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small wind Success StoriesOwner Testimonials
I just love the feeling I get when I watch my electricity meter spin backwards, because the more often my meter spins backwards, the less I have to pay Southern California Edison (SCE) for my power. The reason my meter spins backwards is because I've installed a 3000-watt "Whisper" small wind turbine and a total of eight solar photovoltaic panels that add another 1,080 watts of potential electricity to my own home hybrid renewable energy system. I built our 2,000 square foot home about ten years ago on five acres of land. Within the last year I've added a home office in the barn out back. Last year, my wife and I consumed an average of about 550 kWh of electricity per month. At that level of consumption, I had to pay as much as $0.20/kWh to buy electricity from SCE. I find that to be an outrageous price to pay for electricity generated primarily from dirty fossil fuels. Our electricity consumption in 2002 was double that of a year ago, but our power bill was cut in half this year due to my ability to tap the power of the wind and sun. While I'm a big fan of both sources of renewable energy, wind power is cheaper, The small wind turbine certainly works well. Just the other day, dust devils were spreading dust and dirt all over our house - and the wind turbine itself. But it just kept cranking our 3,000 watts of electricity like there was no tomorrow! I've never been much of an environmentalist, but the more I learned about the negative environmental impacts of diesel generators and large fossil fuel power plants, the more I became convinced that renewable energy was the way to go. An article in Mother Earth News magazine prompted us to do some homework and investigate renewable energy systems. And boy did we do our homework! We read a lot, traveled to factories that manufacture wind and solar systems in Arizona, California and Washington, and gathered data on the quality of the wind and solar resources here in this particular part of Kern County, near the border of Los Angeles County near Lancaster and Palmdale. What we discovered was that the winds blow at an average of over 10 mph, which is considered a Class 2 or "adequate" wind resource. Not the best by any means, but definitely good enough to make an investment in a small wind turbine worthwhile. The solar resource, by the way, is one of the best in the entire country. The average amount of good sunshine across the US is 6 hours; this region is blessed with 7.66 hours of good sun every day. We installed our small wind turbine ourselves. We had plenty of help from the state. We learned a lot of what we needed to know from California's "Green Team" video conferences, a program sponsored by Governor Davis' office and the California Energy Commission. Obtaining a building permit from the county was also very simple. I took all the information from Southwest Wind Power, the manufacturer of my small wind turbine, and all the information I got from the "Green Team" to the local building inspector. Since Kern County allows up to SCE was also cooperative. They sent us a 10-page contract that included the utility's interconnection requirements as well as a "net metering" agreement. Net metering is the program that allows my meter to spin backwards when we are sending electricity to the grid from our wind and solar systems; when the sun isn't shining and the wind is not blowing, the meter spins the other way when we recover the excess power we put into the grid or I'm buying power off the grid. After filling in some information about our installations, SCE produced a completed contract for me to sign and return. It was very simple and straightforward. Our small wind turbine began operating in May 2002. During the first couple of weeks of operation, we only had to pay for a measly 14 kWh per week. With our buy-down rebate from the California Energy Commission, which covered almost half of the initial installation cost, and a 15% California state tax credit, I estimate our small wind turbine will pay for itself in 5-7 years. After the initial investment is recouped, we can look forward to generating electricity for free for years to come. Our experience with the benefits of renewable energy systems has convinced my wife and I to start a new business selling small wind turbines. The only thing I'm not happy about is that more people are not using small wind turbines. Click here for more information
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