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$100 Solar Panel vs $100 Wind Turbine in a Normal Backyard
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- Published on Apr 17, 2026
- I was not expecting that from the wind turbine 😨
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Here's something I didn't find a good place to mention in the video: I picked the solar panel I did because it's a very convenient option for most of my viewers. You can find it online at most major retailers, and it's also for sale in multiple countries. However, while it's definitely not the most expensive option, it’s still far from the cheapest. Regarding that, let’s just say…keep an eye on this channel in the New Year! 😉
Change the charger controller
slap that wind turbine on ur car or bike..
as the next experiment.. i mean..
id try that.. (but i cant drive and dont have a bicycle)
but yea charge up a battery while moving.
its something i always say.. why isnt it done?
wind resistance i guess would be a real "bastichy" lol
Solar panels and wind turbines are never an "eyesore" in my world. I love seeing them anywhere, and everywhere. 7:49 They are our future. Gas stations are eyesores.
around the 3 min mark, you were trying to spin it backwards, after you hooked it up again you were spinning it forwards.
Isn't the price of a 550watt solar panel in China now $60?
One expert for wind turbines in Germany says “if you can’t see the sea, don’t waste your money with a micro wind turbine.”
Funny as funny as funny as funny
When you get tired of spinning those blades you'll figure it out
There are thousands of wind turbines in south dakota but I guess they're not micro ones
@stevendeckert6373Not micro ones. That is the point!
Wind energy has a crazy history. It was used for decades from 1900- 1950s in areas with windpumps before rural electrification with power lines. These first systems where very low efficiency but using an airmotor like a windmill, with near 5kw of wind power. The batteries might get 1 to 10% of this (100 to 200W typical) using an old generator. Keep in mind that a typical windmill is about 30 to 50ft height on a tower and over 8ft diameter. About 95% of USA land does NOT have enough wind resource for large scale wind turbines >100ft high. 50ft high wind is about 2% of USA land as economical for small scale wind. It took fed and state of California about 5 years to figure this out again over fifty years later. The California Energy Commission (CEC) rebates were given out in many millions of dollars for wind generators that would never work! Solar PV had similar problems, but installers usually put panels in the sun vs in a cave or in the shade of a tree. It was after 2008 that the CEC required panels to be in the sun, but wind credits were given another 2-3 years for wind generators with not enough wind! Texas and a small strip up from it has good wind resource. There are other exceptions of good wind areas like Altimont pass that have enough topological favored wind for generation as
Need a video for a $100 nuclear power plant.
😅I agree
Lollll
$100 nuclear power vs $100 fusion power
Hi, I am special agent Smith from your local FBI office. I have some questions for you. Do you have a minute?
100 dollar steam turbine
you were disappointed that there was not enough wind at that level; the wind turbine was disappointed that you placed it at such a low level
Virtually every story that starts with, "I bought a wind turbine" ends with, "I should have just bought more solar panels".
Haha, I live on a boat, and trust me, when it's rainy and cloudy for 3 to 4 days, you hear the generators start up 😂 NOT ME.... wind turbine keeps my batteries full.... I have an old EARO4GEN ..👌🏼
@bingosea For most sailors it's just a gimmick you try out one time, not worth the hustle.
You also have to place the turbine were it doesnt get in the way or someone could run into it. And space is limited on a boat.
And yes, there are many days without, not enough or too much wind.
@wolfgang-franzkranek6146 the wond generator gets mounted high up on the mast (normally higher wind speeds up there), therefore out of the way. It really comes in best in rainy cloudy weather, which is usually accompanied by wind.. solar do3snt work when mich in cloudy rainy weather....in conclusion, solar and wind generator combined keeps me in full power 24/7, 365 days a year.
Btw, not all wind generators are equal..lol
Usually by folks who wasted money on Vevor wind turbines.
@bingosea Sounds weird. I don't know anyone who has installed it on the mast. For good reasons. But hey, if it works for you.
Me screaming at the screen to get further away with that leaf blower
serious... he has limited real world experience.
I was even thinking he should blow at the orange aerodynamic cap to maybe even dissipate the air flow evenly to the fans
@EliteGeeks Nah, he's just an idiot.
You can tell from the start this guy is a Stupid Geek and really has no Idea what he's doing accept to make a video and hopefully some money from RUclips.
If you enjoy screaming at your screen ? Check out "Nevada 80 " Makes me understand why Politicians call voters "STUPID" !
Irish here. We don't get much sunshine here, but we get lots of wind.
As the old phrase goes "different horses for different courses".
Maybe a rain-powered generator? 🤔 Speaking from Westland, NZ, which can also be a tad damp 😐.
@alfnoakes392put the wind turbine in the gutter
@Snorribitenoser There are much smarter designs out there, that one is a bit horrible. A good place to look is boats supplies places. Lots of remote places here in NZ have a wind generator or two.
Hold the leaf blower about 8 feet away so it can push on all the blades not just a 1 sq inch of one . I hope your joking
Filipino here. We get a lot of Sun and we get a lot of typhoons. But we still use coal for electricity,
A wind turbine at that location has the same effect as an underground PV system.
yes not high enough but he is high
😂
You'd think someone doing a comparison would have a clue about the products and VEVOR seriously that's the Chinese version of Harbor Freight. I will not come back here, I can waste time doing something else.
