Step 3 - Add a Wind Turbine
From SolarPneumaticHybrid
With a wind turbine or multiple wind turbines, you can generate power at night (when there is wind) and during the day. Very often, you have probably noticed, when there is less sunlight during sunlight hours that is often due to clouds. Very often, not always, those clouds are storm clouds. Storms mean wind. Storms without rain are rare (I think). When it is darkest during hours when you would normally have sunlight is often when you have the most wind. So my idea (I'm sure that it is not an original idea) is that if you have batteries that can run your house for 12 hours when fully charged, and you have enough solar panels to run you house and fully charge those batteries on every sunny day, then by adding a couple wind turbines you will almost never run out of power because the wind will make up for the cloudy days and a windy winter will make up for the short days. If you then find that you regularly have a surplus of production after your batteries are fully charged and yet you run out of battery charge regularly or even on occasion, then you just need to add more batteries. If on the other hand you don't regularly have enough surplus to fully charge your batteries then you have to decide if you need more wind or more solar. Everyone should have at least one wind turbine and you should log the electricity produced by it. If you log your solar and your wind separately you can then decide how many hours a day you have wind production versus how many hours you have wind production.
Anyways, a year from now or less, I'll have data to help you decide whether you want to add wind power or not and if wind power, how many turbines.
