I want to inexpensively assess if the existing windmill tower at the farm is a feasible location for use as a wind turbine tower. Ideally, I'd like to record wind speed and direction at regular intervals (like, say, every 15 minutes) for several months and chart that data.
There are a plethora of inexpensive home anemometers out there, but I haven't found one that wants to record datapoints at regular intervals. Most seem to want to give instantaneous speed/direction and maybe a max speed for a given period.
I guess in my head, the perfect solution sends the regular datapoints to an Excel file on the cloud so that I don't have to manually transfer data from a USB stick or hard drive, but maybe I'm overthinking it. I've been known to do that.
Surely somebody here is smart on stuff like this. Educate me, please?
I wonder if there is a way to link the instantaneous speed monitor to a Raspberry Pi set up?
If there is an airport nearby you can get the weather history from the tower records as publicly available information.
Those records would be hourly and include more than you are looking for, but may only be recorded for active field times - basically no info when the field is closed for operations (night time for small fields)...
If there is power and internet available, look at a "weather station" rather than just an anemometers?
I have this:
https://www.amazon.com/ECOWITT-Wireless-Powered-Anemometer-Sensor/dp/B07JLRQJ12
wirelessly connected to this:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0978XLG8T/
There are other brands that do similar things, I just happen to have experience with the "ecowitt" ones. I have mine hooked up to Weewx (open source weather station software) but it will upload data to ecowitt servers too, IIRC.
There are apps for that. Maybe not the exact location but maybe something close. I use sailflow and windfinder.
stafford1500 said:
If there is an airport nearby you can get the weather history from the tower records as publicly available information.
Those records would be hourly and include more than you are looking for, but may only be recorded for active field times - basically no info when the field is closed for operations (night time for small fields)...
Turns out some airports are too small to have that info available through wunderground or other sources.
So I'm interested in this as well
In reply to RevRico :
Those are likely unmanned fields with nothing more than an open radio frequency for the local pilots to clear each other in cases when there are more than one aircraft.
Boom.
https://rainwise.com/windlog-wind-data-logger
$385 and all you have to do is stroke the check. Easy money if you are serious. Logs approx 3 months with no intervention based on the spec sheet.
93gsxturbo said:
Boom.
https://rainwise.com/windlog-wind-data-logger
$385 and all you have to do is stroke the check. Easy money if you are serious. Logs approx 3 months with no intervention based on the spec sheet.
Now all he has to do is mount it 100 feet off the ground (or whatever, like the wind turbine) to get accurate readings.
Well if you have an existing tower you are halfway there! Just gotta get a harness and climb it.