@fouraces9137 geez lady try having a little fun.
well said.
I have a $150 wind turbine from Amazon that is mounted 40' high with a few trees in the area that might block the wind. I have pretty consistent wind as I live on a sort of ridge on a mountain. I tried to use this to pump water for my cattle, but it wasn't enough. After 8 months of trials, I put up a 70w solar panel and found that it produced 3x the energy on average per 24 hr period. Now I have 8 of those solar panels in addition to the windmill and an upgraded pump. The windmill still recharges the batteries and maintains the system overnight, but the solar panels do the real work during daylight hours.
That's intriguing.
This is the conclusion that a lot of people come to. Wind is great for filling in gaps, but the sun is way more reliable. It's a pretty unique location that has consistently reliable wind.
@leifhietala8074 The only conclusion is renewables only work in certain conditions. You need to live in those conditions or you cannot use them as a primary source.
It also proves you get what you pay for and wind turbines are not cheap and their conditions for use are narrow. Solar has seen lots of development from the space industry alone.
@gotafarmyet4691 The conditions exist to produce power from solar between the middle latitudes and the equator every single day, year round. Of course you get less on cloudy days and in the wintertime, but that's just one parameter to plan your system around.
If you live in the high latitudes (most humans don't) you'd better have another source.
@gotafarmyet4691 People in Germany and the UK report good results from solar panels. Cold weather apparently is good for panel efficiency. And yes, a properly planned solar or wind project is just nothing like randomly clamping a $100 throwaway toy to the shed in your back yard.
Wiring the way they tell ya in the manual (if you don't know what you're doing) is always solid advice.
I love how it never occurs to him that his wind turbine is wired wrong.
Yeah... Hahaha..
During testing, spinning the opposite way maybe might have helped.
Blower blowing air through the blade gaps...
The second he spun it and it generated literally nothing I was like the wiring has to be wrong, or the entire thing is a piece of crap and just doesn't work at all. Because turbines are kind of a known thing they work, it should have generated something.
When he hooked it to the supply after he tested it with the multi-meter he spun it the opposite direction.
GreatScott used a similar looking controller on a wind turbine. Turns out some of the controllers straight up don't work for some reason. So it might not be entirely the turbine that is to blame... could also be the electronics.
Most likely... because he got it spinning...
the voltage the turbine was making is just to low, it has to make least 5v above the battery voltage for the mppt to work
@423GustavBern if the controller isn't working properly you can be putting 300v ac from the turbine and it will be putting out 0.0wh 😂
@423GustavBern Some MPPTs just plain don't work as well. One way to see whether the turbine is making adequate voltage is to attach an AC volt meter directly to two of the phases and then measure open circuit. Ideal would be under load but we just want to see if the MPPT should be working if it was a good electronic design.
He wasn't going to get much current from spinning it by hand, but even with the leaf blower, he stood too close and most of the air missed the blades.
*Sets up wind turbine in the most wind sheltered area of his yard*
"WhY aM i GeTtInG 0Wh???"
If the battery is fully charged, the charge controller isn't going to continue charging the battery.
Plus if the regulator wants 12+ volts minimum, 3 volts isn't going to do nothing.
@douglascounts4634 exactly, he needed to make over 11v and no way at slow spins he would do that
@EliteGeeks The charger controller boosts the Vin to charging levels. The current flow is variable. No matter how fast the turbin spins there should be at least some current flowing into the battery if it has any charge capacity left. The Watt meter is cheap and will not display mW.
If he had started with a battery with a voltage of 11 volts or less he would have seen some charge. This guy has no clue whatsoever about basic electricity. You can't put more water into a full bucket
@douglascounts4634 But 3V IS doing nothing.
Maybe this is why there are thousands of solar arrays installed but very few residential wind turbines.
Wind turbines can produce a lot of energy. Just not a $100 one.
0:10 "Things didn't go the way I expected"
Everyone else: Things went exactly as expected...
Watching you play with the turbine was like watching a pissed off cat.
A cat that doesn't know which direction the blades should turn to generate power...
@zomerzet Why are storms rated in "Cat"?
@HughJaanus - lol, I want to somehow change that from "Category" to "Breeds of Cat". Like, a hurricane coming in that's "Orange Cat" instead of "Cat 5"
😄
Most cheep wind turbines are rated at 26-30MPH wind speed (class-1 wind turbines) - and you have to get to at least half that speed, just to produce enough output voltage to meet the MINIMUM controller input voltage (11 volts in this case). Furthermore, IF the charge controller is made to work with a wind turbine, it often has a different setting for this - it is not just a voltage thing - the load curves are different for solar panels, verses wind turbines.
The MPPT (Maximum Power Point Tracking) circuit inside the charge controller can be damaged in some solar charge controllers if you try to use them for wind turbines. This is because the MPPT circuitry assumes it is working with a current-limited voltage source (solar panels). The MPPT circuit analyzes the power curve by quickly increasing the load-current, and monitoring the voltage, as the voltage drops-off due to the current limiting of the solar panel. Then, it calculates the power at various points on that curve (power = voltage x current), and determines the point on the curve that produced the maximum power. This MPPT circuitry does not work well with wind turbines, because of the inertia of the turbine blades. The quick MPP curve-scan can result in a current surge that is beyond the input current rating of the charge controller - the controller expects the current to be limited by the solar array, but it does NOT drop off, due to the turbine-blade inertia. The scan was completed before the turbine had time to slow-down (stall) from the high, momentary, MPPT scan-current. Again, the curves are different.
