New Mexico Alternative Energy Incentives and Policies

[naturechase]

This link will guide you to finding Rebates and Tax Incentives in New Mexico..

Incentives/Policies for Renewables & Efficiency

[guitron45]

Originally Posted by naturechase

This link will guide you to finding Rebates and Tax Incentives in New Mexico..

Incentives/Policies for Renewables & Efficiency

What this link will show you is what an embarrassment the state govt. is to anyone who can read between the legalese lines. It shows who is firmly in control of things in the state house. That would be the anti green.........

Well, to be honest I don't like democrats much either, Libertarians are just the Republiban in sheeple's clothing. You have to get past what they say to what they actually do. What they do is knuckle under to biddness. How is it that the fed will make it easy, and give you 30%? And here in N.M, one of the finest solar areas in the country they fight you every step of the way. How long might it take to get the state mineral and whatever board to approve your generator?

The forms in triplicate will make the USPS happy, and you for your troubles get 2.7 cents for every thousand watts per hour you make.

Gooooooolllllyyy it takes my breath away! Or how about,"Whooops, you forgot the 80 amp circuit breaker between your array and your type writer that could put someone's eye out!" How many of you have an array that puts out 80 amps? In 25 years of living on top of a mesa next to a 10,400 foot mountain that makes it own storms I've never had a lightning strike. I have no lightning arrestors and don't want them. They are like saying "Hey Zeus!! over here! Here is a great path to ground, come check it out." No thank you New Mexico, better you should spend the money to help Intel pollute the Rio Grande. Well, I told you I was a hippie. Age hasn't mellowed me very much.

Ron

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[myocardia]

Ron, you and I are going to get along famously. BTW, if you think the NM state government is bad, you should try living in TX. Sure the state government has easy laws, but mostly they leave that type of thing up to the local municipality as much as possible. Sounds good on paper, right? Guess what's explicitly illegal where I live? Wind turbines.

Yeah, in the #1 wind state in the US*, producing electricity by turning a turbine is explicitly illegal. We regularly have wind in excess of 20 MPH, and 25 MPH isn't all that rare (25 MPH is the point at which wind starts whistling as it blows past/around wires, and other thin things). Sad, but true. I just found this out Friday, and I'm still considering pursuing it in the courtroom, since every politician that has ever taken a breath has never once said or done a single honest thing with said breath.


*TX produces more electricity from wind power than any other state. As long as you don't live anywhere near a city, town, or incorporated water puddle, you're free to do so. We don't, however, have the highest wind speeds, although we're near the top of the list.

[guitron45]

I feel for ya amigo. I guess you have to stay there for work reasons. It is a good sun state too. If you decide to pursue the wind issue... do some noise studies. There are cheap db meters at

sound meter - MCM Electronics Search

This one was 29 bux. At missouriwindandsun.com there are nine bladed, low wind start up, 1kw ! wind turbines for less than 800 dollars. That's a third the price of a bergy. These are claiming very quiet operation with video/sound demos at the site. The catch is a 90 day guaranty v.s. 5 years for the Chinese Bergy. But one of these WTs ,or at least a reference to the video, might help in your quest if you want to challenge the law. Not something to undertake lightly in Tx.

[ we just recently watched a movie called American Violet about a black lady who ran afoul of a racist DA in Tx. Imagine that! I thought they just hated Mexicans. The lady won a minor victory against the Da who was proved a racist using testimony from his own family, is was still in office as stated in the credits of the movie. Its just biddness!! ] Back to the LAW.

Motorcycles make far more noise as do hip hop subwoofers, than these turbines at the aforementioned site. There is great injustice there. But if we start making lists of things that don't make sense in Tx. or most states laws, we'd be here all day.

We don't get the wind you guys do but I was very tempted to get one of those WTs from that site. The guy's attitude and the short guaranty were deal breakers. I really want a wind charger, as an adjunct to our system. I have an air X 450 watt, new, still in the box. I'd like to sell it. Because they have a narrow wind aperture, much like what you have there but with a lower start up speed. I found out after I bought it the it wasn't right for our area. Pretty dumb, I know. I should have done more research. They begin to furl or self brake at around thirty mph. This isn't a problem if you have lots of wind below that speed. I'm going to put it on ebay. I am thinking of building my own from common car and electrical parts. Oh yea that guy at missouri wind says his chargers are fine at 70 mph wind speed and need no braking. Seems too good to be true. Makes me a bit suspicious.

