D. M. Linton, P.Eng.

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Home Interests Alternative Energy

What Size Wind Turbine?

turbine-dia-for-13kw.png

Good question!

If we assume a wind turbine efficiency of 50% and that a household can demand up to about 13 kW, we can calculate the wind turbine diameter.   Let us assume a dry air density of 1.225 kg/m3, which corresponds to a temperature of 15oC and pressure of 101.325 kPa and wind velocity of 5 m/s.

An equation from this page will be used:

That is a large turbine!  A little good news might be that if the wind velocity were assumed to be 10 m/s, the turbine diameter drops to 7.35 m.

I undertook to estimate my peak power consumption to compare with the 13 kW assumption above.

Appliance Watts Note
Oil Furnace 3000 guess
Oven 2,000 guess
Refrigerator 725  
2 Computers 540  
Coffee Maker 1,000  
Water Heater 3,000  
Clothes Washer 500  
Clothes Dryer 3,000  
Truck Engine Block Heater 1,000  guess
Stuff I did not include 1,000  
TOTAL PEAK DEMAND 15,765  

 So the 13  kW rule of thumb is not bad, assuming that 3,000 W of total demand is not active at any given time.  Note that this is a winter time list - the oil furnace and truck engine block heater would lower the peak demand to 12,785 W in warm weather.  The oven, clothes washer and clothes dryer could be scheduled to run at different times further reducing the peak demand another 2,500 W to 10,285 W.  The refrigerator and coffee maker could also be made to not run simultaneously - another 725 W peak demand reduction to 9,560 W.

Assuming a 10,000 W peak demand for my house and redoing the calculation above, I would still need an 18 m diameter turbine at wind speed of 5 m/s or a 5 m turbine at wind speed of 10 m/s.  Wind power is not looking so attractive .... unless we could store the continuous output.  Realistically, the furnace might run 10% of the time, the water heater maybe 2% of the time the refrigerator maybe 5% of the time, the laundry appliances maybe 0.7% of the time.... There is actually only about 2,540 W that might be considered continuous but that would still require a nine metre turbine just to power the continuous loads.

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Author

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Name
Dennis M. Linton, P.Eng.

Location
Madoc, Ontario, Canada

About

Dennis is a Professional Engineer currently employed with Pollutech Environmental Limited as an Environmental Process Engineer specializing in water and wastewater process engineering and regulatory compliance.  He was born in Cobourg, Ontario, grew up on a dairy farm about 30 km northeast of there and attended Campbellford District Secondary School.  After high school, Dennis apprenticed as a construction steam fitter and worked in heavy construction for 16 years.  In 1992 he was accepted to the Environmental Engineering undergraduate program at the University of Guelph from which he graduated with Honours in 1996.  Dennis has five children and one grandchild.

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