Do You Know How Much Power Your Windmill Should Make?

Do you know how much power you need to generate each month?

This is something you really need to know BEFORE you start to design your alternative system. If you don’t have this information, up front, you may be deeply disappointed in the generation plan that you ultimately choose. Fortunately, this is an easy task, and it doesn’t involve higher mathematics, either!

Watts going on here?

Electrical power consumption is measured in Watts. Each of your appliances has a power rating, generally in Watts if you live in the U.S. For example, if you were to run a typical clothes dryer for one hour, you’d use approximately 5000 Watts. A color television will use about 200 Watts per hour. Figure how many hours per month you use the appliance (say 20 hours for the dryer) and here’s how many watts you’ll have used:

5000 (Watts) x 20 hours = 100,000 watts or 100 kWh (kilowatt-hours).

If your utility company charges you 7.8 cents per kWh, then you pay $7.80/month – just for the dryer! Go do the same calculations for the rest of your electrical appliances, and you’ll see that the cost of electricity is no small number!

Air Conditioner (12,000 BTU) = 1500 Watts x 200 hours/month = 300 kWh = $23.40 each month!

75 Watt light bulb = 75 Watts x 100 hours/month = 7.5 kWh = $.59 each month (for each bulb)!

See http://www.cornhusker-power.com/householdappliances.asp for more electrical appliances and their electrical requirements.

Now, add up some of the power requirements of your favorite appliances, and you’ll get an idea of how many Watts of electrical energy your home needs at a point in time. For example;

* 6) 75 Watt Light bulbs = 450 Watts

* (1) Television = 200 Watts

* (1) Computer = 365 Watts

* (1) Electric Blanket = 175 Watts

* (1) Kitchen Clock = 3 Watts

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Total Watts required to operate all of these items at one time = 1,193 Watts

If you simultaneously used all of the above appliances for one hour they would use =1,193 Watt-Hours of electrical power. One windmill generator producing 1000 Watts would not quite be enough, and you’d have to draw down your batteries for this power.

This means the 1000 Watt windmill had a good chance to charge your batteries. If the batteries didn’t get a charge, you’ll be getting your power from the grid.

Given this hypothetical situation, you now have some factual data to determine what size of windmill you’d need to get, to satisfy all of your electrical requirements. This is a good starting point, for sure.

More bang for your alternative energy buck could be the installation of solar panels to supplement your windmill. There may be wind-less days (as well as cloudy days), no system will ever be 100%, but if you can store some energy in good times (through batteries), you may never have to use “the grid” again!