Photo: NREL
While most of the wind energy press is going to the large-turbine wind farms, more stories these days are focusing on the smaller installations that are privately owned. Last Sunday’s Boston Globe had a spread about a convent that is installing its own wind turbine in hopes of getting off the grid. Today’s Buffalo News features a 10-kilowatt installation at a private home in northern New York state. This system, which cost $25K after incentives (with a brief mention of a $25K grant from the NY State Energy R&D Authority), saves the homeowner an estimated $120-140 per month in electric bills.
Aside from the subsidies, this installation, like many private installations, had to pass several hurdles. First, the home has no close neighbors, so noise is not an issue. More importantly, for a wind system to be effective, the turbine must be mounted higher than the rooftops and trees, usually much higher, to get above the ground turbulence which severely limits the efficient use of wind. In this case, the tower is 140 feet high, and although the house is somewhat isolated, it still required special permits. If there was a neighbor with 250 feet, the permit would have never passed.
I have mixed feelings about subsidizing such installations in any way. First, it’s a good thing to have people off-grid who can be. But most of those installations are reaping large benefit from these subsidized systems, often removing their electric bill entirely. Would it hurt so much if the payback was 15 years instead of 10? How much should the taxpayer subsidize these private installations?
Second, there are innovative new designs that actually make use of the turbulence generated by buildings and trees. They aren’t the traditional bladed turbines, but instead are designed more like impellers (blades more or less parallel to the central shaft) which, when mounted on a rooftop, can take the updraft created by the wind blowing up the roof and convert it to rotational energy before the turbulence even happens. This would of course make wind generation possible in places where a 140-foot tower would never be allowed.
If local and private generation is ever going to be more than a fortunate anomaly for a few, these new designs need and deserve a similar subsidy structure to the one enjoyed by larger traditional systems. Right now experimental small systems receive little or no financial status, and I’m not necessarily suggesting they should. But perhaps some of that incentive money that is currently going to large private systems could be diverted to those creative efforts that might result in more installations on more rooftops in areas other than large private properties.
(See article in Buffalo News)