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Comment by occz | Hacker News Reader

I thought residential wind was basically a non-starter due to wind availability at low heights + power scaling exponentially with blade length?

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Plus, I'm not bothered by a poorly maintained, stationary solar panel on my neighbour's house, but I very much mind a poorly maintained, rotating turbine in the same place!

Both excellent points.

Yes, economically, at the moment, it's hard to justify. But some solar system inverters support wind inputs, which means the "overhead" costs (inverter, battery, etc) drop away.

Yes, in terms of kw/$ adding more solar makes more sense. Except that solar is obviously dependent on sun. Mixing inputs means more "spread" in generation. (Obviously night time, rainy days, and so on.)

So its not just about kw/$ but also smoothing generation to reduce overall storage (which is -very- expensive.)

They do need more maintainence. And they contain more kinetic energy, so failure could be more serious.

These are all excellent, well accepted, points. And just when things are absolutly-positivly a bad idea... well, that's why it's ripe for disruption.

Just to reiterate what other people have said, no! There are extremely few cases residential wind makes sense. Maybe in some cases where geometry of buildings allows for an effective wind sweep much greater. But otherwise, winds aren't windy enough at building level.

I was looking and home wind options last weekend, and came across Harmony Wind Turbines, which look interesting given as a vertical solution they take less room, their models apparently can gather wind at lower wind speeds, and they have a feature to allow they to function at higher wind speeds, increasing the total operational speeds.

Unfortunately, all the interesting details are pending testing which they've partnered with universities for, but I'm not sure how far along they are.

Its unfortunately very hard to yell whether it's actually interesting or just appears to be so because key details aren't known, but hopefully we'll know one way or another within a year or two.

The other energy source that's drawn my interest recently is microhydro solutions, but that necessarily requires specific geographic features (a water source and elevation).

Depends on the situation; for most people, it's a non-starter, but remote cabins in the right place may make for a good residential wind source. There are fishing camps in northern Canada that are only used for a couple of months a year, but they have winter caretakers. The one I know isn't above the treeline, but the trees are all pretty short (30-40 feet max, 10-12 meters, usually less), so getting above the trees isn't hard. Given that solar is going to be pitiful even if there's no snow, wind would be my first choice to keep a handful of things charged. Satellite phone, e-Ink reader, indoor lighting. His heat is all firewood chopped during the first couple of months after arrival, before it gets really cold.

Might there be a size at which it would make sense for multiple houses to group together and pay for a turbine that's big enough to supply all their electricity, rather than one per house like solar panels? (If enough of the local residents feel YIMBY about it, that is.)

There is certainly a market for smaller turbines in remote locations where it’s harder to maintain grid access, or any other scenario where pure $/W is not the only factor.

In locations where wind regimes correlation to nearby other ones are among the lowest.

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