Residential Wind Turbines in Colorado

I live in Colorado and although residential solar is beginning to take hold, there is very little development in the residential wind turbine arena. Does anyone else think that there is opportunity here?

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Permalink Reply by David Smith on July 11, 2008 at 3:30pm: There is opportunity as long as the incentives make the turbine installation a viable option for the consumer. I would recommend you research all of the applicable incentives and tax breaks that are available for turbine instillation. With that information, you will be able to develop a payback calculation for a customer. The shorter the return on investment period the more attractive the product will be for the customer. Here are a few sites that point to many of the available incentives.

http://www.awea.org/smallwind/colorado.html

http://www.awea.org/smallwind/

http://www.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/windpoweringamerica/pdfs/sm...; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David Smith on July 12, 2008 at 8:49am: Here are some sites that can be helpful in establishing a viability study of an area using average wind velocity to discern average output of a given device.

By calculating the percentage of the rated power (RP) produced at the average wind speed, one can arrive at a rough capacity factor (RCF) for the wind turbine at that site. Moreover, by multiplying the rated power output by the rough capacity factor by the number of hours in a year, (8,760), a very crude annual energy production can be estimated. For example, for a 100 kW turbine producing 20 kW at an average wind speed of 15 mph, the calculation would be:

100 kW (RP) x .20 (RCF) = 20 kW x 8760 hours = 175,200 kWh

http://www.awea.org/faq/basicen.html

The Derive 6 Calculator or excel are good products for performing the mathematics and business model calculations.

Here is a project calculator.

http://www.windustry.com/sites/windustry.org/files/WindProjectCalcu...

http://www.windustry.com/your-wind-project/community-wind/community...

http://www.bergey.com/Technical.htm

http://www.spiraxsarco.com/pdfs/TI/p023_48.pdf

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/33638.pdf; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Wind4me.com on September 15, 2008 at 5:23pm: looking in Colorado for any small residential wind turbines that work and dont cost a fortune
any ideas out there????; ▶ Reply to This