Is It Still Worth It

[Yianie123.]

Hello everyone.  It has been awhile since I've been on the site.  I have been collecting parts over the winter to build an 8ft windmill.  The thing that is bothering me is that the cost of electric solar panels have come down to $.99/watt.  Add an inverter and it comes to about 1.50 a watt.  I live 50 miles east of Chicago, and I really like the look of a windmill, but with the price of solar cells coming down, is it still worth building a windmill?

[DamonHD]

Entirely depends on what solar and wind resources you have.

Rgds

Damon

[Bruce S]

That's kinda up to you actually.
IF you want to build one for various reason, self satisfaction , larger knowledge base. Then go for it;
IF however, you're looking at it from costs perspectives, then perhaps Solar is the best route to go.

Here in St. Louis city we can't put up anything larger than lawn art or gopher/mole chasers so Solar is our route at this time.
 
Personally, I don't like having all my eggs in one basket, SO go for one then back it up with the other.
MY backup is getting an oversized lawn art working VAWT
Cheers;
Bruce S

[freejuice]

123,
  It all depends as they say....  in my situation I have solar and wind...the solar beats the bee-geebers out of wind here in this part of SC....but its grid tied so when the grid goes down the solar panels are simply big shingles! However the wind charges a battery bank which is also tied into my service panel, I also constantly use that power too.
 Its a good feeling knowing I'm never without power when the grid is down.
 Likewise on some rainy/cloudy days the solar is stone-cold-flat-dead on output while the wind gen is humming along nicely.

 Around here in the winter ice stoms pull trees down into the lines...into summer time lighting stoms zap things for several hours and sometimes the power on this old REA just simply craps out....even a hurrcane like Hugo which took everyone by surprise by how far it punched inland left many folks around here without power for about 3 weeks.

While I dont subscribe in an "over the top" "Doomsday/Prepper" mentaility, I do however, like a little bit of a buffer between the reality of candle light and taking a shower every three days weather I need it or not with 1-1/2 gallons of water.

While Solar prices are down I would simply take advantage of that too and spread things around a bit

[fabricator]

For me yeah, because I can build wind turbines, I can't build solar panels, and you can see a turbine making power. And they're just so damn cool.

[richhagen]

If your purpose is to supply an off grid home then the answer is likely yes, because if you are living off of batteries then the 'when' of the power is also a very important consideration since your storage will be limited.  It turns out that wind and solar are often complimentary in that in the winter, when the days are short, the wind is often strong, and on calm summer days it seems there is often quite a bit of sun.  If you are selling to the grid then this would be less important, but for off grid, then redundant sources are beneficial, even if one of them has a smaller dollar per watt produced overall.  I am nearly a neighbor in Chicago, btw, Rich

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

Solar and wind complement each other.  Solar gives you power when the weather is good, wind when the weather is bad.  Having both means you have power input on most days.

Wind power tends to be proportional to HVAC requirements, because higher wind speeds increase the heat gain or loss through the insulation and air leakage.  Very handy (even if the power from the mill is only running incidental HVAC loads like a furnace blower, rather than a giant mill powering electric heat or a heat pump).

50 miles west of Chicago?  Doesn't that put you near where the Siberian Express interacts with Gulf of Mexico moist air in the winter, burying you in snow?  Maybe not as bad as Minneapolis / St Paul.  But I recall when my parents were living out that way the snow tended to cover everything, repeatedly, for much of the year.  That, along with the associated cloud cover, would seem to bode ill for getting through a winter on solar panels alone.

Wind may be variable, but when it's there it has a LOT of power.  At 3/4 kW / HP it doesn't take a lot of mill to collect a substantial amount of power.  (The main problem is to keep it from coming apart or burning out when the wind gets really howling, with power being proportional to the CUBE of the wind speed.)

Between the prevailing westerlies coming off the great plains and the "lake effect winds" generated by the great lakes (read:  Inland seas) working off the great plains as a solar collector, they don't call Chicago "The Windy City" for nothing.  But the area around and among the Great Lakes is the cloudiest in the central 48 states.  When NASA was making a map of the US using satellite imagery with the sun at a constant near-noon angle and no clouds on the ground, they got most of the 48 imaged within a couple weeks - but Michigan took most of the year.  As I recall Southeastern Illinois also participates in that issue.

So if I had the time, materials, and such a site, I'd build the mill even if I got a great deal on panels.