Wind Power for Home & Business Data Diskette

by Paul Gipe Chelsea Green Publishing Co., White River Junction, VT (1996)

The diskette is a companion to the 413-page book Wind Power for Home & Business, published by Chelsea Green. The diskette contains more up-to-date and comprehensive information than that found in the book's fourth printing. There are also text files, worksheets, and programs included on the diskette which are not found in the original book.

Much has changed since Wind Power for Home & Business was first written in 1992, especially the number of manufacturers of small and medium-sized wind turbines. Information on the types and sizes of wind turbines available on the international market changes monthly, quickly dating any conventionally printed compendium. Chelsea Green and the author believe that the diskette enables them to easily and inexpensively provide the most up-to-date information possible to the users of Wind Power for Home & Business.

Chelsea Green issued the fourth printing of Wind Power for Home & Business, the most current version of the book, in 1996.

What's New in the Wind Power for Home & Business Data Diskette

The diskette contains the most up-to-date information possible on the characteristics of the small and medium-sized wind turbines available on the international market. It lists three times more small wind turbines and more than twice the number of medium-size wind turbines than does the first printing of Wind Power for Home & Business. It also contains one of the most comprehensive lists available anywhere of addresses, telephone numbers, and other contact information for wind turbine manufacturers as well as for governmental laboratories and non-governmental organizations working with wind energy.

More Small Turbine Listings

The diskette contains more information on small wind turbines than was ever contained in any printed version of the book. There are more than 3 times as many listings for small turbines than in the first printing of Wind Power for Home & Business. There are now 90 entries for models of small wind turbines available on the international market.

More Small Turbine Manufacturers

The diskette includes listings from manufacturers of small wind turbines in the United States, England, Scotland, France, Quebec, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Germany, Brazil, Denmark, and the Netherlands.

Introduction of Standard Power Ratings

The listing of small wind turbine models now includes a Standard Power Rating for all entries. Users of the data diskette can now compare one small wind turbine to another without resorting to the confusing and sometimes misleading rating system employed by small wind turbine manufacturers. Though the Standard Power Rating downgrades the rating of several popular small wind turbines, it offers a much more realistic evaluationof what consumers can actually expect from small wind turbines than that found in some promotional brochures .

Small Turbine Prices

The diskette contains approximate prices in U.S. dollars of many of the small wind turbines on the international market. The diskette is the most up-to-date and comprehensive source for information on small wind turbine prices available anywhere.

Small Turbine Price Comparisons

The diskette contains comparative price per kilowatt and comparative price per unit of swept area for most small wind turbines listed. This is information that is new to the diskette and not found in the printed version of Wind Power for Home & Business.

The diskette contains more than twice as many listings for medium-sized wind turbines as in the first printing of Wind Power for Home & Business. There are now entries for 119 models of medium-sized wind turbines.

The diskette includes listings of medium-sized wind turbine manufacturers in the United States, England, Germany, Spain, Japan, Denmark, and the Netherlands.

All calculations performed for the printed version of "Wind Power for Home & Business" are preserved in the worksheets found on the diskette. The user can change the assumptions in the worksheet cells as desired.

The diskette contains 30% more non-governmental and governmental organizations working with wind energy than are found in the first printing of Wind Power for Home & Business.

The diskette contains a greatly expanded list of electronic sources of information, including many that are not found in any printed version of Wind Power for Home & Business. The new list includes both usenet news groups and world wide web sites.

The diskette contains a broader list of sources for do-it-yourself plans than found in the printed version of Wind Power for Home & Business.

The diskette contains two new worksheets on the economics of wind energy not found in the printed version of Wind Power for Home & Business. These worksheets are far more sophisticated than those found in the book and take into account four years of refinements made since the book was first written.

