| By :
Roger Brown
Wanting to take advantage of Wind Turbine Power at home is a noble goal. The reasons are numerous but the key ones are: 1. Cheaper electricity With a home windmill, you can make some or all of the electricity you need to power your home. 2. Get off the grid As fossil fuel supplies dwindle, you have the potential to harvest the FREE wind that blows by your house every day. 3. Help the planet Avoiding electricity produced in a power plant reduces carbon's effect on the atmosphere and helps Green the earth. But, with their high cost, wind turbine power simply isn't economically feasible everywhere yet. How can you know if a windmill will work for at your home? The specific question you must answer is, "Is there enough steady, high velocity wind at MY house?" We must do our homework because just knowing that there is a lot of wind in my state does not finish our analysis. There are several resources you must use to go from the general to the specific and zero-in on the answer to that question: 1. Look at the government wind map The United States government regularly updates maps of wind patterns across the country. By checking out the map you can make sure you are in a region with typically enough wind to make diving deeper into the topic worthwhile. Typically, the middle of the country has the most wind. States like Texas and Wisconsin are absolutely perfect for home wind projects. As prices of wind turbine power come down and technology becomes increasingly capable of picking up lower wind speeds, more and more areas of the country will become economically feasible to install home windmills. 2. Check with the weather service in your area The National Weather Service in your particular area can tell you the wind patterns and seasonality of winds in your community over time. 3. Use an anemometer to test wind at your house An anemometer is a small device that will measure the wind speed and direction real time. You can use the device and test several times during the week, in different conditions - morning, night, during days of heavier and lighter wind. Those readings will tell you if there is sufficient wind at your home to turn the turbine and make power. Once you get that data you can do the math on how much power a wind turbine will produce for you at your home. Since power prices vary so greatly across the country, you need to know your cost of power at home. Some parts of California cost $.33/kilowatt-hour and parts of Kentucky cost $.02/kilowatt-hour. Obviously, it is easier to justify buying and installing wind turbine power in an area with high power costs even if the wind isn't that great.
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