Thread: Wind power? Anybody skeptical?

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Bottom line is while work is being done on all kinds of alternative energy that may work, for now we have to use what we know works. It's a no-brainer that we have to "drill here, drill now and pay less." Not too hard to figure out that one. The problem is the clowns in Washington who are supposed to be working for us, but are getting money from the Global Warming, Save the Owels, Squirrels, Caribou and who knows what nuts that are willing to sacrifice us.

Hydrogen works. Remember the Hindenburg. Wind works, too, if you have a good tail wind!

Time to gather up a load of tar and feathers and visit Washington, DC.

Originally Posted by R Pope

You guys should visit SW Alberta. There are hundreds of huge windmills there, feeding into the grid. Same in Saskatchewan, down by Swift Current. My cousin has a few old Windchargers making electricity for part of his farmyard.
Saskatchewan is windy because Alberta blows and Manitoba sucks!

Not sure I agree, but that's funny!!

We have a bunch of the windmills popping up around the countryside as well. Has to be 50 or so just outside of Shelborn ON, 40 or about on the east side of Lake Huron around the Kincardine area. And six new ones at the south end of Lake Huron at Kettle Point ON. Thing is, if they weren't paying and producing, they wouldn't be building them. It's not the whole answer, but then nothing is, but it's playing it's roll as part of the solution for now.

A guy in our area has started a business of putting up the turbine windmills. I have been thinking about it for sometime and with propane getting higher, and higher it is looking better. When we moved to the country about 13 years there was a guy in one of the small towns around us he had one. I heard it cost $16,000 and at the time if he was generating more then he could use he would get repaid from the power company but they have since changed that set up. If you generate more then you use, you get a credit and it is only good for so long. When he does not need the power he shuts his off, it takes a small amount of wind to get his going.

This year it has cost us over $4,000 to pre pay for this coming season, and that was doing some bargaining with two companies. If I use more then what I have stock piled I’m in trouble. I’m locked in at one company at $2.38 and the other at $2.68. I pre paid at $1.89 plus 7% tax at one company and $1.99 plus 7% tax at another. We will be at 58 degree’s with a sweater. If I could get a turbine windmill I could at least save on electric, which is going up because they said coal has gone up 98% over last year. Hot water heater, electric stove, oven plus one electric furnace. I may have to move in the tree house, and shut the big house down.

Richard

Richard, we have a much milder winter here, where solar panels on the garage roof, would roll back our daily electric bill to pennies. What is popular here right now is solar set ups without the battery back up. What they do, is roll the electric meter backwards when they are producing electricity. The benefit is, no battery systems to maintain, just a radically reduced electric bill from PGand E. The bad part is yes, at night you are using energy off the power company, buit most of that consumption is rolled back during the day. My thought were to run electric space heaters at night during the winter, to lower our natural gas bill(mostly used to heat the house) and use the solar to off set electric from fan, lights etc in the summer.
If our place was bigger, and not in the downtown area, I'd definately look into the windmill option. I'm not so worried about getting off the grid, as I would like to lower my monthly bills. Unfortunately as stated by all, all of these options cost.

Hot rod daddy. There was a guy in the 70's who built a wind generator from 50 gallon drums, cut in half length wise as wind catchers all welded together to form an air wheel so to speak. He then connected the drive shaft to washer and dryer motors and used them as power generators. With the power he produced, it spun his house around(sort of like the top of the space needle in Seattle). It still exists, and the wind turbin still spins today. His house is above Hwy 101 in Novato CA.

Don S.
My Father in Law was working for Toyota Industrial(fork lift division). Toyota was working with a hot electric power entrapaneur(sp?) in Sacramento. She had taken a Porsche 914 and converted it to an electric vehicle as a graduate project. She was helping Toyota with their electric vehicle research. My father in law said, it was a very cool car. He liked that she put the charging plug on a retractable mechanism that sucked it back up into th tail pipe when not in use. I'm wondering if this may be the same Porsche you were refering to?

Originally Posted by ford2custom

A guy in our area has started a business of putting up the turbine windmills. I have been thinking about it for sometime and with propane getting higher, and higher it is looking better. When we moved to the country about 13 years there was a guy in one of the small towns around us he had one. I heard it cost $16,000 and at the time if he was generating more then he could use he would get repaid from the power company but they have since changed that set up. If you generate more then you use, you get a credit and it is only good for so long. When he does not need the power he shuts his off, it takes a small amount of wind to get his going.