I was very surprised to get a friendly reply to my first post. It was a bit radical for an opening msg. What a trip to get a friendly response from Texas. As a long time ski area employee at Ski Apache I developed a deep dislike for the state of Texas as a sort of generalized entity. When the little prick came on the scene that dislike turned very ugly. Know all the time that there are people like yourself and I'm sure, thousands of others that are great folks. I just feel like I know how most of them think when it comes to religious mythology and politics. So I very much appreciate you popping up and making real my suspicions. Julie [ tallgirl] over at the Outback forum is near Austin and participates in their user group with a great deal of generosity and even more expertise. This girl has a good education in electronics and lives with a large PV system. I suspect she's an engineer from the way she answers questions. So I know you guys are out there and it's very nice to run across you. Are you using pv equipment at your place.

I have a myspace site where I have pictures of our house and some of my compositions there as well. I'm not selling music from there or anywhere else for that matter except at gigs.
Ron

Ron Becker on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Downloads

[myocardia]

Haha, it's a small world isn't it? I know a guy who has a cabin in Ruidoso, which as you know is awfully close to the town where you live. I haven't been out there in a few years, although I've actually been thinking about it lately.

Anyway, I'm not sure where you got the idea that TX is a bad state. It has it's bad people and even a bad town or two like every other state, including New Mexico and California. For instance, that same DA could very easily have been elected to office in the county where you live, or the county where I live. Since most Americans have absolutely zero dealings with their district attorney, neither you nor I would know anything about it. I've never lived in any other state, nor would I. I believe maybe you either misunderstood my earlier point, or I just didn't state it clearly enough.

The point was that even with nearly zero state laws regulating something, anytime that you can put money into a politician's pocket to write a law that bans what you want banned, it will be banned or regulated the way you want it to be regulated. City elected officials are as dishonest as state and national elected officials. County politicians are too, of course, but they haven't been able to figure out how to ban something as quiet as a wind turbine in places where shooting guns and/or making any other extremely loud noise is well within the law.

Not that I think it's all a big conspiracy. While many millions of dollars have been put into politician's pockets over the last 15 or 20 years concerning both wind and solar power laws, there is also a considerable amount of "I don't understand this, so I don't like it." going on with anything that isn't status quo, as there has been for the last few thousand years, it seems. Speaking of that type of thing, you wouldn't believe how many "housing associations", as they call themselves, actually have regulations against solar panels.

And yes, the man who lives directly behind me has a "full sized" Harley (not a Sportster), and it idles at at least 85-90db, and is probably at least 110-115db as he rides away on it. For those who don't know, 115db is 8 times as loud as 85db. That is just fine with the local politicians, of course. But me putting a ~70db wind turbine in my backyard would be heresy. Again, 70db is less than half as loud as 85, and is 1/4 as loud as 90db-- 10db is perceived to be twice as loud to us humans, making 20db four times as loud, and 30db eight times as loud.

Changing the subject, I like the name of your band. It's the type of name I would have picked, were I in your situation. There are no pictures of your panels or other solar equipment on your myspace page, though. Do you do the +15°/-15° seasonal variance with your panels, or do you just have them mounted at roughly 32-33°? Oh, and while I'm asking questions, did you check out the panels I linked in this thread? Prices that low per watt just don't exist for smaller panels. Sure you can now buy 200 watt panels for $2.75/watt, but not 20-120 watt panels. Anyway, if you haven't, you'd better hurry. He's already sold more than half of the panels that he's letting go at those prices.

And no, my house isn't solar powered, at least not yet. The reason that I phrase it that way is that I own more watts of PV panels than you seem to own (well over 300 watts, if you include the 90 watts of cells I have for my electric bicycle, and the 48 watts worth I just ordered Saturday), but none of them are attached to my roof yet. I'm on disability, and saving money takes quite awhile these days. When I was making $80,000+/year, I was as oblivious to solar and wind power as the average American happens to still be today.

