Step 7 - Add More Wind Turbines
From SolarPneumaticHybrid
What I want to do with my home is always have power for whatever I want whether it be run the air-conditioner, run the heater, use the oven, use the TV, etc. I don't want to have to plan my electricity consumption each day. A week or two of stormy weather can and probably will empty your batteries if you are only using solar power. If you increase you battery capacity and then increase your solar capacity to be able to fully charge the extra batteries, you will probably still run out of power on a stormy week, especially in the winter where your solar panel become more efficient because of the cold but then have fewer hours of sunlight each day to harvest. With a few wind turbines you would get a lot of your power from wind during storms during the day and at night so you drain your batteries less, plus, in many cities and even whole states in the USA there is wind practically all the time. Your peak energy production under ideal conditions for solar are higher than your peak production under ideal conditions for wind when comparing residential wind to residential solar. That is why you start with solar. But by adding wind, your batteries may very well last a week during stormy weather where without wind you would of run out of power during the night on your third or fourth night. Remember, during the day during a storm, your solar panels are still going to produce electricity, just not enough to run your house and charge your batteries. With wind and solar, if you have a storm at 3:00 pm, instead of your batteries augmenting your solar to run your house, the wind augments your solar to power your house, and then has a little left over to charge your batteries. Then, at night if the stormy weather continues, you may meat 60% or 70% of your energy needs from the wind and get the rest from your batteries instead of getting all of the power from your batteries at night.
If your batteries are fully drained and you are left without power 1 or more times a month, adding one more wind turbine may do the trick to keep that from happening. If your already have a wind turbine and you are logging data from it, look at your data first to make sure that those dead days aren't accompanied by low wind speeds. If those power outages correspond with still days, then you may need to increase your battery capacity first.
