Little, Big
Posted by Big Gav in wind power
Metaefficient has a post on a household wind turbine called the "Windspire".
n the last few years, we’ve seen a lot of mini-wind turbines that haven’t turned out to be very useful. But the Windspire turbine from Mariah Power sounds interesting. The Windspire has a propeller-free vertical-axis design, and is expected to produce about 1800 kilowatt hours per year in 11 mph average wind conditions. That amount of wind power is roughly 25% of a typical household’s energy (or much more if you are particularly energy efficient).
The Windspire is 30 feet tall with a two foot radius, sized below typical residential zoning restrictions. Guidelines for installation sites are generally half an acre of land and relatively windy locations. The Winspire has just passed the ETL safety certification, which means it’s ready to go to market. It is expected to be released this spring, and priced at $3,995.
On the other end of the scale, Metaefficient also has a post on the world's most powerful wind turbine - the 7MW Enercon E-126.
The world’s largest wind turbine is now the Enercon E-126. This turbine has a rotor blade length of 126 meters (413 feet). The E-126 is a more sophisticated version of the E-112, formerly the world’s largest wind turbine and rated at 6 megawatts. This new turbine is officially rated at 6 megawatts too, but will most likely produce 7+ megawatts (or 20 million kilowatt hours per year). That’s enough to power about 5,000 households of four in Europe. A quick US calculation would be 938 kwh per home per month, 12 months, that’s 11,256 kwh per year per house. That’s 1776 American homes on one wind turbine.
The turbine being installed in Emden, Germany by Enercon. They will be testing several types of storage systems in combination with the multi-megawatt wind turbines.
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