How The Liam F1 Wind Turbine Will Destroy Every Home Renewable Energy Source

Small Wind Turbines have been all the craze lately, as they’re said to be an incredibly cheap to run and efficient way for buildings and households to produce their own electricity! Mini-turbines have been developing much faster compared to other renewable energy sources, and at the forefront of this revolution is the fantastic Liam F1 Wind Turbine, which promises to completely mog on its non-turbine competitors!

Let’s take a look at the Liam F1 Wind Turbine and check out how it dominates every other Renewable Home Energy Source!

00:00 - INTRO
00:39 - Why Liam F1 Standouts
02:02 - Liam F1 vs Solar
03:43 - Liam F1 vs Hydropower
05:06 - Liam F1 vs Air Source & Biomass Heating
06:28 - Cost & Maintenance

[anandawijesinghe]

As an engineer with wind turbine design experience, I can say this is false sales hype. The total wind energy input is decided by the maximum area swept by the turbine, it is therefore quite small. As a drag type turbine, its conversion efficiency must necessarily be below the maximum 59% Betz limit, and much smaller than that of a lift driven 3 bladed propellor turbine. The cost of this device will be much more than that of a structurally simpler and lighter 3-bladed propellor. which uses much less construction material. Its mounting immediately above the roof means it essentially has no mast, and that it is not installed high enough above the roof to capture sufficient free unobstructed wind flow.

There is no way this device would cost effectively produce sufficient wind energy to justify its cost; it would simply be a white elephant, and a neighborhood eyesore continually pivoting like a weathercock towards the turbulent local wind direction, and not efficiently capturing the kinetic energy of even the turbulent local wind!

Don't be misled by this sales hype !🥵 !

[Elliandr]

I looked this up and it doesn't seem very affordable compared to solar. However, for most areas, you need a permit to have wind installed on a roof, so a silent model would probably be the only option if you want wind. Also it has one big advantage over solar: Ameren (my local utility) has a net metering program tat gets zeroed out once a year which happens to be at the end of summer. This means that even if they owe you money they will just void that and remove any credits you earned from generating power in the summer. This means that you need a system that exceeds your average usage if you want a grid tied system where you don't have to pay the utilities. Wind, however, is more abundant in Autumn right after that reset date so depending on the cost might be better than solar or might work well as a hybrid system.

Looking at the numbers:

The "Liam F1 Mini Urban" model wind turbine costs around $5, 450 + installation costs, goes on the roof, and generates no noise. It's based on the Archimedes screw and is advertised to produce an average of 1500 kwh per year with wind speeds of 5 m/s average, but will produce energy when wind is blowing as low as 2 m/s and nothing below that. This means that the advertised "average" will really depend on how windy your area is on average.

Getting an anemometer first would be a good idea to determine what your average will actually be. You can buy one for less than $100, but unless you plan on writing down the numbers multiple times a day every day for a year you are better off spending a bit more on a model that can log historic data. You can then use that data to determine how suitable wind is for you.

The average household in my uses 8, 376 kwh a year. If we round up and assume you'd want 9, 000 kwh and if we also assume each unit gives you an average of 1500 kwh a year you'd need 6 of these for a total cost of $32, 700. A house that uses 9000 kwh a year will end up spending an average of $500+ a month so such a system would save $3000 a year meaning it would take 11 years for the system to be paid off assuming no maintainence is required.

[frustratedalien]

I first read about the Liam F1 turbine in 2014. There's a WaPo article about this from the same year. If it hasn't been commercialized properly in 9 years, I highly doubt if it delivers a fraction of what this video claims.

[musikSkool]

In 1 year from now you will never hear anything more about this. Products don't lose because of a failure of the idea, they lose to a failure of funding and public interest.

[timkremer]

This product produces very little power, and costs 5x per kW what solar panels cost.
Unless you live somewhere that is super windy & cloudy all the time, it probably won't outperform solar panels.
And with mechanical moving parts, it will need more maintenance.

[bertholdsanchez]

Why a simple device like this should cost 10000 -15000 dollars is ridiculous. Perhaps that is why no-one buys them?

