Wind Power

In winter 2016, we added a 1kW wind turbine to our power system. For the story of the installation, check out my blog post.

In winter, we were struggling to charge the electric car using just the solar power system. The shorter days combined with the increased cloud cover (and winter 2016 was a very cloudy winter!) meant we couldn’t generate enough from the sun. Normal operation of the house was still easily provided for, but the car was the extra load that caused the struggle.

Ella has always had a love of wind turbines, and it was a bit of a ‘bucket list’ thing to get a turbine of her own. David did some research, and we purchased a 1kW WINDverter V2 turbine from Windpower Australia. It was installed with help from a qualified electrician, and feeds its power into our existing battery bank.

After some teething problems getting the new turbine to ‘talk’ to the existing solar power system, we got it sorted. And how is it?

A) It is ridiculously quiet! Its almost disappointing how quiet it is, just a gentle whir as the blades spin. No noise concerns here!

B) We underestimated how much wind actually blows at our house! There are many, many days when we are not generating wind electricity at all.

C) When it does blow, the turbine is performing exactly as specified and the power contribution is enough to allow us to charge the car more often than we could without it. Exactly what we wanted!

D) It looks fabulous, and is just plain awesome to have at our house!