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Old 10-07-15, 08:10 AM   #14
Robaroni
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Meescha,

HAWT is more efficient than VAWT but VAWT's are easier to build and don't have the furling requirements of HAWT's.

From the wind data it looks like your location is a poor wind decision, sorry, there's no easy way to put it.

You can build your own but once you start getting up to and over 10 foot blades (wood is fine) you are introducing stresses and design requirements that take several built windmills to understand.

Wind is attractive, it looks so easy and we can see it spinning around but it's a bear to do right, take a look at the failures in commercial designs.
Using a crane to hoist a 300 lb windmill up 80 feet isn't just a one time thing. Windmills are mechanical and that means service. Bearings fail, blades fail and alternators fail. They fail when the weather is the worst, the little buggers!

MY suggestion after living with alternatives for several years is to go PV. Prices are under a dollar a watt for systems today and you'll get more bang for your buck than any windmill ever made.
Don't mount your modules on a roof unless you don't have the ground area, snow will kill your output for months. Put them on poles, especially in Alaska where the latitude angles are steep in the winter when you want that snow to slide off the modules. ( I use a foam brush on a long pole to clean off my ground modules and I'm good all winter in the Western Catskills of NY - 42 latitude). Besides if you have a problem nothing is worse then climbing on a roof with 2 feet of snow cover, I've been there!

Once you learn how to live with PV you can experiment with wind which compliments PV, by the way, if you still want to but living with alternatives is a learning curve that you can't get fully out of books.

I started like you, I built my house and then put in a 1400 watt PV system to learn from. Today (10 years later) I have 10.6 Kw's and because I took my time not too many mistakes.

I'm just getting to implement wind (I've been monitoring my wind for years with a high quality monitor, I suggest you do the same) and hydro here so don't rush, that's when you make mistakes.

Rob
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