| By :
Roger Brown
If you are looking into the purchase of a vertical helix wind turbine, the first thing to do is understand what factors will drive and define your success. It is not that hard, but before you leap, clarify your expectations after some fact-finding and analysis. Here is the basic information you need: 1. Amount of energy you need to make (kilowatt-hours/month) 2. Your current cost of electricity per kilowatt-hour 3. Total installed cost of the unit you intend to buy 4. Ongoing cost of maintenance Before you seriously think about specifying which particular unit you would like to consider buying, you need to do this research and analyze what you find out. First, explore how much energy you need to make...Are you going to try to power your entire house or just charge batteries to have for emergencies? All the information you need is on the invoice from your current electricity provider: Here's what to look for on the bill… 1. Your amount of kilowatt-hour usage in your highest use month (usually, summer) 2. Your amount of kilowatt-hours used in your low month (usually, winter) 3. Average kilowatt-hours/month over last 12 months You certainly don't need to wind generate all your home power requirements for a wind turbine project make sense - you can simply use wind to charge batteries for backup of critical systems like refrigeration in case of power failure. Next, the amount of wind energy available on your property needs to be determined. That is not an easy question to answer because even on the same property different amounts of wind energy are waiting to be harvested at different locations and at different altitudes. The best way to understand your actual wind is with an anemometer. An anemometer is a small device that allows you to take wind samples. The problem with using an anemometer alone though is it provides only real time data and therefore doesn't give you any trend information. To learn about longer-term wind speeds in your area over specific time intervals, the best source is Wunderground.com. You can input your city or your zipcode to find out historical weather information going back many years. What you are after at Wunderground is the AVERAGE wind speed and direction, by month. If the average wind speed is at least 9 mph over time, then a wind project make sense to pursue. A project is certainly doable if the average wind is less than that, it just won't yield as strong a payback. There are then 2 pieces to this puzzle of understanding how much wind energy you have available: 1. The information you collect on your property via the anemometer will tell you where specifically on your property will optimize power production. 2. The average wind speed on Wunderground will let you know if your local area has enough wind to drive a wind turbine. Next, you need to understand your current and expected cost of power. For a home, electricity is typically priced on a straightforward cents per kilowatt-hour basis. This means that for every kilowatt of energy you use for one hour, you pay X cents. Depending on where you live, power can cost between $.03-$.33/kilowatt-hour. You can find this out easily by looking at your rate online or just adding up your bills and dividing by the total kilowatt-hours. The rate name can be found on your power bill. Or, just Google your utility's name and the name of the rate shown on the utility's invoice. Embedded in all the rate language you will find your price per kWh. Ok, here's a quick recap of what we have learned so far… At this point you know how much wind you have at your disposal and you know "where your energy is" - that is, you know approximately what the average wind speed is on your property at several altitudes. You also know your current cost. Now, you are in a good position to start looking for optional wind turbines to consider. The amount of power you would like to create will tell you the size of unit you need to be looking at. Depending on the size of your house, a whole home system will need to be in the 1.5-2 kilowatts range. The 2 most basic categories of wind turbine are vertical-axis and horizontal-axis. Both are available for under $1,500 in kit form. To maximize power output, I would strongly recommend sticking to a horizontal design at present. Most vertical systems just aren't ready for home users yet. Current designs cost too much upfront and don't generate as much energy for the same investment. Horizontals are a more mature and stable product. Their bugs have been mostly worked out already because have been out in the market longer. Also, there are a lot more options available and at lower prices. The appeal of verticals is that they can be mounted close to the ground or on roofs. This makes them more accessible for maintenance. Unfortunately, the wind down low is weak and chaotic. It is much easier to make electricity if the wind turbine is mounted higher - at least 30 feet over the highest obstacle, like trees or buildings, that could block it. Inconvenient, but unfortunately that's where the best wind is. In the final analysis, it is not just all about the payback. There are a wide variety of options, from kits to ready to go wind turbines out there that will work and the prices vary considerably, depending on the amount of effort you want to put into building it yourself. You can buy a very cheap DIY horizontal-axis wind turbine for under $1,500 that will make 2 kilowatts of power. However, you will have to scavenge for the materials to make it and it will likely take months to complete. You just have to be realistic about how likely you are to finish such a project and if you will enjoy the process of building the turbine. Or, you can buy prepackaged windmills almost ready to go right out of the box that you can have up and running inside a week. You pay for that convenience though. A prefab unit could cost 10-20 times as much and will obviously have a much longer payback period. Whichever way you choose, there's really no way to lose - you will be making a positive move into the world of energy independence. And, any way you slice it, a home wind turbine ultimately puts you in the driver's seat. After the unit is paid for, the energy it harvests is FREE.
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