Okay, I've realized that I have nothing more to say right now, and could have posted this over 2 hours ago, instead of waiting until after the football game ended. Oh well, live and learn, huh?

edit: Oh, now I remember what it was that I had left to add. I no longer make lots of money ($80k+ is extremely good money here, where we have such a low cost of living) because I'm now on disability. I had a stroke a few years back, and lost the majority of my short-term memory.

edit#2: Wow, you and I write long posts, don't we? Anyway, the other thing I wanted to tell you was that you should definitely look into getting a "netbook", since you're off the grid. My 10" MSI Wind uses only 12 watts of AC power, even with the screen in use. Pretty amazing, since the average notebook uses ~50 watts.

[myocardia]

Okay, I see that I've forgotten to respond to at least one other of your points you made, so I'm starting a new post. You are very correct when you assume that the lower a turbine (blades, really but that's another post) startup wind speed, the lower that particular turbine's "survival", without some sort of intervention. With nine blades, unless they are just inordinately ineffecient, there's no way the turbine could survive 70 MPH winds, without some serious help (furling), and that's most likely very close to a nine bladed turbines survival speed with furling. 100% of the time, the lower the startup speed, the lower the survival speed. I'd never even consider buying something that expensive with more or less no warranty. Remember what your grandmother/father told you about things sounding too good to be true.

I see that I also missed responding to something you said yesterday about 80 amp circuit breakers and lightning. First, the average American home that "goes solar" installs between 2,000 and 5,000 watts. If it were an off-grid installation, 5kW would be over 200 amps @ the most common voltage (24V), and still over 100 @ the highest it's possible to go off-grid, 48V. Most of us Americans haven't figured out that they don't need to use 3,500-5,000 kWH per month, like you and your wife have.

As a matter of fact, tell anyone you don't know well that it's cheaper and easier to save a watt than it is to produce a watt. I dare you. I've tried it at least 30 or 40 times, and not once have I gotten any type of intelligent response whatsoever. Usually the only response I get is just a very dirty look, and no words at all. It always makes me laugh, by the way.

The other thing to mention is living on top of a mesa, and never having been struck by lightning. Low wattage DC (like you have) doesn't need to have any earth ground. Since your house is as close as you can get to being a rock, and I'm willing to bet that you don't have a grounding rod since your panels are so few and so small, it really isn't possible for your house to be struck by lightning. If you had a 3-5kW PV setup, though, it would be extremely dangerous not to have an earth ground. With an earth ground, if you have three AC plugs in every room, you have pretty much grounded your entire house. Sure that in and of itself doesn't make your house extremely likely to be hit by lightning, but it's all of a sudden possible.

Also, I realized something else that I forgot to mention in my last post. If you're interested in buying a nice but not too expensive wind turbine, look no farther than this site (the link in that thread), or one of the Wind Breeze turbines at their site.

[guitron45]

[QUOTE=myocardia;8205]Okay, I see that I've forgotten to respond to at least one other of your points you made, so I'm starting a new post. You are very correct when you assume that the lower a turbine (blades, really but that's another post) startup wind speed, the lower that particular turbine's "survival", without some sort of intervention. With nine blades, unless they are just inordinately ineffecient, there's no way the turbine could survive 70 MPH winds, without some serious help (furling), and that's most likely very close to a nine bladed turbines survival speed with

I wasn't endorsing these and was only quoting claims from the site. It's why I included the url so you could see for your self.He has figures for the power out put of this trubine in 70 mph winds. Can't say anything about the veracity of his figures. They are quiet and his ideas about wiring using the tower as the negitavie side of the two phase circuit and using welding cable to carry the hot site. This eliminates the need for a slip ring of some kind. He does things very differently from other turbine builders. Good or bad who knows? He has some followable logic there about why three phase systems less desirable. And I don't want a small charger, I already have one of those. Not right for here. I didn't go for this guy's stuff because I am not qualified to asses his engineering if you could call it that.

Ron

I didn't put pv stuff on the myspace site because it was largely about the music.

