New Partnership Promotes 100-kW Wind Energy Option

[jpak]

http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=47719

Customers in the northeastern U.S. can opt for with a cost-effective 100-kilowatt (kW) wind turbine to power their small business, farm, school or municipal projects with wind energy.

"We've been searching for a dependable wind turbine to meet the needs of many businesses and organizations in this region that fall between the small-scale homeowner and large industrial power consumers."

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The American-made NorthWind100, is a 100-kW wind turbine that has been engineered to provide onsite power generation. This wind turbine builds on NPS' experience in harsh, off-grid wind power applications and experience in distributed, grid-tied power generation. The design lends itself to all-weather maintenance, lower operating costs and seamless connection to the North American electric grid.

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[TreasonousBastard]

1. About a quarter-million to install, so...

as the manufacturer says-- it's NOT for the home. The average home can easily live with 10-15kW, though (with some small adjustments in electricity use) so one of these could power a block or small community.

Here in NY state, you can get well over a hundred grand back, and cheap loans for the rest and then have big property tax breaks. Some of the utilities and counties have their own deals, too, making it even sweeter.

So, with an installed cost of under 100,000 after all the rebates are taken into effect, 20 homes sharing this thing pay about 5 grand each, plus whatever plusses there may be. Sounds like a good deal if there's enough wind to keep you off the grid most of the time, and even better if the local utility lets you run the meters backwards.

Around here, though, the local zoning board hates windmills.

[phantom power]

2. I'm going to indulge my inner hippie for a moment.

$250K is essentially a home mortage. It's at a pretty good scale, in terms of both price and capacity, for an energy co-op. That $250K doesn't appear to include engery storage and management to provide baseload power, however.

[TreasonousBastard]

3. Yeah, as I said, it's pretty cheap for...

a small community or business. Payback could be well under 5 years if everything works out and the power company is charging high rates.

Everything depends on the details-- like just how much wind is available, connection costs, and the cost of backup generation or storage if you really want to get off the grid. And that zoning board.

There are much smaller, although less efficient, setups for the individual home with an initial investment of under 20 grand, much of which can be gotten back in tax deals and rebates.

[jpak]

4. These are for towns and businesses - not homes

Domestic (home power) wind turbines are rated 1-10 kW.

This turbine fills the gap between (multi) MW million dollar utility-scale turbines and small domestic turbines.

A lot of small NE towns are considering purchasing wind turbines to offset their electricity consumption - this is a good deal...(and they can sell the Green Tags to boot).

Also, until intermittent renewable sources reach 20-25% of total grid generating capacity - there is no need for energy storage.

Now if Turbine Town had a landfill or sewage treatment plant biogas facility, it could run a biogas generator (or a number of generators) intermittently to fill in any gaps in turbine power production - they would not need an energy storage system at all.

Add in a 100 kW PV array (like many California towns/cities are doing) and that's pretty much all you would need to provide municipal power on demand...