| By :
Roger Brown
As the residential wind turbine gains in popularity, it is becoming more and more acceptable to locate one of these devices on your roof. Especially in urban settings they have no choice but to locate one there. In days gone by there was a lot of community resistance to installing wind devices on roofs, because there are so many people it just didn't like the look of them. They felt like they spoiled the look of the local community and therefore they resisted through their local governments and through the permitting process and people from installing such devices on their own properties. Now, however, things are a little bit different and there is more acceptance at local level. There is so much talk in the press and in the communities all over our country regarding green energy and how it benefits us all that there is really not any widespread or wholesale resistance to installing wind turbines on roofs anymore like there was. In general, people feel a lot more comfortable with renewable energy devices all over the country. And, as prices come down it is becoming a lot more affordable for people to engage in this type of cost reduction effort for their homes. While a residential wind turbine can function perfectly well on the roof you must keep in mind that the roof is a very turbulent environment for airflow. For the air to move around objects and angles on your roof, it has to pass by a variety of different geometric structures that tend to deflect and distort the pattern of wind. This is not necessarily a bad thing though. Vertical axis wind turbines are pretty much designed to function well in this environment. You can get a tremendous amount of electricity of the device like this but you've got to match the strength of the turbine with the wind conditions at that particular location. If you match the turbine properly with the wind conditions on your roof, it is unlikely that you will cause damage. Damage really comes in to play when people install high moment arm horizontal axis wind turbines there. They tend to pull up the underlying substructure and can really cause problems and damage the roof itself. Summarizing - if you install a residential wind turbine on your roof it is unlikely that you cause enough damage to make it not worth your while. However, it is wise to spend a little time and money and make sure you're correctly matching the turbine to the task.
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