Also, a charge controller that is used for wind, often has a dump-load control circuit, that dumps any excess energy into a resistive heater, when the batteries are charged - this HELPS to prevent the wind turbine from self-destructing (spinning too fast) under high winds (with no load), but should not be the only means of over-speed control. Regardless, there must be a way to prevent the turbine from self-destruction in high winds, and the controller often plays a role in this. It might be helpful to watch a few of the videos that show wind turbines self-destructing, when they go into free-wheeling (no load) - at least you will know what you could be getting yourself into before installing one.
However, the BIGGEST problem YOU have, is the lack of wind speed. Like the booklet said, YOU NEED TO BE WHERE THE WIND IS - and that is well above the treetops. The power output of a wind turbine varies with the cube of the wind speed. If the wind speed doubles, the output power increases by 8 times (2x2x2). If the wind speed triples, the power output is 27 times higher (3x3x3). As you can see, power drops markedly if the wind speed is low - WIND IS KEY! In general, if you need 100s of watts of power, don't even bother installing a wind turbine, if you are relying on wind speeds that are less than 10MPH - there is just not much energy to be extracted from low wind-speeds. Also, placing the turbine amongst the trees and buildings, is just ASKING for problems.
Next to wind speed, is the AREA swept by the blades. The greater the area swept by the blades, the more power the turbine can produce. The area varies with the diameter squared. If you double the diameter of the turbine, the area increases 4 times (2x2). If you triple the diameter of the turbine, the area increases 9 times (3x3). Don't expect much from a 5 or 6' diameter turbine - it just doesn't catch much wind.
Not trying to talk anyone out of installing a wind turbine, because they do complement solar-power fairly well, if you live out in the open, in a windy area. Also, solar-power might not work at all during a nuclear winter.
yea ive been thinking of wind turbines for my house simply because we commonly have rain going sideways on windy days, theres a bunch of those large massive commercial turbines around so figure we might get something
He connected it to the controller without the battery connected. The no load voltage could have exceeded the input limit.
In the nuclear winter there will be no wind aswell, so it makes it much more useless. Like absolutely useless. He can reengineer the wind turbine into hydroplant and use the nearest creek - if it is under 50meters, as the loss in the wires is also a factor. Or can create Don Quihote - looking windmill, which were the only working thing actually. So their diameter is like 15-20 meters. not 1-2 meters like this chinese cr4p. And they have plenty of big wings, not only 5 ubersmall jokes. Nevermind, the common sense is not a feat for the masses.
Super detailed explanation, thanks for that, I live in a super windy area, our trees literally grow with a slant. I think a combo is a super good idea as theres a few months out of the year where theres not alot of wind
@drgrunn174or people, so that point is moot, unless you are a self aware computer
i want to say the reason you weren't getting output from the wind turbine is because you were effectively trying to charge a led acid battery with your wiring, so the only time it will show output is if the turbine is producing power at output voltage of turbine>battery voltage which would be 13+volts, just thought that would help if you wanted to attempt this experiment again!
I can make a wind energy harvester for free but I can't make a solar panel.
RIP Robert Murray-Smith
RIP??? Wtf no way 🥺😭😥😢
@austinwebdev yep, and everything's going to be okay; the family is keeping everything going so his works and wisdoms are not lost nor forgotten.
I still watch and/or show people his content nearly every day. Most wholesome dude right there with Fred Rogers and Bob Ross; he is already sorely missed but at peace now and we take what we can get in life so I'm glad he and his sphere of influence remain and I get to have experienced it.
Thanks for knowing him.
@russellzauneryes indeed!!! Thank you for the info. I wish this world had him l longer though. We need more people like him. He was fantastic.
Did he get the jab?
@mikey4016 Take your meds or shut it
When the wind is slow and the sun is hot, the turbine waits to slowly rot.
Nice Red Sun Over Paradise reference
When the sun is down and the winds are top, a solar panel becomes a useless flop.
solar is just too cool
The only place I've seen small wind turbines like that is on boats, which are regularly exposed to high winds.
17:30 yaah of course cause you are trying to charge a fully charged battery. 😂😂
During the whole video?
@Cool_Guy7860 0,5 w at the end... batery dont discharge if its a good batery not for 3 days :D
Battery was not fully charged.
@tmog1000how do you know?
I’ve enjoyed your descent into madness. Thanks for taking one for the team! 😂
what if you made a wind turbine that had solar panels as blades, lol
That would be dope!
And lightning rod for post. That would make some serious sparks 😂
@goatman86 fast charging FTW!
There is a company called Ridgeblade that has a solar and wind offering.
Same outcome as if you had solar panels with plastic windmill blades instead of silicon cells
3:31 are you spinning that backwards?
Noticed that too.
Yess😂
AC generators don't care about direction of rotation.
@arydantThat is true, thank you. Just thought to eliminate all variables in the experiment.
@arydanttotally wrong. Say bye bye to your electronics.
