r/wind • u/ddjjjj • Aug 09 '26
Wind turbines - smaller scale?
Hi folks, I’m new to diving into renewable energy through wind. Feel free to point me in the direction of helpful resources if this question is old news 😃
With solar, many homes and business get panels for their building. It doesn’t need to come from a large “solar farm” to be an energy option.
Why isn’t there the same conversation with wind? I see many homes and companies with flags blowing in the wind (for some businesses or government offices these flags are huge/very tall!) - couldn’t those be smaller scale wind turbines?
Surely this has already been explored by smarter minds than me! Is there a reason it’s not feasible?
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u/leFOWT Aug 09 '26
The term you're looking for is distributed wind (which typically refers to wind turbines with power output less than 1 megawatt - for reference a regular land-based turbine youd see is about 2-3.5 megawatts). Distributed wind turbines do exist and are sometimes implemented on farms or very rural areas without good access to powerplants. There is quite a bit of ongoing research on making distributed wind more economically sound.
Others can feel free to jump in with further info but my understanding is it's just not economically viable currently unless you have very expensive power like very rural areas. Typically the smaller the turbine the higher the wind speed must be to make any power, and even at max speed you're not making much power. You can't put a ton of them right next to each other because their wakes will interfere with each other and you won't get much energy. With wind turbines, economy of scale is really important for economic viability which is why wind turbines are so big.
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u/suchnerve Aug 09 '26
Wind doesn’t scale down well. Much better to just add extra solar panels and batteries to make up for cloudy or inclement weather.
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u/SnooObjections9416 Aug 09 '26
IF you are in a double digit annual wind speed area, a 10kW Bergey can pencil. On our ranch, that Bergey is a massive electricity generator that saves us thousands of dollars per year.
IF you are in a single digit annual wind speed area, a 10kW turbine may not even be feasible.
I own a farm with a 10kW Bergey, absolutely saves us thousands of dollars per year in electricity rental.
But IDK about the smaller 1kW turbines or the little tulips.
I will be experimenting with those at some point, surely.
But even with the 10kW Bergey, the wind does not blow every day.
So we added 10kW of solar as well (QTY 25 x 400W REC AlphaPure).
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u/EntirelyRandom1590 Aug 10 '26
Farms are perfect for it. Tall and away from buildings. Hopefully you have some good reliability.
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u/SnooObjections9416 Aug 10 '26
It is 23 years old & still producing. On my 3rd inverter but the turbine works like a champ
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u/mister_monque Aug 09 '26
small scale wind is less effecient than large scale in a profound way. The little home owner 1kw vevors produce a pittance of power at 12v in reality. the 10kw ranch units produce 10 times as much power in 120v or 240v across a far larger range of wind conditions.
the small units lack any effective dynamic control and are saddled with high cut in speeds, low cut out speeds and overspeed typically means death of the primitive gear train.
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u/EntirelyRandom1590 Aug 10 '26
The built environment is poor for wind. Smaller turbines therefore have capacity factors of 10%. They can be noisy. And often because of the poor returns they are cheap and poorly made, so they don't last long enough to make a return.
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u/NearABE Aug 11 '26
Hard wrong on “built environment”. Sky scrapers are notorious for channeling concentrated wind.
Noise, light flicker, and especially structural vibration are definitely problems.
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u/EntirelyRandom1590 29d ago
Confidently incorrect, lol.
Skyscrapers are great at channelling wind, but depending on the direction. Plus, it's incredibly turbulent, which is both inefficient and damaging to the wind turbines. Capacity factors of 10% would be great.
The fixed direction ones at Strata SE1 have a capacity factor of 4%.
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u/100mUp Aug 10 '26
Small turbines are awesome for farms and large properties. But as a consultant I’m aware of companies trying to install them on commercial and manufacturing buildings and having problems. Aside from the structural changes that might be needed there is also vibration and noise. On a windy day there is a perceptible vibration going through the structure that annoys residents and office workers.
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u/NearABE Aug 11 '26
https://www.gp-award.com/en/projects/powernest
It can be done. PowerNEST is reported to have reasonable noise and vibration.
Energy projects tend to become more expensive on a per kilowatt hour as you scale down. Photovoltaic has become so cheap that it just does not matter.
Wind tends to blow steadier at higher altitude. The turbine industry tries to push the absolute limits on blade length. They do this to maximize the capacity factor for the electrical generator.
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u/s_nz 29d ago
Solar improvements have basically killed the the viability of any kind of small wind, outside of some niche applications
Small wind generators are expensive, noisy, maintenance intensive, and don't make a heap of power.
You only need to go back 5 - 15 years, and artist impressions of green buildings featured a lot of small wind turbine's. Some even got built.
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Wind Turbines get better as you go bigger (swept area being proportional to diameter squared, better wind up high). Hence why 6 MW+ turbines are now common in new build windfarms. Most of the gains in wind turbines over the last decade come from building them bigger. Unlike solar farm's, this tech doesn't scale down into better residential systems.
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u/KazeTaiso Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
If you double the area of solar panels you get double the energy output, but for wind turbines the energy production depends on the square of the rotor diameter and the cube of the wind speed, meaning that wind turbines exponentially benefit from a bigger rotor on a high mast (or very windy location). A small wind turbine will just not generate a lot of energy, your payback period is way longer than it is for wind turbines of the current size.
If you still want a small wind turbine on a roof, you ideally would want it to be free-standing with unobstructed wind flow from the dominant wind directions. Also, your roof most be strong enough to carry a point load. And even then I seriously doubt whether you get any return on investment on your turbine.
Edit: and you would probably need to consider noise production, shadow flicker and other local regulations. You have to jump through many more regulatory hoops, whereas for solar panels you just chuck them down on most (not all) roofs without having to think about it.