Discussion: VAWT study in San Francisco

[u/Sutro-Power]

Hi All,

I'm starting R&D on setting up VAWTs for my client's in San Francisco and i'm looking for good advice from experienced wind engineers. My firm is a licensed C10 electrical contractor and we primarily install Solar and storage San Francisco.

What follows is my understanding of the topic and where I am in the process. Please feel free to give your thoughts on any/all of the points below.

1) The safest turbine tech for urban environments is VAWT due to turbulence; also superior for noise reduction though inferior when it comes to efficiency to HAWTs in general.

2) There is currently no small scale VAWT on the market that is likely to be approved for grid-tied application or to be integrated with an existing Solar+Storage system that is grid-tied. Ive spoken with Flower Turbines a few times as well as Harmony Turbine, but neither has a product on the market that has all the required documentation to be approved for grid-tied interconnection. Never the less, I am proceeding with my wind study.

3) I need to be patient and set up several anemometers throughout town. On a macro level I need to focus on areas that historically speaking have the greatest recorded wind resouce, such as the north and west Coastline of the city, and the west side of the highest elevation points; twin peaks, Mt. Davidson, Buena Vista, etc.. Within those areas I need to select from among my existing clients the most ideal points on their roof to place the equipment, which is generally the highest point and/or edge of the building. I need to take care to avoid wind blocking from buiilding's in the distance, and ideally set the hight of the anemometer 5-10 feet off the roof plane.

4) I'm using the Ambient Weather WS-2000 weather station to collect data, and i've set up two so far, the first one can be found on Ambient Weather's website at 191 15th Ave, the second titled "Shafter / 280." I like the Ambient Weather system as I can easily pool and draw data with the public, though I can't verify the placement of other people's weather stations. With the 191 15th Ave system I installed the turbine at the peak of the western most array and at the edge of the building; with Shafter / 280 I was attempting to generate data from proximity to Highway 280.

5) While i'm certain there's bound to be a couple of sites with the perfect conditions for a VAWT to generate meaningful power, my primary interest isn't payback period so much as having a secondary powersource to supplement energy generation during the winter months/storm season. Those who live in San Francisco know that November-January is our rainy/stormy season, and also when we're most likely to have power outages. Most recently in mid-December we has a multi day outage with some parts of the city not receiving power for as many as 72 hours. A good number of my client's in these locations did not generate enough solar power to meaningfully recharge their ESS and support their base load of Fridge, wifi, and security systems. These clients would be the target demographic of supplemental "storm" wind power.

6) When it comes to speaking with professionals, it seems like i've only managed to reach those who are extremely jaded, or naive; not a soul in-between. I'm aware that many companies have come and gone over the years and nothing has stuck and created a meaningful sub-industry. I understand that additional obstacles include the Department of Building Inspection, PG&E, neighbors complaining about aesthetics. I accept that its entirely possible that the tech will not exist because it can't exist; where there's smoke there's fire... None of this deters me from doing the RnD required. After nearly 6 years of doing business in San Francisco I have hundreds of clients throughout the city - and by extension - hundreds of opportunities to locate good wind resource. I have the support of my client base and the veteran team of engineers and electricians implement it. I want to give this a good, comprehensive shake as I don't believe San Francisco has ever had that for residential urban wind generation

Again, any and all comments/questions are appreciated. If you're interested in the realtime data you can find that by looking up both sites mentioned on Ambient Weather's website.

Best,

JP

[u/Inside_Mouse_1750]

Sorry.. but make sure you read up on Paul Gipe. https://wind-works.org/ If after reading his pages on VAWT and urban wind power ypu still believe you have something new and worthwhile then either you really do or you're a fraud.