimenting and I took a couple of them apart and hooked the lights to the wires direct tot he motor and manually spun them and got the light to come on. So later on I went to an old radio shack and got some larger propeller blades, grilled out their center and glued the gear part to it and took it outside on a windy day which made the lights come on. I decided to try using several of the motors and did the same thing and got help from my friend's dad to make an amplification coil, a battery to store the electricity and the lights, as well as an on/off switch. Brought it to school as a science project and got an A+. Later I took an old home fan on the same principle and created an array of those. Had the same guy help me see if I could use that all to create safe lighting for a little club house in the back yard. Had it running for a couple years. Then "someone complained" about it despite the person being a licensed electrician and reps from the power company more or less ordered it be dismantled or face some hefty bogus fines. That's when I got my first introduction to the grid scam.

[davidmorris-jones]

I bought a 325 watt wind turbine & installed it on my top floor 12 story apartment balcony to subsidise my solar panels. I was quite impressed to see around 12 amps being generated 15 volt max. It is capable of a bit more upto 15-16 amps. I am a Ham Radio operator & do know how to measure correctly. It was not expensive either. Only £149.95. It works for me.

[petset]

You make a lot of good points that many people don't consider. Adding a couple more points, 1- density of air at the location is a factor. If someone lives in the Rocky mountains like I do, the air is considerably thinner than at sea level, so molecules of air passing the blades aren't as dense, thus have less energy. Number two is something I might be mistaken on if standards have changed since I researched turbines... rated power. A decade ago, the rated output was standardized at something like 24 or 26mph wind speed. Very few locations have sustained winds that high. Some sellers have a chart showing theoretical output at different wind speed, and a more reasonable 14-15mph wind offers less than half of posted rating. No one will be happy with that without doing some research. Most of the 400-500w generators are useless in the most ideal conditions. ...I have one, made in the USA. It just doesn't charge batteries unless it's howling out there. Live and learn. If someone thinks they need 500w to do what they want, they will need perhaps a 2, 000w generator, costing quite a bit more than they were prepared for (plus higher costs for peripheral items in the build). Anyway, thanks for your video. Well done.

[keithw]

VAWT are about 40% efficient (a good one), whereas HAWT are about 60% efficient. However, on a VAWT, you can mount two sets of blades, set up to turn in opposite direction. One set rotates a tube, the other a shaft within the tube. The stator actually rotates in the opposite direction to the shaft, effectively doubling the speed of the generator. Another advantage is all the heavy equipment is at ground, so access is easy and the structure can be lighter. This approach is being trialled on offshore installations, whether it can work as well for off grid use remains to be seen

[Cyrribrae]

Huh. I've already decided that wind doesn't make sense at this point at my house (hope it keeps getting better), but really appreciate the discussion here and the way you're approaching it. Much more useful than a lot of the videos online (and their armies of comments from people who have no idea what they're talking about but SURE they understand all the physics).

[MrSummitville]

When the wind speed doubles, it contains 8 times the energy. BUT ... spinning a wind turbine twice as fast, only generates 4 times as much energy. Wind Power increases by the cube of wind speed, but a Wind Turbine's output only increases by the square of the wind speed. If you understand TSR, then you will understand why this must be ...

[WhatDadIsUpTo]

I have built VAWTs for over 50 years and they meet all my expectations. They all compress air, which I store and use for power when I need it.

[shadyss]

I know this is old, but the general appeal is 24/7 operational ability over solar. I live in a pretty windy area so the thought of one of these with a smaller battery seemed like a neat way to learn about renewables. However as I get into this rabbit hole I'm learning wind is a terrible way to go from a maintenance perspective, let alone the all the issues you just touched on!

[CeruleanTalon]

In the process of buying a home in Alabama. The utility company has charges against you using solar panels so that you are actually paying full price, but using almost none of their electricity. I realize it will not be an instant thing, but we want to go as far off grid as we possibly can and discovering your channel is helping us. Thank you!!

