| By :
Roger Brown
Southwest Wind Power is a company based in Flagstaff, Arizona that makes wind turbines for businesses and homes. What markets do they service? They service the home, commercial, and industrial markets. They have an strong school program, too. This is a large turbine and will conceivably supply enough power for a large home with some to spare. How much do they cost? These windmills are steep. The cost of their model 600, which is more efficient than their previous 3.7 kW unit, is $15,000, plus an additional $11,000 for a 60 ft tower. This is an expensive windmill and way overkill if you are looking at something for your house. Where does wind work best? This is where the rubber meets the road. You need to spend considerable time researching this with the dealer they put you in touch with. Because many folks are so anxious to "go Green", they overlook this most important part. Although the wind blows everywhere, not everywhere will work for wind turbines of this size. To make a windmill this large work, you will have to have strong, unobstructed wind of 15 mph or more. It will certainly make power with less, but as the wind decreases, you will be extending your payback period WAY out in the future - longer than most people want to deal with for this size investment. What is good and bad about Southwest Wind Power and their wind turbine products? The people you reach on the phone are very nice. The good and the bad thing is they are growing very fast. I originally called a few months ago and never got a call back. I then went through their tedious online evaluation tool though recently and my screen locked up at the very end. I called the company and actually got someone on the phone this time, but they sent me to 2 dealers where I had to leave messages. They work only through a dealer network. That means when you call them, they can\'t help you directly - they send you to a dealer. Many of the dealers are quite small and you have to leave a message. This is not what you expect out of a company charging thousands of dollars for their products. In conclusion, Southwest Wind Power is basically a good company with a robust product but this type of underperformance customer service-wise is indicative of many in the wind area these days. They are ramping up faster than their systems can accommodate.
|
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.articleforbacklinks.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites
