Wind Power for Homes

Have you checked the availability of windmill of the ratings you are talking of?

Ram Anant Comments: yes I have checked both AC output and DC output. We canb try this residential concept with either as phase one.

Dear All,

Yes 200W power generation for a period of 10Hrs per day is sufficient for average house-hold in India. It gives out about 2kWhr of power.

But the question is from where: solar or wind and what about the output. I feel the hybrid version of solar and windwill give better results and may make the home, energy independent. Many places wind power will not be available, some othersource which is unheard ofmay be available. Hybrid means we need to harness all the power that is available viz, solar, wind, energy from Biogas, energy from waste, micro-hydro, animal power etc.

As per as the output, it is better to have 230V, 50Hz,sinewave. Though it adds the power loss in Inverter and batteries, it will remove inconvinience of the user. ( He can use anything like Mixer, TV, Fan etc., Moreover usage of DC fans etc. is difficult)

Also it will help the industry to comeout with grid interactive Inverters which will help the whole nation. West Bengal state has already initiated the move.


Ram Anant comments:

Dear Apulu, no doubt Hybrid Version will give better results but the solar panels will work only during the daytime. Also we do not know how often we may have to clean the solar panels to keep best conversion efficiency.

I was thinking about this 200W wind mill for residential applications. This nonetheless have to be very robust and maintainance free. As phase one, we can look as DC generators and see how much power we can genearte per day. as phase two we can look at grid tie inverters that can feed the energy back to the grid.

Have you come across the designspecifications for Grid tie inverters? I have some ideas we can discuss.

The power generated need not be converted into 230V AC. It can stored in battery and used for lighting using LED. Pumping power back to grid comes only if excess power is generated. So it can be thought of at later stage. Many electronic appliances basically operate either at 12V or even much less. So converting power to 230V AC and reconverting to lower level is waste of energy and unwanted expenses. It will be more sensible to create a bus of 24VDC and try to operate all appliances in that voltage. My contact email id Vkadal@gmail.com


Ram Anant comments:
three things to consider here:
1. there is no DC wiring at homes today to operate the electronic equipment or to power the emerging solid state lighting (LEDs). In my other article in Green Home Lighting, I did discuss the alternative of routing the DC around the homes. The fans can be brushless Dc motors, and as you said all electronicscan operate out of DC. This however, will require heavier wiring depending on the load if we are to route lower voltages comapred to 230VAC. I also don't think there are any vendors that sell home appliances that work directly off DC voltage.
2. One of the reasons I thought we would feed the enrgy back to the grid was wind mill will operate 24/7/365. Once the power usage at homes comes down to almost nil, we can pump the energy back to the grid and look for that much needed credit
3. Lead Acid storage is good. But if we are thinking "Green", we should look at reducing the usage of LA batteries. These also come with the certain level of added manitainance and disposal issues.

On a another note, feeding the energy back to the grid does create the issue of "Islanding". This system design has to be well thought out in order to address the issue of Power Credit and Islanding. Newchallenges will come up as we go along.

First Electronic Engineering Resource in Tamil
First Indian Language Datasheet Website
Fourth Asian Language Datasheet Website
TAMIL DATASHEETS
தமிழ் தரவுத்தாள் தளம்
தமிழின் முதல் மின்னணுவியல் கருவூலம்
www.tamildata.co.cc

hai all

i think,two way- on grid and off grid.

how,to connect synchronise with grid.?its without grid-tie converter?
its parallel connections,same us UPS.?
Itsenough wind energyavailable inside city in india?

Ram Anant Comments:

There are two menthods;
1. direct grid tie windmills
In order to pump the energy from wind mill to the grid directly following five variables have to fall in place:
a. line voltage
b. frequency
c. phase sequence in case of 3 phase output wind mills
d. phase angle
e. waveform

The wind mill output voltage isstepped up usingtransformers based on the grid voltage in the vicinity to 11KV, 33KV etc.

Once all the above parametersare in sync with rthe grid, then the power transfer from wind mill to the grid is facilitated.

2. indirect grid tie windmills
In case of Indirect grid Tie wind mills, the energy is stored in the batteries, the inverter that runs off the batteries, pumps the energy back to the grid. The pulse width modulated Inverters have the flexibility to synchronize to the grid and do efficient energy transfer.

Both have advantages and disadvantages.

50-100 watts worth of wind energy may be available within the cities. Avearge power of 50W over 24 hrs is 1200WH. for an average home, 1200WH can be 12-15% or even moreof household energy need for the day.

this is a good article.

I like to use wind mill for my house. what is the cost of the home project.

pl. provide the components/parts required to generate 200watts to 600watts of power by using wind energy.
pl. reply immediately.

