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At the macro scale, home windmills are a stupid idea. Anything can be done more economically at scale. Wind farms leverage economies of scale that don't work at
by tlb 18y ago
At the macro scale, home windmills are a stupid idea. Anything can be done more economically at scale. Wind farms leverage economies of scale that don't work at home, so they can easily make more power per unit labor with the same hardware. If Jellyfish were efficient, they would be more efficiently used in wind farms.
At the micro scale, some people will buy them despite the economic inefficiency as a fell-good hobby project, but they'll never become widespread without being economical.
Also: small wind turbines make a fairly annoying constant noise. I'd vote to ban them from my neighborhood.
- lionheart 18y agoYes, and no I think. There are some serious advantages of building this kind of system one house a time instead of in large scale wind or solar farms. The transmission costs, for one. If you generate the electricity in the same location it is used it is more efficient. Also, this way the new grid can be created slowly using many small investments made by individuals instead of having to make one huge investment immediately.
- tlb 18y agoIt doesn't reduce the capital cost of transmission lines: you still need thick enough wire to power everyone's house when the wind isn't blowing. If you're talking about the power loss in wires, it's only a few percent. Losses may be higher with power generated at the leaf nodes, because when my house is idle during the day it has to send power into the grid through the relatively inefficient local network while a wind farm is plugged right into the grid.