Home Wind Turbines Are A Worthless, Dangerous, Wasteful Vanity
by John Laumer, Philadelphia 
on 11.15.06
We're entering a phase where anything expert "greens" say can and will be used to argue against renewable energy. Or at least put in a lousy context by the media. Here's an anecdote that illustrates the process, brought to us via tip. The Daily Mail reports under the headline Wind turbines 'may actually do more harm than good' that:- "Home wind turbines have become the must-have home improvement among people eager to help save the planet and flaunt their green credentials. Dubbed 'the ultimate green fashion statement', [turbines] are selling in the thousands, amid claims they can cut household electricity bills by 30 per cent". The story goes on to state that "...they barely produce enough electricity to power a hairdryer in many houses. They also do nothing to tackle greenhouses gases, while there are far better ways to cut down on energy bills". Wow. Green fashionistas are ruining the view from the street with useless equipment, then, eh? Worse than that, the story goes on to point out that 'in some cases chimneys may be toppled and structures made noisy or unstable as a result of wind turbines.'
A water bed can fall through a floor of an old Victorian home. A badly installed TV antennae can destabilize a chimney. And, even a basketball backboard, improperly mounted on a garage roof, can cause objectionable noise, inside and out, and contribute to structural problems. While it may be a good thing to point out why professional roof-mounted turbine installation is recommended, the tone of this article makes it seem like a piling-on of negatives. Reminiscent of the tone of those who constantly remind us that fuel efficient cars 'can be unsafe.' Like "You're better off in an SUV, kiddo."
Our favorite passage in this story has to be: "As well as being noisy and unsightly, they barely produce enough electricity to power a hairdryer in many houses". Lets take these one at a time.
"Noisy." Compared to what? Lawnmowers? Street traffic? Airliners overhead? Give us some decibel numbers.
"Unsightly." That's a value judgement. Compared to what? The homes they are on? Yard ornaments? Their dogs?
"barely produce enough electricity to power a hairdryer." Yes: people are going to buy a wind turbine to blast a hair dryer all day long!
This writer just looked at the wattage on a newly purchased Revlon brand hairdryer: Rating was 1985W. That's roughly equivalent to twenty, 100-W incandescant bulbs...surely more than a whole residence-worth of what's actually lit at any one time... or to over one hundred forty (14W-rated, 60W incandescant equivalent) compact flourescent bulbs.
Picking a number out of the air for the sake of discussion, let's say the average home turbine, so pictured, runs at 20% of rated output, due to wind variability and whatever. That's still enough juice to power over twenty bright CFL bulbs. We wouldn't want that now, would we? Especially if the UK grid has been prounouced under-powered and getting worse, increasing the likelihood of future brownouts.
Some prospective benefits seem to have been overlooked in the story. Citizens could donate their Pounds Stirling to a climate lobby, or, better still, invest the same in a properly installed home turbine, to more immediate practical effect, while providing a transparent polling of concerns. A tally of a district's all-in-a-row turbines, as in the photo, would be a good way to for a local politician to figure out what the body politic really feels about climate change and energy security. Quite a savings on political consulting fees could result.
And then there's the prospective carbon credits issue to resolve. Do the savings go to the home owner or the utility?
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Of course it is true that energy efficiency should be a prerequisite before installing something like a home turbine (or PV, for that matter). I spoke to the nice folks at Skystream this week and was pleased to hear them state up front that all available energy efficiency steps should be taken before embarking on this technology at home. Check out TreeHugger Radio on Ecotalk to hear more from them.
Interesting subject, I've about installing a roof top wind generator in the city. However, with the zoning restrictions where I live, I have no doubt it would be a struggle.
Needless to say, the engineering of something like this has to done with some common sense. One doesn't want a large spinning piece of metal to go flying through the air during a wind storm. This rules out most chimneys as most are not reinforced with steel; they hanle their load as a compressive force and couldn't very well handle a laterial force (unless the structure is extremely robust and massive).
If you can effective distribute the load across a roof enough to be workable, there is still the question of resonance, in addition to the wind noise (which in itself can be surprisingly loud, especially with cheaper flat blade designs).
If you have messed around with residential sized wind turbines there is a certain type level of vibration which rises and falls especially if shifting winds make the turbine occationally off axis to the wind direction. And depending on the installation sometimes a resonant frequency of the tower or component is reached (usually just briefly), which can be quite loud! I put one on a barn in Maine that, in the right wind conditions, could play quite a tune.
I think the best solution is use a dedicated tower or build the units in at time of construction. And of course use the axial units pictured (not the Skystream mentioned above) which have self limiting stall characteristics in heavy wind conditions. There are still load and vibration issues of course, so it would be ideal if the struture provided an indepenent load pathway apart from the building structure.
But as an idea, it is great. After all the wind blows 24/7, while a PV panel needs light. I say use both.
Wouldn't it be better instead to switch to a green energy provider? Ecotricity for instance, fund wind farms.
Surely an industrial strength wind turbine in a good windy location would be more efficient than lots of home turbines? (and it's easy to forget the resources required to manufacture home wind turbines in the first place. )
== author's response follows ====
In the abstact I think you are right: that would be better. However, two other factors may be in play. One is the desire to be independent of a national grid system that is clearly undersupplied and likely to get worse. THe other factor is that there is a 'culture war' between the landed elites who do not want to have their landscapes marred by wind farms and the urban dwellers who want green electricity regardless. Buying your own runs around that struggle.
In the US most wind farms are mega installations, often in an out of the way location. Although it has been done, few towns take it upon themselves to supply their own electricity. So the result iUS wind ebvergy is controlled by big corporations and power utilies.