Try mounting the windmill on your car and then drive around and see what kind of wattage you can generate
We live in rural Texas. We have a neighbor who has both a wind turbine and a solar panel. Both are undoubtedly more than $100. Anyway, they have said the solar panels produce significantly more energy for them than the turbine does, even with how windy it often is, here.
You bought a $100 pinwheel.
attach it to your cap, and well call you "Spanky"
@citylockapolytechnikeyllcc7936 🤣
Geico pig: "Weeeeeeeeeeeeee"! All the way home.
Yep, even 10 watts of generation is going to encounter some resistance to generate it. It isn't just going to free spin.
You ever seen a generator for the lights on a bicycle? Those have a lot of resistance.
@douglascounts4634It feels different if you turn the wheel or the generator. There was one called Dynosys Lightspin. It was huge but it kept turning when you spinned it by hand with no load. That was with coreless coils like the wind turbine. Those only have noticeable resistance with current. For current the voltage needs to be high enough. The wind turbine would make a resistance at those speeds if you short the cables.
Edit: There is a picture of a disassembled Lightspin online in Fahrradzukunft Nr. 18. It's drum design, while the wind turbine is a disc but the concept of the coreless coils between pairs of magnets is the same.
Wind turbine that low ain’t gonna do poop
It will if there's a lot of wind lol
@mediocreman2enough wind to blow the houses & trees out of the way
Wind is wind, it doesn't know it's altitude. If the blades are turning it should be generating.
@reefhound9902 Sure, everybody knows the jet stream travels at ground level.
@anotheruser676 as if there is no wind at ground level. The turbine would blow away at jet stream speeds.
17:22 well I can't help myself laughing on that puny 0.5W of that Turbine, 😂
One of my professors has a wind turbine (mounted about 40'-50' in the air on a pole located away from her house in a direction that is typically upwind and is very flat and windy). She also has solar panels on her roof. A few years ago, I asked her about it. She said that the setup generated most of her power needs. She said the solar panels generated more power by a lot which really surprised me given how windy it is there and frequently cloudy (it's Minnesota). She regretted the wind turbine since she didn't feel its output was worth it.
A 2000W turbine outputs 500W.
Before installing a wind turbine, you should take wind measurements over a longer period and then calculate the correct diameter and number of blades for your needs.
This was probably not done correctly, or at least not at all.
Politicians and environmental organizations also think that a society can run on wind turbines, but the opposite is true.
It's quite strange what people think now, when millers already knew how unreliable wind was 400 years ago; unfortunately, they didn't have much else at the time.
That windmill design is suboptimal for your area. Might want to look at some of the alternative wind blade designs over on the channel of the late, great innovator Robert Murray-Smith. He investigated several alternates that optimize output for various potential footprints, and nearly all of his designs are in open-source archives.
RIP Robert.
He was a pleasure to learn from.
Charge controller for the turbine was reading a full battery.
14:28 if you are getting nothing after 2 days, you have something setup incorrectly. Or the unit is defective.
The wrong setup is the location itself.
@thomasmore260oh it's not just the wrong location he definitely did something wrong, or it was broken. There is no way that a turbine generates literally nothing. That's not how they work. I mean you could literally hand spin a a turbine like that and it will generate more power than he registered.
I am in no way saying that a turbine is a good idea for a house it's not, wind power requires massive turbines for it to be worth doing. The reason windmills worked was because they weren't trying to generate electricity they were trying to generate work, for things like running a pump. The fact that he got nothing while it was actively spinning tells us that either his measurement device doesn't work, the turbine is broken, or it is wired wrong.
No he came to the right conclusion solar is always going to be better than a turbine for this kind of use, but a properly set up turbine would have generated some power. Generally the best setup is solar with a little bit of turbine to fill in gaps in the power needs, like to keep batteries topped off at night or to keep batteries topped off during low light seasons.
@JW-452It needs to get enough RPM to have a higher voltage as the battery to do any charge. This was not the case and expectable for this location. I had a much better but still bad location when I tried. I got some charging in gusts of a gale after removing half of the blades and converting the rectifier to a voltage doubler. Those turbines are designed for offshore use. There they get enough RPM. You cannot get those RPM by hand spinning or the leaf blower on one spot of the circle. (You could try the leaf blower on pelton blades though.)
Are you a... engineer? What kind of dark wisdom is that?
FYI charge controllers won't charge a full battery... That being said he is surrounded by a 6' fence and no where near high enough with the fact he has no wind there... If he mounted it here with a low battery he would actually get some output...
That wind turbine needs to go much higher.
The power station will not start under 11 volts (11-60) and your meter before connecting it was less than 5 volts.
Right, so if the power station isn't accepting current, no current will flow. Really looks like something messed up here.
the wind turbine controller was probably faulty.
Yeah, if nothing was coming out the other end of the controller when spinning it by hand or leaf blower then I wouldn't have wasted my time.
No wind no power
I agree even the artificial wind didn't produce any real results
@nickmcminn2137 I hope he got his money back or another controller that worked. My wind turbine even worked at ground level even with a light breeze.
Maybe running it first without the battery fried the circuit.
Need to measure the phase wire AC voltage without the controller, then connect all the phase wires together and see if it becomes difficult to spin.
