September 16, 2009
How Efficient Are Small Wind Turbines For Homes (not Wind Farms) In Percent Efficiency? Which Small Is A Buy?
Germany has a program (“A Million Points of Light”) to install wind turbines in homes. Finland has small vertical axis wind turbines going up in cottages, on chimneys.
Which is the best design for a home-power installation? What are the efficiencies of the different blade designs?
Anybody know anything about the ‘bent-prop’ design, like this one?
http://wind-farm.blogspot.com/
Does the chimney need to be reinforced?
How high does the wind turbine have to be, over the tallest house in the neighborhood?
Filed under Vertical Wind Generator by on Sep 16th, 2009. Comment. 
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Comments on How Efficient Are Small Wind Turbines For Homes (not Wind Farms) In Percent Efficiency? Which Small Is A Buy?
Wind is free so it does not make sense to talk about efficiency.
robert h mentioned NOISE, that should be your primary concern.
Remember wind does not blow all the time, so, you will need a battery bank, and an inverter, to turn it into AC power. This is all rather complicated to run, if you do not have a technical bend.
Lookup some suppliers and ask them to explain it to you.
turbines make a lot of noise go and see one first.
Try here: http://awea.org/
Can’t speak to the basic efficiency, but at commercial wind farm sites, where the wind has been monitored to determine the cost effectiveness, the typical ‘capacity factor’ (the amount of time any type of generation puts out it’s actual nameplate rating) is around 30%. And that’s at a GOOD wind site.
Before spending any money, you need to put up a tower to monitor the average wind speed. That will tell you if the project is worth pursuing.
I think I would personly check them out before think of buying as you will have to work with your local electric company