| By :
Roger Brown
Reading wind turbine reviews are a great source for sizing up the statistics and opinions on particular manufacturers. By looking at a number of wind turbine reviews, you can get a good idea what experience people are having with the unit you are looking for in the field. Here is the criteria by which you should evaluate a windmill for your home and what information you should be looking for in a wind turbine review: * What is the cut-in speed of the turbine? This is the speed at which the wind device starts to make power. Typically, horizontal wind turbines start making power about 6-7 mph and verticals somewhat lower than that. Honeywell now makes a wind turbine with the cut-in speed of less than 1 mph. This is certainly the trend - toward lower cut-in speeds. The lower the cut in speed can be, the more "deployable" these devices are and the more wind power the can be generated at homes across the country. * How many kilowatts of power will it actually generate? How much power can you expect to really get out of the unit? This will be a rating at a given wind speed. Usually, that speed is relatively high, like around 30 mph for a home wind turbine. Just because a device is marketed to produce 1 kW of power, does not mean it will produce 1 kW of power for you. It totally depends on your ability to mount it in the correct place where there's enough average wind to sustain ongoing power production. * What is its cost fully installed? The cost out of the box is only part of the cost that needs to be considered. The price installed will also include the likely costs for installaiton, mounting, and commissioning the turbine, or hooking it in to your electrical system. Be very careful to correctly estimate the costs of fully installing the system. If you don't have capabilities in certain area then you will have to outsource the work let someone else do it. That is certainly okay and well within the bounds of any home improvement project you might undertake, but you do need to make sure you include the costs are doing that in your initial analysis and comparison of options. Also, how friendly and helpful is their customer service department? If you have problems, you want to know the company who sold it to you will be there to back their product up. Summarizing - it is good to look at wind turbine reviews on the Internet before you purchase a device. You have to make sure though that you are comparing the key elements of the product though. As you go through the reviews, you can add information that you find in one that you don't find in another. Then, go back to the product's manufacturer and find out the missing piece of information so that an accurate comparison can be made.
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