Only practical application for micro turbines is in areas that are not only particularly windy in general but for backup power in storms, since the wind is usually what causes outages anyway and it's not typically very sunny during stoems. But then the question goes from "should I just get nore panels" to "should I just get more batteries," and maybe the batteries win there too lol.
My dad was a pretty cunning engineer. All the neighbours on the island we lived on * got wind turbines around about 45 years ago, when you could buy solar but it was ex-pen-sive in the extreme, and they were nothing like as productive as they are now. So wind-turbines were the thing for three or four years. They were like your one except twice the size. And they made a hell of a noise, filled the harbour with a angry buzz.
And half the people gave up on the turbines, for the expense, and the noise, they just didn't produce enough.
So dad made a SLOW tower-turbine out of 40 gallon steel drums split in half and mounted on a long central shaft. They spun at about 60 rpm on average, but mounted on the BOTTOM of the shaft was a cog 500mm in diameter, with a chain drive to the shaft of a 24 volt electric motor with a 50 mm cog on it. Ten to one reduction, and it was about four times as efficient as the neighbours' turbine at the same wind speed. And it wasn't set very high up, the bottom of the spinning part was about 3 meters off the ground, and the top of it was another 3.
The only problem with it was you had to let it spin, or bring it down and lay it on the deck and secure it to a couple of big tie-downs, there was no way to feather it in high wind. Oh, and when it got going, the *WOPWOPWOPWOPWOPWOP* was frightening to hear, it sounded like the apocalypse was coming early.
* very rural, almost no businesses or even farms any more.
1 would love to have one like your dad's which has some real character.
@richkalbus4346 It was something he just did to see how it worked, he was a trained Electrical engineer, but he was from a tradition of farmers just getting stuff done with the means at hand.
I couldn't advise making one of his wind-towers because the noise was frightening, but you had to be there all the time, in case the wind got up to a storm.
It was super cheap and made a lot of power though.
You are describing a Savonius turbine, which has a very poor efficiency, because one half is always going against the wind. The other turbines must have had a really bad quality if they could not compete with that.
when I was on high school, half sized solar panel could be obtained fo price of 4-5 garages and had less than 10% efficiency (nowadays 24-26% is standard). I can buy 450Wp for 65€ (double sided 550Wp is roughly about 100€)
@stanislavbandur7355 Sure, the increase in efficiency is a real game changer. My dad could have certainly brought solar panels, but the main problem was they didn't last, he thought, and the outlay of the money would be wasted, and you needed a lot of support things to go with them. Maybe he was being too cautious, but it was early days in the solar industry.
And he also liked to make stuff, the wind turbine he made was not because we NEEDED it for power, we had a 1925 R.E.B. Crompton & Co diesel electric generator set that gave far more power than our house needed.
6:55 The recommendations listed there are for Commercial Megawatt Wind Turbines, not home turbines like the one tested in this video. The home turbine can be mounted in any residential lot, so long as it is properly anchored and has a minimal potential fall clearance of no less than half the mounting height, in most states. It is recommended to use a collapsible mounting mast (one that either slide extends or fold extends) with a breakaway lock for the extension with a sheer resistance of 30 mpa. So if, for whatever reason, the load is too great from extremely strong winds, a storm, etc, the mast will collapse into the yard rather than toppling over onto your home or a neighbor's property.
Power station input 11-60v (wind turbine was generating 3v) and wonders why the power station showed no input. lol
The battery is fully charged so the charge controller "brakes" the turbine electrically by shorting the phases. He has not worked that out the controller is stopping the battery being over charged and getting damaged .
Usually wind turbines should have torque or hard to spin only means that it's working. If free spinning means no load. Or not working
So the real conclusion here is wind turbines are not for regular idiots
That’s what I was thinking too. It seems to be spinning way too freely, which suggests no load or no connection.
Incorrect
@alastorgdl I bet he got a deffective one.
@migsvensurfing6310 A reasonable person would DIAGNOSE the system instead of polluting Internet with moron food
I have a wind turbine out away from the house, it's about 20ft up and it does charge 2x 6v deep cycle batteries. I think what hurt when trying to use the leaf blower, is you were too close. Turbines need more than just a compressed airstream to work. I bet if you stood a good 5ft or so away from it you'd have better results.
Agreed, these are very poor conditions for a wind turbine to work, not proper height, not enough clearance and bad wiring. If you are getting readings on multimeter but no readings on watts meter, then your wiring is wrong somewhere.
Yes, too much air pressure, less air speed & less wind coverage on the outer diameter of the blades.
@LoneTiger absolutely. Human error. Couldn't be wired correctly. Plus, the blades were hitting the tree branches half the time. Who knows? Not scientific, not farmertific, not handymantific and no where near an engineer level of understanding. More like art student whose dad has an awesome tool setific.
@LoneTiger Yeah, but it still shouldn’t be reading zero - so either I’m going to say it was faulty from the start, or he broke it, or just didn’t set part of it up properly.
Bigger issue is he trying to charge a full battery... Charge controller won't charge it anymore...
You could probably make your own wind turbine from scratch and if you pay 100 for that you could definitely get a decent amount of power
very true, looks like he got a dud wind turbine, my friends wind turbine produced arounds 150watt
0:53 "i don't know what to call it"
nacelle
they arent lying when they say they need to be like 40 feet off the ground with nothing around them in a mile radius. the wind speed in most places just isn't high enough to bother with turbines unless you get a really huge one
In other words, only in Nebraska wheat fields.
