Wind power heat

[dh1]

I have an idea, maybe this has being discussed here before???
But what if you used the energy from a wind mill for a heat source instead of charging batteries or tying to the electrical grid.
Lets say you have a 1000watt wind mill that feeds electricity to a heating element in an insulated water tank that is used as a supplement for space heating.
I don't think that it would heat a house but it might cut down how much the furnace runs.
What do you guys think?

[Piwoslaw]

That's exactly how excess power from wind turbines is used. When a wind gennie produces more power than the batteries/house can take at the moment, the extra electrons are routed through a dump load - usually a heating element. Often (but not always) this heating element is inside the hot water tank, reducing the need for other fuel types.

[gspong]

You could, but I'm not sure if you'd really want to(other than a dump load, as mentioned)
Seems like heat would be easier to produce with solar.

If you're grid-tied(and net-metered, depending on rates) you'd be better off sending it to the grid, heating as needed with grid power, and avoiding the storage losses.
If you're off-grid, maybe, I'm not sure how the storage losses compare.

[Ryland]

You can get low voltage (12v, 24v or 48v) heating elements for water heating tanks to act as a dump load for off grid houses, sending electrons back on to the grid is a better use of the energy but for off grid houses you only have so much battery and need to either shut down the turbine or dump the extra energy so heating water does work well.
If you wanted to heat your house this way get a heat pump and use that as your dump load, phase change material is a great way to store energy, so running a freezer full of water would be cheap example of this as it takes 3 times the energy to get water that last degree to get it to freeze so it's a good energy storage medium, or on a larger scale get a farm milk bulk tank and fill it with water and connect it to your heat pump for heating or cooling, altho for either of these a dual heat pump would work best so in the winter you pump heat in to the tank from the outside then as you need it you pull heat off that tank of water and the extra heat radiates in to the house, in the winter you do the same thing.

[dh1]

I got this idea from the fact like you say that excess energy from windmills can be dumped in a water tank.
Didn't really want to have to buy any equipment to tie into the grid, just thought of using the energy from a windmill to supplement the heating system for a house.

Was thinking along the lines of
-Windmill,
-Insulated water tank,
-Circulating pump,
-Some method of transferring the heat to the house, like car radiator and fan
or perimeter pipe, or large coil of pipe, old cast iron heat exchanger, positioned low in the building.

Something simple and cheap that would work as a supplement.

[itsandbits1]

the most efficient way to convert wind power to heat would be to have a windmill turn a magnet N S plate over an aluminum or copper plate immersed in water or have the water run through a coil on the al or cu plate with convection movement or a small pump to transfer the heated water. When the sun isnèt shining the wind is usually blowing, and it can do it 24 hrs a day

[kbhale]

I like the idea of wind mill heat production. I been thinking about using divert load resistor for added heat in the bedroom during the winter. Plumbing for the bedroom would not be practical for me. An extension cord could be temporary and easy to run from the mill. So parts would be wind turbine, extension cord, bridge diodes to turn to dc and the divert load resistor.
Diversion Dump Load Resistors

Could put a three way switch at the wind mill to send the energy to the batteries when not needed for heat. The charge controller would divert it to a hot water element when batteries are full.

I think it would be great for those stormy winter nights. If i could get it to work

[itsandbits1]

I don't know if you realize how little energy you can harvest with a small windmill but it's not much so every time you change it you lose some and soon you have not much. If you want ,I can point you to a site that will let you figure out how much energy is available at different wind speeds.

[kbhale]

I live in a low wind area. Not much wind speed on sun shinny days. It seems to only blow well when the sunlight is poor.

[itsandbits1]

this program suspects I am a spammer so it isn.t going to let me post links. I hate being criminallized before I do anything. I am not coming back here