How much power is required to power a large family home?

Question

I am doing some research into setting up a wind turbine for my house. I see terms like 'kW hours' for energy or power consumption. If my house uses 1500kW hours of energy per week does this mean i need to run a 1500kW generator for 1 hour to satisfy my power needs?

How would i then go about sizing the required turbine needed to effectively power my home?

This is all new to me so i can see alot of follow up questions coming/

Answer 1

"If my house uses 1500kW hours of energy per week does this mean i need to run a 1500kW generator for 1 hour to satisfy my power needs?"

Yes, in theory. In practice, running a powerful generator for 1 hour and storing the energy for the rest of the week doesn't work. There are 168 hours in a week, so a steady power level of 1500/168 = 8.9 kwatts is what you want.  This is a very high number. The national average is 1 kw per house.

However, power is not a smooth continuous thing. It has peaks, surges, valleys. You probably use more than twice the 8.9 during the day, and a lot less at night, for example. And a lot more in the summer than the winter.

Sizing is difficult, as the wind is quite erratic. Average utilization factor of a wind turbine is 20-30%.

Best is to get your utility company to agree to buy power from you during times when you have an excess, and you to buy from them when you need power. And they will supply the equipment to do this. In this case, get a turbine good for 3 times or more your average requirements.

You need to check with your utility company and with local and state laws and see if they will do this.

You also need to check with local, county, state zoning laws about erecting a wind turbine and it's tower. And with your neighbors.

The alternative to the utility company buying/selling power is lots of expensive batteries with electronics to control their charge/discharge. Lots. One large sealed Lead Acid battery holds about 1 kw-hr. If you want to deliver 9 kw from the batteries alone for, say, 10 hours because you have no wind, that is 90 kw-hrs, or 90 batteries, enough for a small submarine. And then if you have no wind for 12 hours, you are out of power!

Of course you can get a switch so you can use utility power when the wind dies. You still need some batteries so you don't have to switch every time the wind changes.

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Answer 2

try this web site - they specialise in alternative energy - one of the first ones in the world

http://www.rpc.com.au/products/efn/efnex...

this is an estimation page

have fun.

you can always have more than one type of power source - it is the battery/storage that is critical.

Answer 3

In terms of system design, you need to consider the load imposed on the supply. In your question you mentioned a figure of 1500 kWh per week. This seems very high. It represents an average of 35 amps being drawn from the supply 24/7.

I have a 4 bedroom house occupied by 2 adults and the minimum load, during the night falls to 0.8 Amps and peaks on some days to around 18 Amps for very short periods, the average through the day is about 2 Amps.

One kW represents a load on the supply of about 4 amps for 240 volt supplies and about 8 on 120 volt supplies  Understanding the load that is being imposed on the supply will help you to decide the dimensions of the system you need.

For local power generation (micro generation) you can use wind or water turbines dependant upon location, and you can also use peizo electric generation (solar cells), all these are referred to as primary power. in addition to this you will need storage which is in the form of batteries.

To use the battery power you will need an inverter, which generates power at mains voltage from the low voltage batteries. Additionally you will need a regulator, which controls the charge/discharge of the batteries, and is essential for efficient battery use and economical battery life.

If your system is capable of generating power surplus to your requirements, you can sell this to your grid supplier for quite a reasonable return.