Or on the coast line wind is always 30 plus and we everything flat in FL.
And even then they are completely useless.
Destroying nature and raising energy bills trifold.
Do not forget that horizontal axis turbines are to be used in the high. Above 9 m always. For the altitude he was using the turbine, he would need a vertical axis turbine. But I don't know if there is some at 100 USD or even close. Those vertical axis turbine start to spin at even 2 m/s wind speed.
Oregon coast
I know solar gonna win before even playing this video😂
A listing on Aliexpress for that controller says “if you connect wind turbine before battery, the controller may be burned if the wind is heavy.” so you may be destroying the controller at around 2:40. Second possibility is that the controller may only be designed for lead acid batteries so when it sees over 13 V on the LiFePO4 it may assume that it is fully charged and not push any current into it.
A battery is fully charged at 14.2 volts, you need a dump load with a wind urbine.
@HughJaanus no, it charges at 14.2v but stays at ~12.8 when you stop charging it
@talcbba Yaaaaawn.
Here we go again, pay attention.
A battery is fully charged at 14.2, if the input charges the battery above that it damages the battery. so you need a dump load to get rid of the excess charge. A battery fully charged, at rest has 12.7 volts.
Thank me very much.
@HughJaanus Rude
A wind turbine needs a dump load to get rid of excess voltage above 14.2V.
Ok, setting aside "I'm not going to follow the instructions," the math behind wind turbines is very well known. This turbine has diameter of 1200mm and *IF* the average wind speed were 6 m/s (about 13 mph) it would produce probably about 36w of power. For context: the old incandescent light bulbs for ceiling lights typically consumed 60-75w. Lights for wall sconces were 40-45w.
Why following instructions would have been important: the power of the wind increases as 3rd power of speed. Speed increase from 5mph to 6pmh increases the power 36/25=1.44 - 44%! So mounting at the height of a 2-story building on a separate mast would have a dramatic effect compared to the roof of a small shack, where there was not really enough wind speed to even make it turn. The turbine sales materials say it was rated for 12 m/s wind. The math suggest it would output about 300-400w. But you had wind that was practically undetectable, so what would you expect?
I think that's the point being made here, most people could just throw down some panels in the yard where there is little shade and get close to the rated output. to do the same with a wind turbine requires a pretty major project which may not even be legal for a residence
IS this dude Jack from Ice Coffee Hour's Brother? lol
Connect the wind turbine to a bicycle and check how much power you can produce with it in 30 mins 😂 get fit and produce power😂😂😂
energy isn’t free no matter how it is produced. you would burn more energy than you produce. you would have to eat more to make up for the difference. so unless you are a hunter gatherer, the money you spend on food would cost more than the energy you produce.
@lkytmryan Well it's better than lifting heavy weight at the gym that produces no power.
its not the wind turbine thats fcked, its the controller
And the dud ewho made the video....
13:28 to 13:30 "I'm starting to wonder if this wind turbine is just a piece of crap."
Lol 😄
Project Lightouse put a bigger Vevor windmill up on their, well...lighthouse heh. it did not go well. so my guess is the solar panel wins. (Project Lighthouse is a fantastic channel, if you haven't seen it!)
I love that channel as well!
I live on the Gulf coast. Windmills of any type are problemtic. Unless the vanes can be feathered, the first good blow wrecks them.
This was the most informative video I have seen regarding a wind turbine generator. I think I will just enhance my solar system. Thank you very much.
Small turbines are not great, but this guy didn't even mount it at the APEX of the shed, and the tried a leaf blower (fast wind out of a 50mm outlet, when the turbine wanted wind over about 1500mm.
He also had a terrible "controller", that couldn't boost voltage to a point where a battery could take a charge.
All the video really told you was that if you ignore mounting instructions and don't understand basic physics, then improvising with a dirt cheap turbine is pointless.
Comparing a £2000 axial turbine 10 metres up, with a £2000 solar array, might have been more interesting for you. I appreciate the fellow didn't have the resources to do that, but you would have reached different conclusions.
I have a supposedly 5kw wind turbine. Didn't know that was taken from a height of 36 feet high. My turbine is only at about 25 feet. Haven't been able to get any power production from it so far. It definitely spins.
The higher the maximum output wattage is, the harder it is to get it to produce anything at all. A turbine that makes power at 5mph winds will still only make 200 watts when the wind is 50 mph. A turbine that can get 5kw in 50mph winds will make nothing at all at 10 mph.
@austinwebdev
If the maximum power of a wind turbine is calculated at, for example, wind force 8 = 100%, then the remaining power at lower wind forces is as follows:
Wk. 7 = 56%, wk. 6 = 13.8%, wk. 4 = 5.5%, wk. 3 = 1.7%, wk. 2 = 0.4%, and wk. 1 = 0.04%.
That's the problem with all wind turbines.
The answer to the question is entirely based on geography.
Not that it matters to this Geek. There is a thing called " WIND SHADOW " ! The formula is 7.5 to. 1 foot of Height. Example: a 10 foot high object cast a wind shadow of 75 feet. Dah !
The wind trubine will only spin in one directon I assume, to generate power and it needs to be on a swivel base so it can turn with the wind.