[myocardia]

Haha, I wasn't saying you were endorsing them, I was just refuting his claims (going solely by what you had said). I haven't tracked down his site, but if he's selling DC generators, he could very well be telling the truth about them not needing to be furled with 70 MPH winds and nine blades. His setup would just be starting to put out enough energy to start being able to measure any discernible output at those speeds, though.

Automotive alternators are not what you want to use as a generator on a wind turbine, unless you go to the trouble to either rewind them, or use a second pulley to gear them way down. Their maximum output comes around 3,5000-4,000 RPM. A 70 MPH wind won't give you anywhere near 3,500 (shaft) RPM. It will actually be closer to 1,500-1,800 RPM. You'd get the turbine's full potential output every time a Cat. 4 hurricane or an F3 tornado hit your property, though.

BTW, what in the world is "J-Pop"? Jazz-Pop maybe?

edit: According to Google, neither missouriwindandsun.com nor missouriwind&sun.com exist.

edit #2: Think I should have mentioned the point I was trying to make? Your 400 watt AC turbine will give you many times more watt/hours per day/month/year than the "1,000 watt" DC turbine you have described to me. If you would put better blades on it, like these longer blades, you'd get significantly more.

Ron, see the post below this one before replying.

[myocardia]

Okay, I have found the website to which you referred. I'm not going to link to it, but it's located @ missouriwindandsolar.com, for anyone who wants to go check it out. The sun/solar synonym got the better of us! Anyway, he's obviously just using an automotive alternator like I had assumed. Here's the most significant claim he makes on his homepage:

Delivers up to 40 kWh per month in only a 12 mph average wind speed

The above quote is him admitting to it only outputting 55 watts from 12 MPH winds. With 6 blades, that's absolutely horrible. With only three blades, the above referenced 500 watt Windy Nation turbine outputs 200 watts at the same wind speed, and will give you 475 watts into only a 25 MPH wind.

I could say more, but I think you get the picture. The 400 watt Air-X that you have needs too much wind before it starts outputting decent power, but it's quite a bit better than the missouriwindandsolar turbine, unless you regularly have 60+ MPH winds at your house. BTW, who admits that their turbine requires 135 MPH winds to reach it's maximum output??

[guitron45]

[QUOTE=myocardia;8239]Automotive alternators are not what you want to use as a generator on a wind turbine, unless you go to the trouble to either rewind them, or use a second pulley to gear them way down. [QUOTE=myocardia;8239]

The alternators he uses are rewound. Some of the questions you raise could be better answered by the site but I just tried with a couple of different spellings and the site must be down or discontinued. Here is the long url to the ebay items.
PMA 12-350VDC+ Permanent Magnet Alternator Generator SC - eBay (item 280409776096 end time Nov-12-09 19:26:02 PST)

As you can see it is rediculous. And all those damned %'s are not part of the url I copied. I hate it when websites or mail programs insert them.

if you search ebay or google for: MISSOURI ESTREME LOW WIND TURBINE GENERATOR 1000W, you should be able to get to the page on ebay. If you scroll down you will come to a picture of the nine blade turbine and most of the verbage from the site. My background in electronics is insuffecient to evaluate his claims.

Originally Posted by myocardia

Their maximum output comes around 3,5000-4,000 RPM. A 70 MPH wind won't give you anywhere near 3,500 (shaft) RPM. It will actually be closer to 1,500-1,800 RPM. You'd get the turbine's full potential output every time a Cat. 4 hurricane or an F3 tornado hit your property, though.

BTW, what in the world is "J-Pop"? Jazz-Pop maybe?

edit: According to Google, neither missouriwindandsun.com nor missouriwind&sun.com exist.

edit #2: Think I should have mentioned the point I was trying to make? Your 400 watt AC turbine will give you many times more watt/hours per day/month/year than the "1,000 watt" DC turbine you have described to me. If you would put better blades on it, like these longer blades, you'd get significantly more.

Ron, see the post below this one before replying.

I have the site you linked bookmarked for further examination of the longer prop idea. But I don't understand why you think the Air X would put out more power. This is my just my ignorance about WTs and electronics in general. What is you background in this field?

I guess it's Jazz pop. I don't remember writing that. Is it from the myspace site?

Ron