One of the great features of wind turbines for homes is how simple they are to understand and operate. The concepts behind them are no more complicated than that of a child's toy - the pinwheel. The only real difference is the energy is not dissipated, or thrown away - instead, it is harvested by you to use to power your appliances, etc.
All of us these days are thinking about ways to spend less and get more. Wind turbines for homes will allow us to do that rather easily but it's hard to get motivated to do something this different unless we take some time and analyze how these things work and how we will maintain them later on. The clearer the idea is about how it will work, the easier it will be for us to buy and implement such a device.
First, let's use the example of a horizontal wind turbine. This device looks like a classic Dutch windmill where the rotor path is perpendicular to the surface of the earth. As the wind blows in a particular direction, the tail of the horizontal wind turbine orients the rotor path to take advantage of that prevailing wind. That way, you are always assured that you will get the most power possible from such a situation.
As the wind turns the blades, the blades turn a shaft that is inside a body that houses the motor. As the shaft turns inside the motor turns, the magnets inside the motor relative to the electrical wires that are wrapped inside create the current that you will later store or use.
As the current is created, of course it moves along transmission wires from the motor to whatever device you plan on hooking it up to. If you choose to do a grid tie system, you will be sending the power you make directly to an appliance instead of a set of batteries. For larger systems this is almost the only way to go. That is because the cost of battery systems can more than double the price of the project.
However, for small wind turbines for homes for example, a battery system is a lot more practical. The space that they take up his inordinately large, but the fact that you can use the battery to back up your devices and possibly even your entire house in case of power failure provides a strong motivating force that many people do make the investment and by the batteries anyway.
Summarizing - the concept of wind turbines for homes is a relatively recent phenomenon. While they have always been around on farms and as power production for some utilities around the world, the use of these devices that are houses has been sparked by the home handyman revolution. More and more people are feeling like they can install a device like this because it was so intuitively obvious how it works.
All of us these days are thinking about ways to spend less and get more. Wind turbines for homes will allow us to do that rather easily but it's hard to get motivated to do something this different unless we take some time and analyze how these things work and how we will maintain them later on. The clearer the idea is about how it will work, the easier it will be for us to buy and implement such a device.
First, let's use the example of a horizontal wind turbine. This device looks like a classic Dutch windmill where the rotor path is perpendicular to the surface of the earth. As the wind blows in a particular direction, the tail of the horizontal wind turbine orients the rotor path to take advantage of that prevailing wind. That way, you are always assured that you will get the most power possible from such a situation.
As the wind turns the blades, the blades turn a shaft that is inside a body that houses the motor. As the shaft turns inside the motor turns, the magnets inside the motor relative to the electrical wires that are wrapped inside create the current that you will later store or use.
As the current is created, of course it moves along transmission wires from the motor to whatever device you plan on hooking it up to. If you choose to do a grid tie system, you will be sending the power you make directly to an appliance instead of a set of batteries. For larger systems this is almost the only way to go. That is because the cost of battery systems can more than double the price of the project.
However, for small wind turbines for homes for example, a battery system is a lot more practical. The space that they take up his inordinately large, but the fact that you can use the battery to back up your devices and possibly even your entire house in case of power failure provides a strong motivating force that many people do make the investment and by the batteries anyway.
Summarizing - the concept of wind turbines for homes is a relatively recent phenomenon. While they have always been around on farms and as power production for some utilities around the world, the use of these devices that are houses has been sparked by the home handyman revolution. More and more people are feeling like they can install a device like this because it was so intuitively obvious how it works.
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