No birds were harmed during the filming of this video!🐧
But according to tRump he has killed 15 whales.
But how many whales were driven to suicide?
I really enjoying watching this video. Very interesting.
4:30 Ok this is rage bait bro stop this still the wrong way you might break it. you can force a wind turbine to spin in reverse, but it's generally counterproductive and potentially damaging they're designed for one direction, so spinning backward feeds energy, creating electrical issues by feeding power into the turbine instead of out, and stresses components.
That's also what I see.
Alright unless my understanding of how electric motors and generators works, it shouldn’t matter which direction the turbine is spinning. All it’s doing is making the rotor spin while the stator dumps the 3 phase power into the inverter, so… yeah maybe there’s gearing inside the turbine itself but I doubt it.
its ac that means it can spin both ways and produce the same energy...
Vertical access windmills work for this approach vs prop
VAWTs are even worse, since half of the turbine is spinning _into the wind,_ thus fighting itself.
Paint the blades blue or grey, depending on your location and it will be invisible to Karen from HOA lol
The thing with Wind Turbines, useful on days when storms come thur, during night time, or even during day time. they can just start working. While Solar Panels. need Sun pretty much to get power. Wind Turbine just need Wind, which can happen day, night, sun, rain, snow, storm, so having both hooked up could be a useful thing.
Residential Wind Turbines are useless for 90% of US residents.
you can get 350w+ solar panels for $100 by buying decommissioned panels taken off houses etc. not brand new but definitely worth it.
I just got myself the ecoflow river 3. I love it!
Unless the turbine has twice the diameter of its blades, its efficiency will not be equivalent to a 10w solar panel.
Efficiency for a wind turbine is not as important, because there can be more wind than sunlight.
@termiterasin In my country (Vietnam), there are many wind turbine systems, but you'll be considered wasteful if you want to install "mini" wind turbines; they are very inefficient. Instead, a solar energy system is more optimal and much cheaper. For about $100, you can get a solar panel with a capacity of up to 600Wp, and the sun lasts for 6-7 months.
@tranvu.906 Solar does produce a lot more. If there isn't sun there's normally wind from a storm. In the desert they work very well together on camper vans.
Efficiency is very different from Total power output. A suburban with a 350 vortec outputs WAY MORE POWER than a super efficient v6 mivec from Mitsubishi. The mivec is far more efficient than the vortec but it produces half as much power. That's why the gas goes farther. It also cant tow a 2000 pound trailer like a suburban can.
Controller on the wind turbine is just defective.
When the turbine was mounted, the blades were finally being spun in the correct direction.
Also, this entire test is invalidated. 15:45 the blades on the wind turbine are on backwards.
"6 watts. 7 watts!" Hits hard 😂
Over a few hours, that’ll save your life, if your cell phone battery died and you had a solar battery pack with ya. Even 1-2 watts over 4-8, 8-10 hours will… give ya something.
@coloradogaydude The EROI is abysmal low
@flexairz Oh trust, I’ve done that leg work 😂 it was basically used as a recharge battery pack, because the solar panel would maybe net 5% of charge if out in the sun all day. 😂
Such a great video because I've been dreaming about wind power forever. Now I see that solar is the answer.
my first toughts were what are the wind speeds tis turbine was optimized for becouse there are a lot of types try some low wind ones
second most of these turbines dont output the listed wattage and are 10 times lower and are over marketed this way to get you to buy it
third can you try discharging the batttery and then trying it again maybe the controler dont send power if the battery is full (even seen that the controller stop the turbine from spinning when battery full on other channels)
You showed us that the power station needs 11W minimum input - so that's probably why the display starts flashing when only getting 7W input from the solar panel...
put the solar panel in the shed, to even out the playing field.
🤣
*You can't use a 4" hole aimed at a 48" blade.*
Dude, u can get a 100 watt solar panel for 50 60 bucks 🤷
i can get 550 watts for $100 here in philippines.
@MoistToast-e3cThe value of the dollar is higher in the Philippines. It doesn't mean the products are cheaper, it just means you have more buying power if you're using USD.
@mediocreman2i know. that's why i chose to retire here.
Not a good brand name solar panel like Renogy.
Very interesting experiment. Informative too.
You were spinning it backwards...... 3:08 🤪
Simulated tail wind ?
One thing you should consider when buying Wind turbine is that there are different types for differnt wind speeds, yours is made for medium to high wind loads.
You should consider wind turbines that are made for low wind speed, those wont output alot of wattage, but they will atleast produce power when most turbines wont.
Uff, look at this:
The wind turbine for tornados, hurricanes, extreme winds conditions, during rain, tropical storms and winter storms
Solar panel: all else during sunlight time
All of these needs batteries obviously to work that's the way how you will take advantage of these ones
They probably meant 500 mW for the wind turbine not 500 W
We're having level 9 gale force gusts of wind here in Dalian, a windy city. Fucking freezing out there, I hate it, -9 degrees. I came home to see my motorcycle fallen to the ground by the wind. The electric motorcycle has solar panels on it, I think they didn't shatter. Usually they produce around 200Wh per day to charge it so I don't have to plug it in. I bet with these winds that wind turbine could give a steady 150-200W day and night.