The diskette contains two new spreadsheets for estimating the annual energy output of a wind turbine from a manufacturer's power curve. One spreadsheet uses a Rayleigh wind speed frequency distribution, and the other uses the more sophisticated Weibull distribution. Both spreadsheets are far more complex than those found in the original version of the book. These spreadsheets calculate corrections for altitude and average temperature, as well as hub height average wind speed, annual energy output, average daily energy, average monthly energy, annual conversion efficiency, and annual capacity factor.

The diskette contains six new images not found in the printed version of Wind Power for Home & Business. These include photos of five wind turbines not shown in the book: Bergey Windpower's Excel, Wind Turbine Industries' 17 kW, Marlec's Rutland, Southwest Wind Power's Air 303, and World Power Technologies' Whisper 1000. The diskette also contains a color image of Battelle's map of U.S. wind resources.

The diskette also includes a free program not found in the printed version of Wind Power for Home & Business. This program is an easy-to-use interactive model for estimating increases in wind speed with height.

In response to suggestions from readers, the diskette includes expanded worksheets calculating Rayleigh wind speed frequency distributions. The distributions now cover wind speeds from 3 m/s to 9 m/s and from 7 mph to 20 mph. The actual worksheets are provided so the user can calculate the Rayleigh distribution from the average wind speed at their site.

The diskette contains several new documents not found in the printed version of "Wind Power for Home & Business:"

• the American Wind Energy Association's Frequently Asked Questions,
• AWEA's publications catalog
• an Overview of Worldwide Wind Energy Development by Paul Gipe, and
• Questions and Answers about wind energy by the Kern Wind Energy Assoc.

Platform: IBM PC compatible.
Worksheets: Lotus 123 (TM) compatible with a *.WKS file extension.
Documents: ASCII text with a *.DOC file extension.
Images: Microsoft Windows (TM) bitmapped with a *.BMP file extension.

Wind Power for Home & Business: Data Diskette (ISBN 0-930031-88-1) is available from Real Goods Trading Corp. in the United States at 800 919 2400, or for those calling from outside North America at +1 707 468 9214.

Wind Power for Home & Business (ISBN 0-930031-64-4) can also be obtained from Real Goods as well as from Chelsea Green Publishing Co. by calling +1 800 639 4099 in the United States, +1 902 455 4286 in Canada, and +44 18 03 86 38 43 in Great Britain, +61 261 91 19 in Switzerland, +46 8 745 19 34 in Sweden, +27 11 702 2300 in South Africa, +61 49 97 08 11 in Australia.

Wind Power for Home & Business is also available from the American Wind Energy Association by calling +1 202 383 2500 and from the Canadian Wind Energy Association by calling +1 800 9 CanWEA. The American Wind Energy Association can also be reached by sending email to mailto:windmail@mcimail.com. .

A combination of both the book Wind Power for Home & Business, and the accompanying Data Diskette (ISBN 930031-90-3) can be obtained from Real Goods Trading Corp. and Chelsea Green Publishing Co.

As we would expect from Paul, there is a huge amount of useful stuff here. . . The best of it is in the form of spreadsheets, which my Mac version of Excel3 will open without problems. . . I like the use of Weibull distributions to find annual energy yield in POWCURWE. I have not seen that done before. There's nothing like a spreadsheet to give you a feel for how one thing depends on another. . . My favourite table is "Characteristics of Selected Small Wind Turbines." There are quite a few (wind turbines) I have never heard of. What I love about having the data in spreadsheet form is that I can add to it. . . It is (also) useful to be able to check the list of addresses on the same disk to find out where they (manufacturers) are. And I can even print the address out if I want to write to one. No need to copy it manually. . . Data tables such as the resistance of cables could be used (as lookup tables in larger spreadsheets) to build useful calculating tools. . . This disk is a marvelous and unique resource. . . Congratulations on a great piece of electronic publishing, Paul! -- Hugh Piggott, Scoraig Wind Electric, author of It's a Breeze: A Guide to Choosing Windpower (Scotland).

Paul Gipe, pgipe@igc.apc.org 26.12.96

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