[michaelward]

Very good video.
I find it amazing that people go out and buy junk, just based on the lure of advertising rhetoric and don't watch videos like this before they even think of spending any money at all.

My answer to them is to buy an anemometer that records wind speeds/data logger, that itself costs less the $40. Check how often wind speeds near you are fast enough and how often they blow, before even contemplating buying any wind generator.

[josephlieberman]

One thing that lingers in my memory about the AirX is that the neat looking aerodynamic housing was not designed to account for ingress of moisture and that any water should have a way to flow out resulting in unnecessary rusting corrosion and premature failure, now perhaps they have dealt with this issue since my experiences were over ten years ago.
I can recommend from much experience the PMA (permanent magnet alternator) type of wind generator such as are built by Hydrogenappliances i have encountered a good number of people who used them on boats or high locations for back up power of telecommunication repeater transceivers, many instances of extremely high winds and the small units put out easily 40+amps of current. i also personally installed one in the Philippines which continues to function even after several strong hurricanes over the years.
basically there is an aray of options for wind energy and the off grid use but its up to the user to be his own engineer so to speak.
extra coats of marine varnish on the stator coils and even magnets can help prolong their life by protecting from various weather extremes.

[SwichMad]

Went the rabbit hole of finding the best blade design and improvements for a HAWT and found through a lot of reading that DU 06-W-200 is the best airfoil with winglets similar to airplane wing tips bent towards the center of the turbine.
Quick calculations on how much will it cost to design and build one using carbon fibre filament or carbon fibre sheets and epoxy yielded a total cost of around 1500 to 1700 for a 700w wind turbine including charger, inverter etc.
Mean output over the course of a year - 100w/h, ROI - 7 years, not considering maintenance.
This is for a turbine designed to pull the most out of the wind available ( mean 5-6m/s for the whole year ) with good quality bearings, generator and very low rotor mass, those Chinese turbines are just slapped together hoping for the best.
I'll go solar, wind is too much of a headache!

[bobkoure]

Back in the 70s I built a Savonius turbine (vertical axis) out of plywood, pipes, sections of a couple of 50gal plastic fruit-juice barrels, power take-off via pulley, belt, and an automotive generator I got from the junkyard. Generators were a bit uncommon then as cars had mostly switched to alternators - but I wanted low speed performance. It didn't generate a lot of power (enough for 12VDC lights in the barn) - but it cost me well under $30 (70s dollars). I now know that I should have attempted a Darius turbine. The Savonius was, essentially, 'scoops' that wind could push against. The Darius is quite different: it has wings on struts, much more efficient. These days, of course, solar is the easiest choice.

[jeancpt]

The reason for Horizontal wind generators is nor because they are more efficient. They are not. I live on the high Veld in South Africa, we have great wind here over August/September. The problem is that the direction of the wind is not constant. Everytime a VWG changes direction it loses it's centrifugal momentum and starts all over again. Those huge wind generators are placed where there is wind from a constant direction, mostly close to large bodies of water. But here, my best option is a vertical wind turbine.

[waynesmith]

Thanks, your video just saved me a lot of time and money. I am retired and make knives. A couple of years ago I got interested in solar. So I built a system consisting of 13 Ecoworthy 100 amp 12 volt panels in parallel with a Chinese wind generator. I decided to keep it simple and use two Ecoworthy 60 amp controllers along with a Rock controler for the wind generator all wired to a bus bar which goes to the battery bank. Everything worked well until I replaced my sealed led acid batteries with 5 100 ah hr lithium iron phosphate batteries wired in parallel. I have removed the wind generator from the system.
Your video told me a couple of things I didn't know. One is how little the wind generator is contributing to my system. And the second thing I didn't know was how battery bank size affects charging difficulty. Thank you.
Now after making a second twin system which is almost done I can go back to making knives. By way of thanks you have a full time subscriber.