This year it has cost us over $4,000 to pre pay for this coming season, and that was doing some bargaining with two companies. If I use more then what I have stock piled I’m in trouble. I’m locked in at one company at $2.38 and the other at $2.68. I pre paid at $1.89 plus 7% tax at one company and $1.99 plus 7% tax at another. We will be at 58 degree’s with a sweater. If I could get a turbine windmill I could at least save on electric, which is going up because they said coal has gone up 98% over last year. Hot water heater, electric stove, oven plus one electric furnace. I may have to move in the tree house, and shut the big house down.

Richard

Richard, in my opinion, you need to step back and examine your quality of life. Going through the winter with the thermostat set on 58 and wearing heavy clothes in the house is not my idea of ideal. I lived a short time in Wisconsin under those conditions and know what it's like. MISERABLE. If I were you, I'd be taking a look at relocating to a more moderate climate so I could enjoy life more. You probably have a well paying job and family in the area, but you have to balance that with what it's costing you to be miserable. Your mental health is at stake.

Wind power? Anybody skeptical?

Let's see...the government is involved. Hmmm....
I need to think about this for 2 nanoseconds.

Originally Posted by robot

Wind power? Anybody skeptical?

Let's see...the government is involved. Hmmm....
I need to think about this for 2 nanoseconds.

We didn't wait for the government, been going around here for 10 years or so..... Maybe it's not the total answer, but it's something. Beats the heck out of paying ridiculous electric bills... on the farm we use solar powered electric fences, been using them for 15 years or so....

Got to learn more about the new solar panels, I have a huge roof with a southern exposure....

Originally Posted by Dave Severson

We didn't wait for the government, been going around here for 10 years or so..... Maybe it's not the total answer, but it's something. Beats the heck out of paying ridiculous electric bills... on the farm we use solar powered electric fences, been using them for 15 years or so....

Got to learn more about the new solar panels, I have a huge roof with a southern exposure....

I need to learn about solar panels, my garage gets sun from the time it rises till sundown, would be a great place for them.

Originally Posted by techinspector1

Richard, in my opinion, you need to step back and examine your quality of life. Going through the winter with the thermostat set on 58 and wearing heavy clothes in the house is not my idea of ideal. I lived a short time in Wisconsin under those conditions and know what it's like. MISERABLE. If I were you, I'd be taking a look at relocating to a more moderate climate so I could enjoy life more. You probably have a well paying job and family in the area, but you have to balance that with what it's costing you to be miserable. Your mental health is at stake.

You know the old saying of being stuck between a rock and a hard spot, that’s where I’m at now. 13 years ago my previous house was new when we bought it, it had 5 years to go on the mortgage, I had to retire and thought it would be nice living in the country. I did like a lot of people who got in over their head but I thought if we conserved and sold a car each year we would be ok, as I had a pretty good collection. Then several things went against us, propane was .79 per gallon at the time, which wasn’t bad. We went from a house that was new when we bought it to an older house. At first I would kid about it being a money pit like the movie but that wasn’t funny after things kept going wrong. The house needs a new roof that I can’t afford; I can’t sell the house without a new roof. It was a mistake getting in over my head but it’s like telling a person who is over weight (you need to loose some weight) or an alcoholic (just stop drinking). If (small word but can be used for the biggest meaning’s) If I could get some of my project cars fixed up a little to go with the original plan, if I could physically stay well enough to do that. We have enough trees, if I could sell the wood that would help. Wood is as high as other sources of heat today. If we could hold on until we could get a new roof we would be ok. Then if I had any more time left in my life I would join the seniors in one of the warm states for sure. I use to tell my wife if I were homeless, I would be homeless in a warm state. Along with the other things that had to be fixed or replaced was the huge windows, we did good by replacing them in the beginning, and at 58 degree’s with the sun coming through the big windows it feels pretty good.

There are people a lot worst off then me that had to give up their homes, I’m not throwing in the towel yet, knock on a big piece of wood. I had a good paying job but it was at the expense of my body to many broken bones, and to many surgeries. I don’t feel sorry for myself, just the other night I watched a group of guys, and a lady putting up cell phone towers, and repairing them. A young guy fell over 100 feet to his death, times are tough now but if I can hold on a little longer we will be ok.

