House top wind turbines

[brer cat]

A couple of years ago someone came to my shop with literature on a round wind turbine that sat on your rooftop and collected wind power into a battery. All I can find on an Internet search are the three bladed, very tall windmills. Anyone know about these low profile turbines?

[rawtribe]

1. Is this what you're looking for?

http://www.mag-wind.com/index.php

[brer cat]

4. Hmmm....not quite

The one I saw was oval shaped. This one would probably work...but I am in Georgia...their distributors are in Texas and ON. Need a distributor in Georgia. Or at least I think I do. I have a totally electric home now and am wishing to have an alternative during possible ice storms, and maybe get off the grid so much.

[gristy]

6. Do you want a green alternative or just an alternative?

Backup generator off of propane might be worth looking into. I have no direct experience with this, but it is what I have in mind for some future construction just in the planning stages.

[brer cat]

11. we are trying for green alternative.

but we are total elec now and need to get off that.

[sam sarrha]

2. they used to make them out of 50 gallon barrels.. some had sails.. on your house they might be a bit

noisy.. the metal ones had some torque, flywheel effect if you will.. could turn some alternators that were rewired to 36 volts..

here are some links.. google: vertical axis wind turbines

http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/vertical_axis_wind_turbines.htm

http://www.goldrockholdings.com/vawt.ht

[sam sarrha]

7. google: vertical axis wind turbines.. or generators

[Solo_in_MD]

3. Try http://www.homepower.com/

[ashling]

5. Here are a couple

http://www.hie.co.uk/swift-rooftop-wind-energy-system.pdf

I'm interested in this one:

http://www.loopwing.co.jp/en/top.html

[MuseRider]

9. The loopwing is interesting.

I looked at the site, would love to have one of these. With the geothermal system we are putting in and this we could probably get mostly off the grid.

I was looking for the price and noticed that they do not ship overseas and they are in Japan. I may not have seen it, is there a USA distributer?

[deadmessengers]

10. The loopwing is a thing of beauty

I can't WAIT for it to become available here in the US.

[GliderGuider]

8. Be very skeptical of these things

Most of the pitches I've seen for rooftop wind turbines are come-ons for more investment so that the tinkerers can keep on tinkering. The typical problems with rooftop wind include very low energy densities due to boundary layer turbulence (meaning you won't realize anywhere near the nameplate capacity of the rig), noise (imagine a bearing going bad on one of these babies coupled to your house) and structural damage due to vibrations.

If you're out in the country you can consider putting up a proper turbine and some PV, but in the city there are few real solutions for going off-grid.

[brer cat]

12. Thanks for your input.

We are in a very small town in a valley between mountains, across the street from a big lake so we have a lot of wind, and few trees so we have a lot of sunshine. We would like to put in an alternative to city power, but we are having problems getting started.

[Subdivisions]

14. Of course it depends on your budget, but considering

you have plenty of sunshine, solar power can provide some or all of your power needs and I disagree that there are few opportunities to go off grid in a city or urban environment as suggested in post #8. There are indeed plenty of opportunities to make use of solar power on rooftops and campuses in city environments.

Also, small quality wind turbine generators are sold by reputable manufacturers and retailers that are not some gimmick "As Seen On TV". Yes, there will be times that there is no wind. But these turbines are still producing electricity long after they have recouped their initial investment. Same for solar power systems for homes and businesses.

[skids]

15. A few years ago I would have agreed.

Now not so much. The vibration and noise issues have been dealt with in systems like the swift wind and a few other HAWTs and several VAWTs. While the HAWTs are best for people with dominant wind patterns, the VAWTs can take the turbulence and keep cranking, and we're getting better at using surrounding structure's wind patterns to the advantage of the unit.

So it becomes a budgetary balancing act: is the value of the extra power gotten using a tower worth the cost of the tower? Many people are reaching the conclusion that, in their particular situations, it is not. Not everyone will, but for those who are situated in the right sort of place, it makes a lot of sense. We've got a nice wind tunnel between my garage and house, if I owned the house I'd put a VAWT at ground level in the back yard.

The days of hyper-optimizing for maximized wind interception are drawing to a close as turbine prices fall low enough that engineering a tower is starting to become less financially attractive.

[GreenPartyVoter]

13. Maybe if you wait a bit longer this one will become available

http://www.engineerlive.com/news/16981/silent-wind-turbine-is-ultraefficient.thtml