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A Dutch company has launched a new type of wind turbine that is small enough to fit onto the roof of a house. The turbine looks like a Nautilus shell, and their website explains how it works:
Most today's wind turbines require that a difference in pressure between the front and the rear side of the rotor blades be maintained in order to be effective. However, this difference in pressure also has a negative effect called "drag".
Our turbine rotor captures the kinetic energy of the wind due to its speed, and, by reversing the wind and reducing it to almost zero Beaufort converts it into mechanical energy. By doing this the wind speed's effect (in kinetic energy) on the rotor is maximized and "lift" is obtained by the wind's acceleration over the rotor plane.
(Score: 2) by carguy on Tuesday June 03 2014, @11:52AM
Another data point, we are two people working from home, a couple of laptops on all the time. The water boiler (baseboard heat) and hot water heater run on gas, everything else is electric. Location is downwind of Lake Erie in a 1963 brick ranch. The only insulation that it was easy to add was to take the attic floor up to a total of 18" (~0.4 meter) of fiberglass. It has never hit 100F here, although with warming it may get there soon. These factors both moderate summer temps and usually limit A/C (a smaller unit, but not energy star) to a few hours in summer evenings. The basement has a small de-humidifier running about half time in the summer to control mold. We mostly cook meals at home, eat dinner out once or twice a week. A recent "energy star" fridge made a big difference compared to the previous fridge from the 1980s. We are both good about turning lights off, but for reading in the evening hours still use 100W incandescents (eyestrain from CFLs); looking forward to trying brighter LED "bulbs". We dry about half the clothes on a rack indoors, more in winter for the humidifying effect.
I'm looking at putting the cable box (a constant draw) on a timer, so it boots up before our typical TV watching in the evenings--but it would be more convenient if the cable company had a box that idled at lower power. If we renovate the kitchen/utility area we will change over to a gas range (cooktop) and oven, as well as a gas clothes dryer.
We're currently around 400 kWh/month (yearly average) including A/C for a few months in summer. If we average the 8 or 9 "non-A/C months" it's just under 300 kWh/month. It would be hard to get down to the hankwang / Netherlands level here, but we do have room for improvement.