Windpower to power minimal heating in obsy?

[George Gearless]

I've just finished my self-built obsy. And I've been trying to figure out how to best avoid damp and moisture in the relatively un-insulated building (by it's design, the roll off roof leaves some openings to the outside).

Needless to say, installing a 4KW electric heater, would cost me a fortune during the winter months. In any case, the goal is not to heat it up to a pleasant room temperature. The goal is to keep it a few degrees warmer on the inside than on the outside.

So I found this car heater that operates on 12v DC, 150W. It's designed to de-ice your windshield by heating up the cabin, before you start the engine. So it's car battery operated. Ok, so far so good.

During winter, it is going to require some pretty large solar panels, to keep a deep cycle battery charged enough to run the heater. There simply isn't enough light hours. But there's often wind. 

So I found this 600w wind turbine. It has a current and voltage modulator built in, so you can attach it directly to a 12v car battery. 600W is ofcourse peak performance. But it's still going to deliver a lot more power than even a large solar panel. Especially in the winter time. Basically, I'm thinking of letting it run 24/7. Yes, there will be days where there is not enough wind to charge the battery. But those days that there are, I'll be protecting the interior of the obsy. Free of charge (apart from instalment costs).

Does anyone have experience with this? And even if you haven't; what's your take on this idea? Feasible? Impossible? Pointless?

 

George

 

[Stuart1971]

I put a very loose cover over my kit in the obsy in the winter, and then just heat the space under the cover, so it’s a few degrees above the rest of the obsy, I built a heater using a 12v heat pad between two 100mm square heatsinks, it runs at 25w and costs barely anything, and works superbly, keeps the temp under the cover at 5 degrees above the rest of the obsy, and is controlled by a temp and humidity sensor, using the humidity as the control to turn in or off….

Much better than trying to heat the while obsy…a very large SCT dew strap wrapped around the base of the mount would do the same job, for very minimal cost…..👍🏻

[gajjer]

To be honest I'd be very surprised if that turbine generates 600W. I couldn't see anything about size, but it didn't look very big to me. I think if you have a leaky obsy then you would need to put a lot of energy into it to keep it 'warm' on a blowy day. You are just venting warm air - at best. I would follow the advice of Stuart1971 if I were you. Better to heat a small well contained area.

If you do buy the turbine I would be very interested how you get on with it.

cheers

gaj

[George Gearless]

59 minutes ago, gajjer said:

To be honest I'd be very surprised if that turbine generates 600W. I couldn't see anything about size, but it didn't look very big to me. I think if you have a leaky obsy then you would need to put a lot of energy into it to keep it 'warm' on a blowy day. You are just venting warm air - at best. I would follow the advice of Stuart1971 if I were you. Better to heat a small well contained area.

If you do buy the turbine I would be very interested how you get on with it.

cheers

gaj

After Stuarts comment, I've been rethinking my heating 'strategy', and concur that local heating is the way to go. With this in mind, the power required to achieve this, is a minor financial burden.

So the wind turbine is on the backburner for now. Because on top of the purchase of the windmill itself, I'll need a deep cycle battery of an appropriate capacity, which only increases the installation cost. For this installation cost, I could run a small localized heating device from the grid for several years before breaking even.

I think the 600W is only what the turbine theoretically is capable of supplying. So I too would be surprised if it gave that much in practice. Still, I'm not yet ready to let the idea go. This particular product seems to be very much a "plug'n play" kind of thing. It's got a built in controller as well. So all you'd need to do is connect the controller to the battery, and the heater/ventilator/whatever to the load out terminals. It seems to have skipped all the technical stumbling blocks that would normally make me hesitant to entertain the idea of such a thing. 

I'll be sure to post about it, if at some point I do go for it.

[gajjer]

Found this link that might be useful when considering wind power.

Wind Turbine Size Vs. Power | Sciencing

A relevant section states  A quick way of calculating the power in wind, in watts per square meter, is to multiply the cube of the wind speed in meters per second by 0.625. If the wind speed is in miles per hour, you multiply the cube by 0.056.  

Hope that helps

cheers

gaj

[AL1]

It seems that wind turbine power has same aperture response as light gathering in scopes.   With an additional wind speed term of course.   Point  being that wind turbine engineers also have aperture fever

Edited July 24, 2023 by AL1

[bottletopburly]

What about a near infrared heater pointing at the pier ?