In the UK, on the other hand, there are a lot of smaller clusters to serve a village or a business. The power stays local. This is a model the US should emulate, though it involves cooperation with the often uncooperative regiional utility.
i love the hairdryer comparison. assuming a 1000-watt hairdryer, and the turbine produced half that much power, it'd still take care of all of my electric bill (my place uses 12kWH or so a day).
'boo hoo! it only produces enough power to completely eliminate my electric bill!'
It's not just The Daily Mail:
George Monbiot seems to think they are a bit of a waste of time also. In his book "Heat" he quotes some architects who state that a house-sited wind turbine could only power approx. 5% of a typical household's electricity needs.
I can only assume Monbiot would prefer to see a greater bang-per-buck by using the money on energy saving rather than energy generation? I would have thought he'd be in favour of decentralisation of power supply?
The Daily Mail is well known for its right-wing reactionary nonsense. Just ignore them.
The writer has some points though - such turbines are more novelty than practical. In urban areas trees, building, etc block good winds. Wind turbines work 10x betters in an open area.
The beauty of wind turbine is that one can create a turbine out of old parts and scrap material. I've made about 30 of them in creating a wind farm for an art installation! [1] (which treehugger, btw, wasn't interested in), acquiring a large open feild made so much difference that it puts urban attempts to shame.
I can only suggest more PV, and maybe a turbine for keeping the batteries topped up at night.
[1] http://poole.zoob.net/projects/
Agreed - jumping on the fashionable bandwagon ain't gonna do anything for global warming, which is kinda the point. You'd be better off signing up for a renewable energy program option your utility may offer.
"... to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all..."
chopper, above, who mentions his/her usage of 12kWH a day, confuses power (which is rate of energy consumption, watts) and energy consumption (which is kilowatt-hours). It's like comparing the horsepower of your car to how many gallons of gasoline you use. It's not the same.
chopper says he/she could cover all electrical needs with the turbine if it even produced only 500 watts. Well, it's not likely you could do it with 500 watts or even 1000. Add up the power used by appliances in your house at any one time and they could easily top 500 watts. A desktop PC, depending on the type of monitor you have could be 300 watts or more. Your inkjet printer takes 80 watts. Your microwave oven is between 500 and 1000. Add up your radio, TV, lights, sump pump, cordless telephone, cell phone recharger, clock, electric oven, hairdryer, toaster, refrigerator.
Even if you are a true treehugger and try to use very little electricity, 500 watts is not going to power your household. Even 1000 watts won't do it. Remember that with 500 watts you cannot even RUN your hairdryer. Ever. You cannot run a microwave oven. Ever. You also cannot run your refrigerator. Ever. A refrigerator takes 700 watts to run and DOUBLE that to start up. If you get your water from a well, the pump uses 1000 watts to run and 2000 watts to start. A toaster takes 1500 watts.
As another commenter mentions, perhaps the turbine can top off your batteries, but you probably couldn't disconnect from the electrical grid.
=== author's response follows ====
Well, if I had one I'd cofigure it grid-connected, expecting to sell electricity to the utility operator during the work day and consume the output at night. And I'd route all turbine power to some emergency lights, should there be a blackout.
Buildings, especially skyscapers, have the ability to "funnel" wind through a wind turbine as part of their design. This creates a potent vortex that takes advantage of the extraordinary air pressure differential between the two sides of a large building. Having a wind generator located high takes advantage of the 1/7 rule, basically the high level wind is much more forceful and even, with far better night wind speed. Some of these new green sky scapers are slated to use this. A great example is the tower being built in Guangzhou, China by the architecture firm SOM. This building is designed to use create more energy than it uses.
There seems to be a lot of people that think the wind power systems will provide the energy that they now consume which, by the way, is what is causing the shortage in the first place. Why would you need a 2000 watt hair dryer? Won't your hair dry all by itself if you just leave it alone? Why would you need a 2000 watt fridge when there are high efficiency, low voltage systems available for RV's and such (even propane, but that isn't good for the carbon emissions, methane would be a better choice). With some really good insulation and a little ingenuity, would it not be better to make a fridge that isn't so wasteful? Even a small stirling engine that requires almost no energy to make turn will refrigerate a decent space.
My point is that trying to cram a small home energy production system into the wasteful living we all enjoy is absolutely rediculous. These systems can, with a little change in your attitude and outlook (and maybe some hardware), completely replace your grid connections. Ask yourself, "do I really need to have all these conveniences that are making me fat and lazy and doing much to destroy our ecosystem?"
We simply cannot continue to live in this way without costs and consequences.
wow, i was doing a search and totally discovered this old post.
chopper, above, who mentions his/her usage of 12kWH a day, confuses power (which is rate of energy consumption, watts) and energy consumption (which is kilowatt-hours). It's like comparing the horsepower of your car to how many gallons of gasoline you use. It's not the same.
actually, its you who are quite confused. i use 12KWh per day on average. that's the equivilent of a steady use of 500W over the course of an entire day.
that is, if i had a source of power that delivered a steady half KW (as well as some batteries to store for peaking power), i would be able to generally cover all the electricity i use in a day.
as to various things in my house using X watts or Y watts, yes, my toaster uses 1000 watts. of course, my toaster isn't on for 24 hours a day, otherwise my electric bill would show i use 24 KWh a day just for my toaster.
if you add up all the power everything in your house uses, you'll have a large number. but not everything in your house runs 24/7. much of it is only on for a bit.