how to power a remote cabin with no wiring by means of wind turbine only?
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Question by : how to power a remote cabin with no wiring by means of wind turbine only?
there are no transmission lines in the vicinity so power can’t be brought in, and even if it did it would be far too expensive. So how wind in conjuction with solar power the cabin? is that even possible?
Give your answer to this question below!
2 Responses to how to power a remote cabin with no wiring by means of wind turbine only?
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If you have a fairly good wind resource it is definitely possible. First you should try to figure out the quality of the local wind resource you have. Then you need to figure out how much energy you will need which will require cutting down your needs to a minimum. Finally select a wind turbine based on average wind velocity, sized to satisfy the overall energy demand. And you need a charger and storage batteries to bridge the time when the wind is not blowing. If you have lots of sunlight to the roof of the cabin or to part of the site, you can incorporate solar cells with a separate charging system to keep the photovoltaic system isolated from the wind turbine system.
Some of your requirement, such as lighting, could run directly from your battery to avoid inverter losses, so you may want both d.c. and a.c. distribution.
Rouse
September 18, 2013 at 10:50 am
Hey Timewaster, we live in a solar and wind powered cabin now, so yes, it’s possible. When you say remote cabin, it’s a little like asking, “How much gas does a car use?” Your answer would start hitting on subjects like miles per gallon, total miles, vehicle weight, and stuff that a non car driver would not understand. A remote cabin might have a few lights, or a deep freezer, the difference in power needs is very dramatic, even if the two cabins were the same size. So usage is very key, but not easy to determine if you are not accustomed to doing that sort of thing. People like us have a curse, we have to know where each electron goes in our home, we know when the sun came up last August, and how much wind we got in December two years ago. When you have a finite amount of electricity to work with, you have to work with it. Leaving the TV on, or even owning one, becomes a double edge decision process.
Having said that, I’ll give you some quick facts: Our “Cabin,” is 1200 square feet, it has a home sized refrigerator, and a small deep freezer. We have Whirlpool laundry machines, a coffeemaker, microwave, two TV’s and a stereo. Our usage is around 220 KWH per month, probably a fraction of what your home uses, but way more than a remote cabin should need. We use a 1.4 kw solar array, which takes up about the same area on the roof of our garage as a mid sized car might. Then there is a 900 watt wind turbine in the field, which is a bit larger than a ceiling fan, but probably too small to run our entire home. On real windy nights, it can barely do the job. In the end, we buy a little power from the power company most months, maybe five dollars worth. The good news is we can. In your remote cabin, that will not be an option. Not to fear, all you need is a generator to fill in the gaps, as most solar powered homes have them anyway. Our entire system cost around $ 13,000, and it runs just about everything in our home. Divide it over 20 years (240 months) and your electric bill is pretty reasonable.
If you can start small with that cabin, then do it. Just figure in minimum lighting, and at most, a very small apartment sized refrigerator that you unplug when you leave. For that, you could probably get by with a few hundred watts of solar power and no wind turbine. Turbines are really neat, they also live on a tall tower, are hard to install and maintain, make noise, and then they break down. My solar array has never had a drop of oil, never needed a screw turned on it, and it runs silently, and makes the same amount of power today it did 11 years ago. For a small system, I’d go with golf cart batteries, maybe 4 of them wired for 12 volts, and a 1500 watt inverter. Then do some DC lights, in particular LED light strips in a few key places, they are really efficient and work even if the battery is too low to fire up the inverter. Two or three hundred watts of solar panels, a charge controller (Xantrex C-40 for example) and the 4 batteries and inverter might set you back $ 1500, but if you learned how to hook it up, and did the work yourself, you would actually understand it and be in a good position to expand or build a larger system one day without someone selling you a bill of goods. It is pretty easy to add wind later if you want to. Southwest Windpower is a good example, they have a small 300 watt turbine that has its own internal regulator, just connect the two wires coming out of the bottom to the 12 volt battery and let it go. There are others, just get one that is designed for battery charging, not direct intertie to the utility grid. The 300 watt turbine costs about $ 600. Then when you are running short, you can run your generator, which can recharge the battery and run your small loads simultaneously, so you only have to run it an hour or two every few nights.
What you need to do is get educated first. Get a sub to Home Power Magazine, then try to get to one of the energy fairs listed in the mag. We did 12 years ago, and here we are today. Try not to put too much weight on sources like this, in my experience living with and teaching solar and wind in the local schools, I’ve found there are three things in vast supply, sun, wind and missinformation. Lots of people on these websites are happy to offer their expertise in this area, having never laid a hand on a wind turbine or solar panel. Get the mag, read the books and look up the sources, and you can learn from people like you and I that have already been there, not the ones reading the interesting articles in Popular Science. Take care Protime…..Rudydoo
Rudydoo
September 18, 2013 at 11:16 am