Hypothetically, if i were to hook up an old timey flour windmill to a generator, how much power could i produce with its rotation?
You must log in or # to comment.
There is no “single answer” for this; way too many factors to consider.
Try getting an idea from a website geared to that subject, like Wind Turbine Calculator, just the first of many links from a popular web search engine.
About 30,000, or 30 kilowatts. You could power your neighbors to the sides and in front of you, maybe also in back of you. That’s about it, but that’s pretty good.
Oh… really? I though it was going to be WAY less than that, being honest. i mean, they weren’t exactly made for that, plus, they look wildly different from modern wind turbines, and so far, i haven’t heard any news of old flour windmills being repurpose for that.
Water is wayyy stronger than air. They were not made for electricity but they had a lot of mechanical forces. Honestly in remote places in mountainous regions, I’ve seen small hydropower projects with turbines the size of water mills power a whole village. Of course they only use it for lights, charging phones and batteries. But it’s good enough compared to the alternative (no electricity)
It’d be wildly inefficient compared to modern windmills which churn out millions of watts. No one would do that.
Energy is energy. Turning a stone or turning a generator is still going to be the same ultimate thing, but while these and water mills were great in their day, science and engineering has improved, leading to the ability to generate more power from the same blade diameter and wind/water speed.
It has to be very high above ground and it’s impractical if you don’t have a good site. Put in solar panels instead.
I know. Its straight up dumb, just by looking at how slow those things spin in movies one can already assume that it makes for a terrible wind turbine. I just wanted to know how much wattage would it hypothetically generate because i got randomly curious about it.
Depending on one’s use case, one can also use a windmill, of any age, to directly generate hot water. Mostly useful if the end use for those watts is hot water. This is more efficient than wind to energy to hot water.
Edit to add: To get ahead of the obvious, but stupid question.
No, likely not hot enough to make steam to spin a different windmill/turbine to make electricity.
No, likely not hot enough to make steam to spin a different windmill/turbine to make electricity.
This would be very inefficient due to doing two energy conversions instead of just one.
Exactly.
I mistakenly skipped all of the words that would have helped like “Get get ahead of the obviously stupid question…” Adding that now.
69
