4 Responses

1. If a $10k one only produces 2k KWH/year in your area, it doesn’t sound like any type of turbine would be cost efficient. It doesn’t matter what size turbine you have if there isn’t enough wind.

2. You can not easily store electricity. It has to be made to order. So it does not matter how much ‘per year’ is the yield. You need to be on a network where the supplier buys your surplus then sells back to you.

   Certainly you can use surplus to heat water for example.

   Batteries store electricity but that means a large store would be needed to run things like heaters, Irons and cookers.

   The systems currently available mean that the most efficient method is to have a grid system.

3. I would estimate that you would need a wind turbine costing in the million dollar range to fulfill the campus needs. You are averaging nearly 2000kw hours per day so your turbine will need to produce 80kw/hr every hour to average out for the month. The wind turbine will normally be giving about 30% of its rated power if it is in the right location, so you are looking at a turbine that is rated at 250kw at a minimum. The amount of wind at your location will make a huge impact on the output so a site assessment would need to be done by a professional.
   A wind turbine rated at 50-60kw will cost close to $200,000 installed and could provide 20% of the campus needs.

4. No, this is not what you should be looking for. The energy estimates are realistic but the cost of producing is absurdly high.

   If you want to keep a more reasonable production cost then you have to be a little more innovative, but I believe that you would succeed to a good degree. I recommend you try this out, it ought to work for you (and you may test with one setup and then simply scale up once the experiment succeeds).

   http://www.cwglive.com/favorites/earth4energy.php

   (It has a full money back guarantee for 2 months and performing this experiment takes less than a week, so you don’t lose anything).