Small Wind vs. Solar Power
Small Wind vs. Solar Power
Comparing wind power to solar energy depends in “large” part on…. well, the size of the system. Large wind farms generally can generate cheaper power than solar farms. However, when taking it to the smaller, distributed energy level, solar is more affordable and efficient. Let’s take a close look at small wind vs. solar power.
In Zeeland, Holland, a comparative turbine test was performed over 12 months. The results showed that small wind turbine systems, generally speaking, do not produce much power considering their cost. This may be because a smaller rotor simply cannot effectively churn enough energy to make it worth their expense.
In fact, the conclusion is that small wind may cost 10 times the price of solar panels to generate equivalent power. In a Clean Technica blog post, entitled “Small Wind Sucks, Study Finds” the following statistics were revealed:
Ampair 600 (3 foot rotor blades): for $12,710 it makes only 20 kwh a month
Airdolphin at $24,747 (or the WRE 030 for twice that at $41,620!) to get 33 kWh a month
WRE 060 $52,444 for 41 kWh a month, or the (relatively!) cost-effective Passaat at $13, 029 to make about 48 kWh a month.
Skystream at $15,149 makes 176 kWh a month
Montana (16 foot rotor) costs $26,359 and makes 224 kwh a month
Some have observed that it might make more sense to consider each individual small wind turbine as a single solar panel in a solar array.
What do you think:
Wonder how small wind measures up? (image from Eridony on Flickr)
People who live in the United States use, on average, about 1000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy each month. When you consider the small percentage of that to be generated by small wind turbines, you’ll soon see that you would need multiple turbines to power your life. Considering the costs above, to generate a mere 200 kWh per month, you’d need $127,100 invested in an Ampair small wind system. But for a comparable solar panel system, only $15,000, prior to state and federal rebates.
The Clean Technica article also notes that you could power your home 100% with a solar array the size of your living room and kitchen on your roof. However, with small wind power, you could not do so. A much larger wind turbine is required to generate the amount of energy for even a single residential unit.
The bottom line is that it is more cost-effective, efficient and probably even aesthetically superior to install solar panels instead of small wind for residential use. When it comes to small wind vs. solar power, it looks like solar is the winner!
What are your personal experiences? Please share in the comments.
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I’m surprised to hear that wind turbines cost 10 times more than solar energy considering the power output they produce. Never really did the math for myself. When it comes to wind power, I believe what you said is true — that we need more than one wind turbine to generate sufficient energy for anything significant. The best is to design an array of them in strategic relative positions to one another so that they can yield the most power from the wind.
I am surprised like Joe who posted above, or rather was surprised until I looked at that notorious test in the Netherlands. This test was done by some sort of power company, and they placed those 12 turbines tested on a site with an average annual wind speed of just 3.9 m/s. If you’ve only got 3.9 m/s, better do not mess around with mini wind systems or any wind energy in general. (You might just as well test PV solar modules in an underground parking garage.) Anyone doing this is misleading the public. Placed correctly, both solar and mini wind can produce tangible results. At reasonable cost at that (I am looking at payback periods of 5 to 7 years in the U. K., after that I will have “free power” from year 8 to year 20, the minimum design life of most mini wind turbines). To me, that is not unreasonable. Running any wind turbine (even industrial size MW plants) on a site with only 3.9 m/s annual average wind speed is, though. Read a Wind Handbook (by Paul Gipe, for example), listen to what the other experts say, and note that no commercial generating (whatever size) is done at 3.9 m/s, ever.
I am running my own Micro Wind test on an average inland location with some mediocre 5 m/s annual average wind speed and I am going to have more reasonable results very soon. I will be happy to share results or maybe even real-time access to our data loggers to anyone interested, just e-mail harold underscore magee at yahoo dot co dot uk .
The price data in the sidebox (above) is inaccurate: Airdolphin retails for $5995 (http://prevailingwindpower.com) or $5976 (http://ecopen.homelinux.net/ecopen/catalog/index.php?currency=USD) and Airdolphin GTO for $5034 respectively which means they start at around $4.58 per KW installed. Also, it will be very hard to spend $19K on an inverter and simple mast, meaning a real-life complete system can’t possibly come in at $24K. And there sure are significantly cheaper MWTs around anyway.
The price quoted for the test unit seems to be taken from Semplice Energy in Britain who are either way over the top with their pricing or may have something really special (?) to offer with their turn-key full-service solution. Simply get yours somewhere else or buy a different turbine if you want to save a bundle and improve your system’s economics.
Other turbines like the Merlin 2.5 KW mini wind turbine or Mistral 850 W micro wind turbine start at around $3.12 per KW installed. Better check it out yourself instead of trusting each and every test.
This article and the article it references are both very misleading and might even be considered biased enough to have no merit as a legitimate comparison much less a serious article.
The results of the test were spun and the poorest performer was used to represent the entire wind industry while the solar was given a magic number but never identified. Even the test was flawed, no responsible wind turbine installer would set it up on a site with that low a wind speed. Might as well put up a solar array and point it down at the ground. In the US, the NREL test results of the Skystream are twice as high as this article reported, I don’t know maybe they put it somewhere where it was windy…
I am embarrassed this article even exists…
I embrace both wind and solar power and there is a place for both depending on where you live, I am currently installing a hybrid system with a Skystream 3.7 as the wind portion of it since where I live it makes sense. I can make power 24/7.
What made this article so distasteful to me is that there are people out there trying to do research on this very subject and they might read this drivel and believe it to be accurate. Do the research, talk to alternative energy intallers, read blogs, whatever, but educate yourself. This article is so biased as to be worthless.
When you’re in not good state and have no cash to go out from that, you will need to take the loans. Because that should help you for sure. I take consolidation loans every single year and feel myself OK just because of it.
@MathiTIA: spammers should market their “loans” rubbish elsewhere, I believe.
R E M O V E !