[UbuteyAustralia]

My 24 solar panels created 1245 kwh for the month of aug -September 31 days and my use was 280 kwh So i think i will stick with my system 🤔👍

[MickPsyphon]

The question that comes to mind is how these wind turbines stand up to winter climates, where heavy winds can often be accompanied by snow, sleet, freezing rain and temperatures below -25°C.

[colinhall]

Bit of ‘over selling’ going on here IMO. That guy never shut up about how ‘amazing’ it is and had no credible comparison data to prove it.

[nunyabidnez]

Something found on the web. These things are up there with those water out of thin air devices.

It's a drag wind generator with no aerodynamic component increasing generation. This makes it effectively closer to a Savonious than to even a Darrieus turbine, which is to say close to the least effective common form of wind generation used for pumping water and the like. A two- or three-blade horizontal axis wind turbine and most Darrieus-style vertical axis wind turbines get an extra kick from aerodynamic lift, especially the HAWTs.
It uses an awful lot of material for the amount it generates. All else being equal, you need to increase your swept area to get more energy from the wind. A two- or three-blade HAWT uses a very small amount of material to increase the swept area because swept area increases by the square when you have a circular swept area with an axis in the middle. This thing looks as if it would increase material required more than the swept area, which means its intrinsically limited to be tiny.
There's no way to feather the thing except by turning it 180 degrees to the wind, which only partially reduces the wind load. This means that you can expect it to get blown over in high winds much more regularly than more sensible designs.
They are idiots about installation. Their site shows these things mounted directly on rooftops. Anybody with any knowledge of the physics of laminar air flow knows that all else being equal, rooftops are really stupid places to put wind generators because the wind is slow and extremely turbulent there. Putting wind turbines on masts well above surrounding obstacles and in the clearest air possible is the only way to get economic amounts of electricity out unless you build your wind generator from spare parts you have in your shed as a hobby.
They go down the path of dissing solar panels -- need maintenance!, don't work in the dark! -- and other types of wind generators -- kill birds! -- instead of publishing standard wind speed to power generation curves which every credible wind generator manufacturer does. And I say this having dug into the spec sheets and scientific papers on their website. This is two anti-patterns for the price of one.

[paullangford]

You can't get more energy out of the wind than actually exists in the wind. "Fantastic" is the right word: fantasy output.

[SteveJohnSteele]

You will still need to either store the electricity in batteries or share it with the 'grid'. Sharing your unused electricity with the grid builds up credit which can be spent on electricity when your device's output is lower than what you require.

[wilsistermans]

I have seen this model before, then called the Archemedes wind turbine. Same promises, but could not deliver. Costed more than it will ever produce in energy.

[Snowwie]

This type of energy production (at least here in Western and Northern Europe) is very useful because solar panels do not give enough production during the winter period. And at those long nights you don't have sunshine either and in winter it's often cloudy (windy) weather. There this turbine comes in pretty handy. According to sources the average windspeed on my location here in the North of the Netherlands is about 7.5m/s, so it definitely can help out. When the wind is blowing, especially at night, and the temperature is cold, then turn on the convector heater or even store heat in a type of stone that can store heat for a long time, only when you have excessive power available. That would be ideal. I would love to buy one or two of these, and never have to worry about energy again. Also because in my country 'netting' is being abandoned.

[jackstretch-jones]

As much as i like the idea of a smaller more compact wind gen and i can appriecate the balanced from both sides of the rotor. life span of the barings and as someone else mentioned what is the burnout speed, most modern wind gens need breaks to stop them when the wind gets up, also how many batteries are needed to store the potential power supplied?

[bembelknecht]

5m/s equals 11.6 miles per hour.... even in my current location in a coastal town exposed to the monsoon, this is already extraordinary.

[axegrind]

In Hamburg, NY you could put one of these on a house and you could power a small city with the amount of wind we get here. Gusts are “only” peaking at around 40mph today, pretty calm out there.

[victor-zbyc]

Places like Patagonia, with heavy winds are suitable for this invention, thanks for the data from Argentina

[rickpen]

This guy did his homework. Impressed he touched on the mini water turbine generator. Problem with a lot of these are harsh winters. Still glad to see the tech advancing.

[defan]

How does it hold up to hail or tornadic winds? Does it have a limiter on it so it doesn't overspin or can the unit take a hit from pea to golfball size hail???