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.
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.
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.
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.