I’m starting to think about diversifying my energy prodution. I have a solar panel array (5kWp) on the roof for a year now. I see that adding more panels does not make much sense as the production in summer as is is already hard to consume it all, and in winter the production is rather symbolic while consumption is through the roof.
So I thought of looking into wind turbines. There is plenty of wind the whole year where I live. But, rather then buying a big 5kW turbine which is quite expensive on its own (plus a pole and all the other stuff) I thought, how about using multiple small turbines (up to 1kW) connected together, similar to how solar panels are. Either into one inverter or using microinverters. Does anyone have any interesting links to follow or some experience in similar setups?
I looked into this a while back and here are some of the issues:
You need good wind.
You need to get the turbines up really high to get good, consistent wind.
They produce a lot less per $ than solar.
They are loud. Loud enough to disrupt your sleep and the nature of your area.
In short, invest in expanding the solar you’ve got and batteries over wind.
I’m aware of the issues (requirenments) with wind turbines. I havent done much research yet but already saw some that are rather quiet, so this is why I was looking into this (sure need to check exactly and compare real life the noise polution). Looking at some yt videos i see that some of the turbines could produce a fair amount of energy. Where I live I have more wind then solar. And as far as solar goes. In the season, my roof produces so much energy I dont have enough to spend it on. However in winter this gets really bad. for example today my solar production was 1.3kWh while usage 25kWh (thats with temp +4C outside). So even if I would invest and put another 5kWp (or even 10) I would produce nothing near my needs. In most sunny day in january my roof production was 10kWh while usage (it was much colder then the day posted above it was -7C) 54kWh. So Expanding the roof array, does not solve the problem as I would never meet the usage of winter and totally overproduce in summer. Batteries sure help with auto-consumption in summer, but this is not longterm storage solution so you can not use the energy produced in summer in winter. Currently legislation here allows me to compensate my usage 100%, so my balance is good as what I produce in summer I consume from the grid in winter, but in next 5-10 years the procentage will be changing as the gov. wants to encourage autoconsumption. To the point where your overproduction in summer will not match the consumption in winter. The problem is there is nothing to consume in winter from solar.