Wind Turbines for Homes

Optimists predict residential wind generators will become standard equipment for new homes and communities within the next decade.  In cities like Phoenix and Los Angeles, where developers continue building housing tracts up to sixty miles from the cities’ geographic centers, wind farms soon will cost less and provide more reliable power  than stretching underground utilities.  Wind farms definitely will hold significant economic and environmental advantage over construction of new power plants.

Residential Wind Generators for Single-Family Homes

Right now, homeowners can enjoy significant savings from installation of relatively small and inexpensive wind turbines for their homes. Although wind generators may not supply all the electricity a busy family needs, nevertheless they significantly reduce power bills, and they complement solar power systems.  Instead of thinking “either/or,” most families ought to consider both photovoltaic cells and a residential wind generator.  Alone, wind turbines provide enough electricity for the family’s lights and computers; in combination with aggressive conservation and sophisticated photovoltaic ceramic roofing tiles, wind turbines can make the difference between continued reliance on public utilities or beginning to turn the meter backwards.

In most urban and suburban neighborhoods, residential wind generators provide either supplemental or back-up power; on cloudy days and during the winter when the sun rises late and sets early, wind turbines easily make-up the difference.  Far more importantly, wind turbines linked to storage batteries provide emergency power.  When floods wipe-out power to entire cities, wind generators kick-in to keep lights and major appliances running.  Precisely the conditions that cripple the grid and solar power provide perfect opportunities for wind power. Powerful southwest winds drive snow and ice storms that bring down old power lines.  Strong Santa Ana winds tear-down old power poles, and they push wildfires that devour thousands of wooden poles and melt high-tension towers, depriving families of electricity for weeks on end.  New wind turbines continue spinning and generating even in high winds.  Families that have relied on gas-powered generators for maintaining at least minimal electric power in severe weather can install foul- weather wind turbines for approximately the cost of a new but soon-to-be-obsolete generator.