It all started years ago, when my husband and I started to realize that our passive solar house built in the 70s was not cutting it. On sunny days, we were warm – sometimes too hot, but on subzero and cloudy winter days, we were really cold. We have a woodstove and that helped. Unfortunately, we were paying a lot of money to run blowers that sort of warmed the house at night. We had all the work and dirt that a woodstove offers as well. Also, my husband has mold and dust mite allergies so blowing air around is not good for him. To sum it up our passive solar heating was not working for us.
We decided to look at other green alternatives. We found the list of NYSERDA installers
At that time there were only a hand full of Authorized Installers to choose from and we pick Gay Canough, ETM Solar Works because she was close. She came out to our house and for a fee gave us a price for Solar and for wind. They were both crazy prices with ~20 year paybacks. I think Solar was $110K and Wind was going to be about $60K and the incentives didn't help much. She said wind was the best for our situation, but at that time (I guess 4-6 years ago?) NYSERDA limited you to 10KW turbine. She could sell us a Bergey 10K but only one turbine with the NYS incentives and we would need another one to cover all of our needs with only a little or no incentive money, so two turbines two towers! We knew this was crazy so needless to say we did jump at this offer.
About two years ago, we looked at using Geothermal heating, but that had a huge cost. It would take a lot of construction on our house to deliver the heat to each room. What we really needed was supplemental heat on non-sunny days – and electric does that pretty well. Heating each room when needed- but also includes a big bill from the electric company for Dec, Feb and March.
I kept my eye on the powernaturally site and finally, NYS opened up the eligible list to turbines larger than 10K and had 20KW turbines in the approved list. I bought the Paul Gipe book Wind Power. I’m on my third pass through it – every time – I know more and so I’m able to get more out of it.
In reading Paul Gipe's book, it was clear that you should by the biggest turbine and tower that you can afford. That it is not worth putting up a big tower unless you had a decent size wind turbine to put on it. Something that was intuitive to me, but now with expert advice I was now certain that I needed a 20KW turbine. Going back to the list, there are only a few eligible installers that will do a system over 10KW. I called back and emailed several times ETM to see if they did 20kw turbins. ETM is the company that gave us that first estimate. After about two months, I finally got someone to answer the phone. They didn’t have a copy of our old estimate and they also said they were concentrating now on the solar side. Wind was just to much pain. Towns were not giving permits and or neighbors were making it hard to install. Solar was just much easier. I guess they didn’t need the wind business because they were too busy to answer the phone or the constant emails.
So I started my campaign to see if I could get any of the installers eligible for over 10k to call or email me back. They do not answer phone calls or emails – with the exception of two.
Daniel Roy from Renovus Energy, Inc. called me right back. Unfortunately, he only had a 5K or a 50K, way to small or way to big. We discussed my situation for a long time (for free). He was the first to tell me about that First Look site (see my blog posting on how to measure the wind). The 50KW he sells sounds great, but was just too expensive for one homeowner to afford. I considered a coop with neighboors, but I didn’t think I had the time to take on something like that.
Next, I found a new person on the list – he was from ReDriven Inc. http://www.redriven.net/
I Called Christopher Grant and went right to his cell phone and he said he worked for the Manufacture ReDriven, but he gave me the name of someone that he had just trained as an installer near us and who was on the NYSERDA list. I must have over looked his name before, because his last name was Weaver. I must have emailed and call Art Weaver 20 times and he never answered, but Rodney Weaver from Rural Generation and Wind had a receptionist! Who could make an appointment to come over in less than a week! So I made that appointment.
I told a friend at work what I was up to, she said her husband has been trying to get any of the wind installers to call him back as well – he was excited to hear that someone was returning calls.
So on Martin Luther King Day, Rodney came over. I told him I was interested in the 20K turbine. He opened up his computer and checked out the FirstWind site too. He said we had more that he expected. So, he figured out the price of the 20k turbine. It was way too much – I don’t remember exactly – I think my part would be in the ~$48,000 range. He looked at our electric bills. It showed how much power we used and what the buy back rate would be if we had extra. He put our average wind speed in the Redriven power calculator and it showed that we would be able to produce enough with their 10KW turbine to meet our energy needs with a tad left over. He also told us that with the 10KW you could get a monopole tower with hydraulic tilting tower, so that you don’t need a crane for maintenance. He said the crane would cost $2,000 per day to bring the 20k Turbine down for maintenance. At that point my husband and I were convinced we really didn’t want a 20KW. Rodney didn’t tell us this but it was apparent that a crane cost, would cut a minimum of 2K out of the payback schedule per year for maintenance- if we were lucky. He said that for the first 5 years the warrantee covered the repairs and parts. I asked if a longer warrantee was available, but a longer term is not available yet.
Rodney explained the turbine is made in China and the Electronic controlling and grid connection components are made in Canada. There is a five-year warrantee. He told us what the installation involved. We would have the electronic parts in our garage and the turbine needed to be less than 300 feet from the house so that we didn’t have a lot of power loss on the electric cable.
Rural Generation and Wind is new to the wind business. http://www.ruralgenerationandwind.com/
I think they said they have installed about ~ 8 systems. I forget where exactly- not in NYS but I believe some in Maine and Canada. They are not new to the normal gas generator business, that people would have in their homes for power outages.
We walked around outside to decide on the best spot. He said he if could sell us the Bergey 10KW too, but it wouldn’t give us enough power to meet our needs. We knew that from our investigation into Bergey years ago.
Next I went into heavy-duty web searching mode to see what I could find out about the company’s. There is not a lot out there. That is one of the reasons I wanted to create this blog. I would have really liked to hear more from others who have taken to plunge and that have real life results. If you are out there please let me know.
I’ll post more on my investigation on another day.
