Your choices so far:
1 Wind; 2 Electricity
| What is your resource? | What do you want to deliver? | What is the service the customer wants? |
| Biomass (digestible sludge) | District cooling | Comfortable indoor climate |
| Biomass (fermentable sludge) | District heating | Electricity |
| Biomass (solid) | 2 Electricity | Process cooling (< 0 °C) |
| Geothermal | Fuel: Gaseous | Process heat/steam (50 - 150 °C) |
| Sunshine | Fuel: Liquid | Process heat (150 - 1000 °C) |
| Water | Fuel: Solid | Process heat (> 1000 °C) |
| 1 Wind | Local cooling (ind. house) | Transport |
| Residual oils/fats etc | Local heating (ind. house) |
One main characteristic for the wind and hence also for the production capacity of wind power mills is the variability.
With the ongoing climate change and the corresponding change not only in over-all wind patterns but also in the distribution of wind speeds over the year, there will be an insecurity with respect to the future production from wind power installations.
However, more and more installation are done off-shore and such installations are less likely to experience huge changes in wind pattern than land-based.
Small, single-house sized, wind generators with power only single kW can be connected to the electricity system in the house, i.e. to the 230 V single-phase grid. With modern electricity meters, an installation of a generator “behind” the meter may automatically provide net metering so that the electricity produced will be discounted from the electricity bought. Thus, an installation like this will provide a net savings potential but not really an income.
With larger installations – up to a few hundred kW – the electricity might be sold to the 400 V, three-phase grid. In this case a separate contract with the grid operator must be in place and separate metering and connection devices must be installed. The grid operator may be reluctant to this type of installations because of the risk for flickering in case there are too many installations this size range in the local grid.
Installations lager than 1 MW will require special attention already during the planning stage and professional consultant help should be hired.