My wife just reminded me of why I got here in the first place it is a beautiful place. We have seen newborn baby deer, in the weeds a foot in front of us looking at us, we saw a baby Falcon, and we have seen Red Fox, Silver Fox. When the grandkids come over, they take turns driving down the long driveway. I saw a Yellow Belly Sap Sucker. Blue birds, Orioles, we have wild Turkeys walking by our house I’ve counted 30 at one time. We have black berries, black raspberries. We live in Indiana but when you get inside our property it looks like it could be someplace in Colorado especially when the tall pines are covered with snow. I guess if you look at it one way it’s terrible, or the other way it’s beautiful. Like the glass is it half empty, or half full?

I guess we all should look at what we have and be thankful because it always could be worst!!

Kind of got off the windmill theory but I feel better after techinspector1 replying to me about my complaining.

Richard

Richard
Sounds absolutely beautiful. Worth perservering and getting those projects done! One car would surely pay for a new roof, and maybe for the short term a pellet stove would be a warm treat in one room, that you use the most. Crank up the heat there, and who cares if the rest of the place is 50 degrees! We do this here as well! We were seduced into using natural gas for heating systems, because of the low cost, then California deregulated the power industry, and electricity doubled over night. But what the papers didn't focus on, was that natural gas quadropled! Our gas bill went from 75.00 dollars a month to around 350-400. My wife freaked. Started turning everything off, thought the new addition was killing us with energy costs, I took out an old bill and looked at our actual gas consumption, vs. a new one, we were only using about 15-20% more energy, for 1500 more square feet! I told her it was the prices that went up, not us. But it still leaves us in the same position, that energy bills are going up, and we already have an energy efficient house, so our only alternatives are sell and buy another place, which really won't solve anything, or take the bull by the horns and plan to take on the real problem, the power company! So that is why we are considering solar. We can run space heaters in most rooms, thus using less natural gas, which is much more expensive here than electricity. When we can afford it, we can put a solar set up on the garage roof which has the perfect sun exposure.
Arguments we hear, over and over, here are valid and will not change, but if I can eliminate my dependence from the the utility company, even at a large initial cost, it will pay off as energy prices increase, and these same systems also increase in price. It's sort of like spending 20k on a hybrid to lower your monthly gas bill from 400 to 150. Doesn't seem to help when you calculate how long it will take to make up the difference in gas cost versus the 20k, but in five years the car will be paid off, and my consumption will stay lower, and I'll still need a new car anyway, so it works for me. Just my thoughts.

I saw that he met with Congress today and every news agency in the known universe covered it. Seems like a very intelligent guy from all the interviews I've seen.

We think big in Texas.Ideas are big in Cal.Texans are practical and realist(sp)and we take an idea and make it a reality.T Bone is a very wealthy person but he is also a very generous person.He sees a problem and acts on it.He is not greedy as most of the enegy companies are displaying.I hope we can some how come together as a nation and start addressing our many problems,if not we will lose our Strongest Nation In The World status.If that happens we are headed for disaster.JMO

I don't know, got to try something. Allready getting warnings on what natural gas for heat is going to be next winter....

No matter who gets elected, it's a cinch nothing is going to change overnight.... With gasoline staying high, and natural gas predicted to almost double, gonna be a tough winter up north!!!!

Well, even if you don't have the rubles to buy into a solar panel array, you can most certainly put a dent in your power bill by constructing hot water panels. Run the hot water that is produced during the day into a large container. Pull from the container to do all your washing and showering at night instead of using electricity or gas to produce hot water. A little further engineering could produce some old fashioned radiators. Run the hot water through them with a pump, set a fan behind them and presto, space heat. These panels are very simple and cheap to make yourself.
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects...er_heating.htm
http://www.diydata.com/projects/sola..._collector.php

Going off the grid is just as much about conserving as it is about producing energy.
No way do you need a 200 amp service for a conservative home. An aggressive off the grid home could get by fine on half that, have wind/solar/battery system with a one lunger lister running on used grease for cloudy still days. I think anyone who is handy could build the whole system and get it working for under 10 grand. You could always add more panels as you could afford to.
Also I would look into a pellet stove. People here are heating for $2-$3 a day.
Also you might look into having an energy audit done. Some states have a one time energy grant to help you get more efficient.