Is it even cost effective or worth the trouble?
More Pages:
- Solar Turbines: What Are The Drawbacks To Using Wind Turbines Or Solar Panels For Providing All Power To A Home? (4/24/2011)
- Solar Power: Solar Power Cost Effective Calculation? (7/27/2011)
- Solar Turbines: Are Solar Panels Cheaper Than Wind Turbines? (7/19/2011)
- Solar Turbines: How Much Do Solar Panels, Biomass Centres And Wind Turbines Cost? (8/15/2011)
- Solar Energy: How Much Does It Cost To Install A Geothermal Energy Source To Power A Home? (6/9/2011)
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Yes there is. Whether it is cost-effective or not depends on how much of the resource you have available. If Wind Speeds are high at your home, then you may generate enough electricity to significantly reduce your power bill.
If the sun shines a lot at your home (with little interference from clouds), then solar panels may be cost effective in the presence of feed-in tariffs, renewable energy incentives etc in your country.
I know in Germany, the incentives are good and in California too, there are good incentives. Other places, I dont know much
Possible, but numerous small units will cost a lot more than one unit sized correctly. Remember that a typical house uses about 1kW on average, and peaks up to 10kW. More if you use electric heating or hot water or stove or dryer.
The best way to do this is to use a 12 volt battery (can also be done with a 24 or 48 volt units, and there are advantages to these for larger systems) with the wind turbine and solar cells setup to charge the battery (or batteries) via a charge controller. Numerous small units would require a much more complicated charge controller.
The output of the battery is connected to an inverter to generate 120 (or 240) VAC to run appliances.
Here you have a choice, you can go 3 ways:
1. Keep the power from the inverter separate from your house wiring and use it to run a few selected appliances or lights. Good for small scale, cheapest.
2. Go with whole house power, which needs a large number of batteries, large solar arrays, a high quality large inverter, and a line disconnect switch. The latter connects your house wiring to either the output of the inverter (which has to be quite large) OR back to the power company, for when you run out of battery power. Needs an electrician to install this at your breaker box.
Note that this requires a lot of large expensive batteries. A large sealed marine lead acid battery (do NOT use auto batteries) at $ 300, will run a typical US house for only 1 hour.
3. Go with grid tie. You need a special inverter that synchronizes with the power from the power company, and a special two way power meter, both installed by the power company. That way you sell power to the power company when you have excess power, ie, when the sun is high, and buy it back from them when the sun goes down. This eliminates the large number of batteries.
For solar power alone, I’d estimate this could cost $ 20k-50k. You need a building permit.
Wind turbines, you need permission of your local authorities to install.
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It certainly can be done but the real question is cost. Basic wind power and solar power generation is not cost effective to begin with unless you have the tax payers helping you with the costs.