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Originally Posted by freebeard
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I am seeing a resurgence of the VAWT type turbines again. I see a couple of startup companies are trying to launch something and I think a VAWT if you could get something that can handle the winds and not break would be great for the low to moderate wind locations and you don't have to get a massive tower up above all the local obstructions, trees etc. I think I would certainly be interested in adding a VAWT type turbine to supplement that more conventional turbines due to startup speeds and the amount of wind it takes to be producing anything.
I am basically just watching the wind generation market at the moment to decide what I will do in the wind generation. I am leaning toward a wind unit called the Ista-Breeze Heli 2.0. It looks like bang for the buck it may be worth doing. I think I may find that my bang for buck will first be to add one more PV array and then look at adding a Heli or two so that I can offset the cloudy days. It is a constant learning experience so I am learning as I go.
This time of year(winter) we get mostly cloudy overcast skies so power production suffers. We do tend to get some wind in the winter, but it isn't consistent so I couldn't rely on it, but it might fill the gaps for some of these cloudy days. Today was a perfect example where it was overcast all day long so power production was very poor. I still produced what I needed and everything is topped off before sundown. You have to design your systems trying to account for the what if's.
You have to really pay attention to what you use because you don't know how long it will be before the sun is shinning again. Get a bunch of ice and snow covering panels and your in for a bad time. I have my PV's ground mounted so I can attempt to keep them clear, but if you get freezing rain which is typical here before it turns to snow then you aren't going to see anything from the panels for a while until you get some sun to cook that stuff off. And when it does shine you need to be sucking down all the power you can get because it tends to be short opportunities with shorter winter days.
Summer time is pretty easy as far as power production with the sun most of the time.