@scaredcrower That amount of energy is just short from useless
@flexairz Yes small wind turbines are useless. My electric motorcycle charges all day enough to drive to work and around the block, easier than carrying the 50lb battery 3 flights of stairs to charge at home
If that.
it's a 500W turbine but it's mounted out of any effective wind so it's not gonna work.
Wind turbines need wind.
Them wind turbines only make power during tornado.
Yeah, around 1W max, lol
Wouldn't it be better to simply hook up an exercise bike with a dynamo or whatever the things are called? You could generate power when there is no sun and no wind and be very fit after a few months. To me that seems like a win-win in America.
@huldu According to LLM, an average human can produce between 100 and 200 watts of power during a sustained one-hour workout on an exercise bike and even exceed 1000W in short bursts.
@dirkbertels3872 There was a video somewhere on youtube where a person ran a microwave using an exercise bike.
To be fair it's so easy to fake things so you really need to take what you see with a grain of salt.
At the end of the day it's basically free power if you can store it for later use. Maybe we should install thousands of them in prisons across the country, if they don't run for X hours a day no food.
@huldu It's not much of a calculation really. A small microwave consumes 600W of power. Say you run it for 10 minutes. Assume also a human with 100W of pedaling power (at the low end of the range).
Energy produced by the microwave is 600W * 1/6h = 100Wh
So a human producing 100W would have to pedal 100 WH / 100W = 1 hour
Realistically (counting losses in inverter and storage), you will need to pedal closer to 80 minutes to store enough energy to run the microwave for 10 minutes. Needless to say you will need to eat whatever you're cooking after that :)
Best Monty python lookalike sketch I’ve seen for a long time… using the leaf blower to power the wind turbine was classic
7:25 Putting the turbine just off the top of the shed does not see like a good idea. I would have added another 1-2 feet to the pipe. I am guessing you took into account that it will not turn and hit the shed.
More like 20 feet.
It would have been much better to mount it at the peak of his actual home
If the battery is already fully charged you wont get any energy production showing
Huh?? The battery sais 7 % to 75 % throughout the video.
Thanks for these videos. Very helpful but got a good laugh imagining myself as your neighbors
love how he is trying to charge a battery that is already full lol and spinning it the wrong way to
Yup... first thing I saw was - WRONG WAY!! Lol
@theoviljoen1539 It works the same in reverse. Lol.
Those small wind turbines are not worth the time unless you can mount them high enough to get enough wind, the average city or suburban neighborhood will have too much interference to get good flow.
They're typically used in boats when you run out of space for panels and as a backup. Ambient back yard air isn't it
The best friend of a wind turbine and the solar is the Generator...
Every time Alex uses **that** sound:
- 2:15
- 2:25
- 2:34
- 3:14
- 3:48
- 4:13
- 4:24
- 6:08
- 7:03
- 8:13
- 8:24
- 8:51
- 10:13
- 11:00
- 12:14
- 12:22
i was about to comment this.
If you do, I went power test again do a Vehicle instead of the horizontal version at a area we don’t even get it until winter December
wow no life hehh?
Was just about to say this. WAY overused, and pretty annoying.
It's like the Wilhelm scream lol😂
This makes as much sense as comparing how far you can go with a $100 plane ticket vs $100 of gas.
I mean not really but that sounds vaguely funny I guess
if you would like to install 100 worth of PVs you can that panel just put on the ground, if you would install 100 worth of wind turbines, you need several 100s worth of mount (pole and wiring and anchoring). At the end of the day in urban areas, it is much more easy to find sunlight unobstructed than wind without obstruction.
@stanislavbandur7355 If you are equatorial and have a decent battery, solar is all you need. If you can go DAYS when there is almost no sunlight and what there is, comes through a heavily overcast sky, output can be terrible.
Summer in UK, often generate a HUGE amount of surplus. Come December, panels barely wake up the inverter and the give weak output for perhaps 5 hours before going dark for 19 hours.
Equatorial locations are PERFECT for solar. Other places, not quite so much.
A good practical demo.
Small turbines are not great, but this guy didn't even mount it at the APEX of the shed, and the tried a leaf blower (fast wind out of a 50mm outlet, when the turbine wanted wind over about 1500mm.
He also had a terrible "controller", that couldn't boost voltage to a point where a battery could take a charge.
All the video really told you was that if you ignore mounting instructions and don't understand basic physics, then improvising with a dirt cheap turbine is pointless.
Comparing a £2000 axial turbine 10 metres up, with a £2000 solar array, might have been more interesting. I appreciate the fellow didn't have the resources to do that, but you would have reached different conclusions.
The wind turbine was spinning so freely I was wondering if it was even hooked up to the generator part.
it won't connect until it starts generating, that's what the controller does
They don't create much resistance unless they moving fast
3:20 bro spinning at wrong direction 😭
Doesn't matter. Ac anyway.
@atsa1... Its producing AC with changing polarity?
True, he was spinning it the wrong direction (among other silliness), but since it produces AC it doesn’t matter, and the controller will rectify it to DC regardless of direction or speed.
Bullseye, the only person that has noticed too, good job.
@Ethan.Lamoureuxit's a 3 phase generator which means there is timing in the design. You will easily get double the output spinning in the designed direction.
Right out of the box it looked like Mr. Fusion.
Something was wrong with that wind turbine.