subject: Home Wind Turbines: 3 Problems You May Have [print this page] Although home wind turbines have become very popular in some locations around the country, they are not popular everywhere. There are good reasons for that and the market needs to change to make it easier for homeowners to evaluate and install wind devices for the alternative energy market to really take hold as it has the potential to do.
These are the main problems and hurdles you may encounter as you try to get one of these for your home...
Setting expectations that are too high - Many people think that it is possible to produce all their power with an alternative energy device such as a small wind turbine. This would take a very large wind turbine to accomplish, in reality. And, it would be very expensive to supply all of your household needs with a single device like that. It is a lot more reasonable to think you could supply power to charge a set of batteries or to handle the needs of a single device like a freezer.
Finding out too late that you do not have enough wind to make it work - Many people want to rush right out and get something up and going, producing energy fast. This is a prescription for disaster because you need to have some baseline wind data and make sense of it first. The easiest thing to do is just get an anemometer and take recordings of the wind for approximately 6 to 9 months. That will give you enough time to get the wind patterns down fairly well. Once you've done that you can size up where you will put it and how high off the ground you need to mount it.
Your local town or neighborhood will not allow you to put the wind turbine where you want to - Although this is changing rapidly, many towns still put up resistance to installing home wind turbines in their area. You need to take a reading of how they stand on this issue before you buy anything because what you buy may not be what they require or allow. Your town probably will not outright ban the use of wind turbines but they will likely put restrictions on the size of the device and the distance it can be placed in proximity to other people's property.
We really need these problems to get worked out and systematized by the wind turbine industry in a hurry. Oil and other fossil fuels are in short supply and running out fast.
In conclusion, home wind turbines have the potential to radically reduce the amount of power required from public utilities over the next 30 years in the United States. We need to collect our thoughts and make it easier for homeowners to get these devices up and running.
