Greening Your Home - cost of wind turbine for home use.

What is the cost of wind turbine for home use, along with any necessary extras.
What height do we need?

A Swift rooftop turbine will cost $10-$12,000.
<CITE>www.swiftwindturbine.com (http://www.swiftwindturbine.com) </CITE>
<CITE></CITE>
<CITE></CITE>If considering a wind turbine, you will find the following helpful: What do I need to know to purchase a residential wind turbine? (http://www.awea.org/faq/rsdntqa.html)

thanks. I have some reading to do.

Don't forget to include city/county building codes in your reading. :coffee:

I contacted a local company about installing a Skystream 3.1 wind turbine. They told me it will only generate about 400kwh per month - can this be right?

For Feb 2009 we used about 3600 kwh of elec. Even if we consumed 50% less per month, the wind turbine would still only be 1/4 of monthly usage...it would take forever to recoup the costs!

Two local farms/businesses have these installed, but i can't imagine it would even make a slight dent in their elec bills

I saw some wind turbine home kits that you can build yourself don't know how feasbile they would be. Nothing compared to the 10-15k you can spend on a real one but it's worth a look either way. Try Google

I contacted a local company about installing a Skystream 3.1 wind turbine. They told me it will only generate about 400kwh per month - can this be right?

For Feb 2009 we used about 3600 kwh of elec. Even if we consumed 50% less per month, the wind turbine would still only be 1/4 of monthly usage...it would take forever to recoup the costs!

Two local farms/businesses have these installed, but i can't imagine it would even make a slight dent in their elec bills

If your house really consumes that much energy I'd suggest you really tone things way down.

The first thing anyone needs in order to even consider any
such system, is an energy saver home...
Solar or wind, doesn't really matter.

In most cases this requires an adjustment, as in, to one's lifestyle.
That's on top of what physical changes need to happen.

For Feb,2009 my house consumed 1200 kwh's.
Yes, that includes the heat.

For Feb,2009 my house consumed 1200 kwh's.
Yes, that includes the heat.

but therein lies my point...even after investing $15K on a wind turbine, it still can only generate 1/3 of your usage...it would take you forever to recoup your costs

I guess i was just surprised at how little power they generate.

incidentally, in my defense, we are actually two families under one roof, so we have two heating systems, etc...

Many of these residential systems are designed for small, efficient, isolated (even completely off the grid) homes.

You also have to take into consideration any rebates from the state and federal governments. Many power companies will also give rebates to offset the initial cost.

For instance, I recently recieved this in a newsletter from the state.....
"1)Utility Rebate Program $3.00 per Watt from Arizona Public Service (APS)
Utility Rebate Program $3.00 per Watt from Salt River Project (SRP)
Utility Rebate Program $4.00 per Watt from Sulphur Springs Valley EC
Utility Rebate Program $3.00 per Watt from Tucson Electric Power (TEP)
Utility Rebate Program $4.00 per Watt from Trico Electric Cooperative
Utility Rebate Program $3.00 per Watt from UniSource Energy Services (UES)
2) Federal Tax Credit is 30% Of Installed Cost
3) AZ State Tax Credit of 25% up to a maximum of $1000.00"

This was for a solar system, but I believe there are similar credits for wind.

Also, some areas mandate that excess power be purchased back from the consumer. Since a wind generator will produce any time the wind is blowing, even in times of little/no usage in the home, there's excess power that may be sold back.

It's not as simple as "it produces 400kw and I use 3600kw, so I'll only save X amount".

No expert here, but I try to pay attention to these kind of issues.

What exactly are you trying to achieve? Do you want to make your home completely self sufficient or are you just trying to save a little extra money?http://www.seo-shark.org/yubstub/8e489b4966fe8f703b5be647f1cbae63.jpg