Ram Anant comments: Texas Instruments does not actually make windmills. We are a semiconductor company that helps with power management /conversion part of the renewable energy.
200-600W wind mills are commercially available in the market today. We can collectively look at the choice of yourwind mills (AC or DC Output)and work out the application of the same in the house hold application.

hai ram,
Thanks lot.
u explain wind form,generated power stepped upto kv side.ok.....

suppose,let us assume,i have small wind turbine,1200w power generated variable voltage,variable frequency. can I use this for my house & neighbour.
can I connect with power conversion equipment,wind interface(rectifier) unit and grid-tie inverter through house tie (fixed voltage and fixed frequency).wether its possible here?in parallel connection with grid through utlity meter.
when grid cut off,wind generation power automatically cut off.
http://www.wholesalesolar.com/images/StartHere/GridWindNoBatteriesFull.gif

2) power generations equipments generated 230v,its convert to dcsource without transformer,with dumpload ,i connectedthe setup directlythrough grid-tie inverter(windy boy,power one...).any voltage difference in rectifier side?????///,
(somebody gives 48v dc convertt to 230v ac power use boost converter)

-thanks

Ram Anant Comments:
the 1200 w of wind energy you have has to be stored in mostly batteries to be used both by you and your neighbour. Run an inverter off of these batteries to power the household loads. many 48VDC/230VAC inverters are available in the market.

To connect the grid and the inverter (powered by wind) in parallel, you need to make sure that the parameters mentioned are considered carefully otherwise the inverter could get backfed and get damaged. Unless both systems are phase locked well in order to work in paraallel, it can cause damage.

all the states do not offer power credits today. the electronic energy meters may not be able to run backwards to provide credits. so another independent meter may be required to see how much energy is fed back to the grid. also ISLANDING issue has to be considered while feeding energy back to the grid.

when the gid cuts off, if you remove the load on the turbine, the energy dump has to be considered for windmills.

alterntely you can use double pole switches to disconnect the utility power while your inverter/turbine can feed the load at home. storing energy in batteries offers the best choice however cost and the use of lead has to be considered.

lastly the rectifier will isolate your 230V source from the grid. larger, low impedance source will supply all the energy required. difference will from the other source.

Hello there,

I am a farmer based in a remote hilly village town in Kerala. In kerala we have frequent power outages. Since my farm land is in a very remote area, the power from supplied by the govt utility grid is never there or if at all available, then never is constant in terms of the amount of power received, that is a 60w bulb lights up like a 10w bulb, if you know what I mean.

We do have good seasonal winds and plent of sunshine during the summer months. At the same time we do have very good rains as well. I was on this site called http://www.bergey.com/, where they say they manufacture windmills for home usage that is a hybrid, which means they use both the wind and the sun to produce energy. The reason what they mentioned made very good sense. They said, when there is enough sun, then the winds would be considerably less and when there is no sun, there would be pretty good winds, like in the rainy season.

For me this logic works pretty well. Based on all this, I was wondering if you could give me some advise as to if at all there are any companies in India who builts these types of small hybrid windmills?

Warm regards

Raman Pillai


Ram Anant comments:
Raman, I apologize for the delay in responding.
yes, you can have combination of wind and solar. it is just the question of what one wants to spend. Solar is about Rs. 250 per square foot and it produces few watts (less than 5). Plus you will have consider the inverter losses, charger losses etc.

either source has to pump energy into a lead acid battery for later usage. if you can tell me what your power requirements are, we can put together a system that addresses your needs.

Mr Ram. Your initiative and guidance is very useful. Though you may not be associated with manufacture or marketing of Windmill for Residences - it would be very useful if you get the approx cost -this information in this forum will be very useful and thought provoking. i had earlier read that such windmills are manufactured and marketing from China. pl do throw some light on this aspect. thanks\

Ram Anant comments: I am not in favour of any one manufacturer of turbines. In Chennai/Coimbatore area, there are many turbine makes that can help you with the models ranging from 400-600-1000-2000W range.

Please run a google search and the results will automatically direct you to the turbine makers/manufactureres/resellers.

Hi,

We are the pioneer of providing good quality small windmills at a very affordable cost. We have been working with Heat Exchanger technology in India for the last 30 years and have been the largest distributors of axial fans.Our next initiative as mentioned in many forums is to use the wind energy to produce electricity. Enginemates Heat Transfer works with a reputed company which has done many installations around the world. The product has been tested over two years to provide you with one of the most efficient renewable energy source equipment. These windmills are one of the world's best, as the size of the blades is small but can help capture so much wind as the big turbines The advantage is it does not use too much space as the large windmills.

Ask Enginemates Heat Transfer to find out how you can become part of the new revolutionary idea of generating electricity for yourself. We are the pioneers of small windmill technology offering you one of the best solutions for using the wind energy to make sure you are not sitting in dark.

Our windmills are small but very efficient in capturing the wind to provide us with the power that we require.

These windmills can be used in a farmhouse, bungalows, by an institute, by a small scale industry, panchayatas, NGO's , even on the roof top of your building etc… These wind mills could be used even in an area where wind blows with an average speed.

These wind turbines have built an excellent reputation in the small wind turbines industry worldwide. At present we supply wind turbines in the range of 1KW to 500KW.

Come and join us on our mission of being part of this revolutionary idea of using nature to help us survive in a better way. Remember Wind energy creates no pollution,best solution for loadshedding,saves electricity bills.

Allow us to study your site to tell you which model will work for you since it’s a renewable energy solution we like to provide to all our customers not just a wind turbine.

Use what nature provides free, WIND. Call us now for more technical advice on how you can make use of these windmills.….

Priya Gupta
Contact: - + 91 9769269140
Office line:- 022 25919293/94/95
Direct line: - 022-32446333
Email: - emht.windmill@gmail.com