November 14, 2007 – One Step Closer to Wind Turbine
We are one step closer to getting a residential wind turbine at high hopes gardens! We had a site visit by an installer and now are waiting for a more final estimate. If all goes well, it could be up in late spring/summer. The following bit of information was very interesting to me. It shows the wind speed and direction over the course of a year. The site also has monthly charts to see how direction and speeds change over the course of the year. The site is a branch of the ISU Agronomy Department, of all places! They have the charts for 17 cities in Iowa.
I was very surprised that the most common direction of wind is from the south, although the most common quadrant direction is from N to W. I’m a bit of a closet weatherman (I think all farmers are) and am impressed how much data can get crammed into a simple graphic like this one.
Here’s a picture from the manufacturer’s web site of the turbine. It is a Skystream 3.7. We may have to trim the tops of some old silver maples and maybe take down one behind the chicken coop. More on that later.
2 Responses to “November 14, 2007 – One Step Closer to Wind Turbine”
gj says:
November 18, 2007 at 7:53 am
You are truly an experimenter. I love this addition to high hopes gardens. gj
Sandra says:
January 5, 2008 at 2:20 am
Hello! I came upon your site via a “corn grain elevator melbourne iowa” google search. After reading several entries it seems we live within range of the same internet provider! My husband and children moved to an old farmstead north of Rhodes in ’04 and are slowly trying out sustainable practices. I’d done some research on the Skystream a year or so ago but dropped it when I saw the price. I’ve subscribed to your RSS feed so I’ll look forward to your progress… Happy New Year from stewartville.net