this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
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Why not skip the middleman and go straight solar, then?
For places like Seattle.
Look at Seattle and tell me which parts have enough wind power for your home windmill:
Chiming in on this... Installed home energy in Europe. Close to the coast, so rather windy. Rather far to the north, so not that sunny. Home solar usually pays for itself after 6 to 10 years, with installations usually being guaranteed to last 20 and of course usually lasting even longer. Home wind is a niche that doesn't pay for itself within the lifetime of the turbine. You're always better off just installing more solar and more storage unless you're building a 200m high wind power plant that essentially always generates enough energy for a small city. We opted for a solar solution with about 10 kWh storage and an energy management system that charges the battery during the winter when prices are low (usually at night when the large turbines nearby are running). The turbines can't compete with ordinary energy pricing, they sure as hell can't compete with a system that grabs electricity at its cheapest from the grid. It's just not worth it.
Lets be generous and assume that the blades of your turbine are 1 square meter.
Looking at the map, we can see that the entire Seattle area has an average ground level wind energy density of maybe 50 watts per square meter.
Assuming that the windmill is twice as efficient as every other windmill and can extract 70% of that wind energy, we can estimate that your windmill will output roughly 35 watts of energy on average, enough to slow-charge a laptop, for a total of about 25 kWh per month.
The average American home uses more than 850 kWh per month, so it'd need at least 35 of these twice-as-good-as-normal windmills. A more realistic figure would be "more than 75".
75 * $320 = $24k, more than twice the price of the average solar install in the Seattle area.
And while this hypothetical example gives the best case scenario for home wind provided in our discussion, I can give you the real world data from a residential solar array. I'm one step away from Seattle's solar radiance. I just looked at my home solar data. Last month (March), I generated 36.3kWh from a single 405W rated panel for the month. This is calculated by the total monthly solar power generated divided by the number of panels I have on my roof. I can also tell you March is not a good month for solar in my northern state. During my best month (June) last year I generated 59kWh from the same single 405w rated panel.
So you're revising your position previously stated position that wind is a great solutions for home power then?
Which part of Seattle is that 😇
I’m joshin ya! Curious though if there’s evidence parent commenter was wrong
It’s incredibly well known that wind power completely depends on how large of an area you can cover with the blades. That’s why wind turbines keep getting bigger and bigger. They’re more efficient and deliver more energy. Roof mounted wind turbines for residential are one of the worst possible renewable energy sources for general consumers. You’re better off with solar or geothermal.
Like someone else said, a single solar panel can outcompete a roof mounted wind turbine. You’d be better off buying a portable camping solar panel and using that to charge a battery bank and then charge some of your electronics off of that.