| By :
Roger Brown
There was a time when residential wind turbines were only for the Far Left. With depleting energy reserves, now the issue has become mainstream and even the Rush Limbaughs of the world are loosening their grip on fossil fuels as the only short term solution. Almost all Europeans and a lot more Americans are asking themselves - "How can I take advantage of the wind energy surrounding my house?" It is becoming clear to everyone there is no long-term future in staying the course with fossil fuels. The Middle East is too turbulent and supplies are dwindling at an alarming rate. How do you know if a residential wind turbine isn't a waste of time for you? You need to be aware that prices now of these windmills can be very high and range from under $500 to over $50,000 - seemingly for the same thing! Therefore, it is essential that you do your homework and make sure you are not setting yourself up for defeat before you begin. That requires some work to assess the wind resources that you have at your disposal. The conventional wisdom is that you will need at least 9 mph of wind on average to make a windmill pay for itself. That average speed number is coming down however, due to the tremendous amount of research and development work being done in this emerging market. The way to validate that a turbine will work for you is to first check WeatherUnderground.com. This will let you check things out at a 50,000 foot level, so to speak. You can enter your zip code or city and it will give you historical wind speeds over the last few years, or at least as far back as records have been kept. Then, if you pass muster there, you need to check if that holds up in actual conditions on your specific property. For that you need an anemometer. An anemometer is like a little windmill that is handheld and you can mount almost anywhere to get a reading for a week or so. Checking this part out on the front end will give you the direction and confidence to dive in and buy the right residential wind turbine. What we are hoping is that as government subsidizes the purchase of the windmills through tax incentives, the more people will buy them. As the more people buy them, the prices will come down and still more people will buy them. As prices come down and more people buy them, the technology will improve and the 9 mph average rule of thumb for a project to work will also decrease. Honeywell has a home windmill now that will start turning in about ½ mph wind but the unit costs thousands more than most. As we roll out this residential wind turbine technology, we are distributing generation of electricity and not keeping it centralized in large power plants that burn fossil fuels. If we took advantage of the wind we have in America, we could completely displace the power we create in power plants.
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