Small wind - is it worth the price?

I'm a member of the small-wind-home@yahoogroups.com . This a group of people interested in Small wind. Someone posted this article from Low Tech magazine. Redriven the turbine that I'm waiting to install was not in the study. Of coarse the small wind group found many things wrong with the study.

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/04/small-windmills-test-results.html As you can see from this looking at the test, their towers were not tall enough. The turbines should tower over the trees like the radio tower in the picture.

One of the conclusions of this article is that large scale turbines are more efficient. Would anyone disagree? But what they are missing is that these small wind turbines will help promote wind. They will prove to people that wind generators are not the evil noise machines that the anti wind people would have everyone believe.


I considered going big - getting a lot of neighbors or investors to get a very large wind turbine. I've seen how much work it is to get permits to do that kind of project. There was an attempt to do a wind farm near where I live. There was a huge out cry from the community that ended with a ban on all large scale wind farms project. Maybe my small project will show them that wind turbines are not so bad. Then when a neighbor tries to get a permit to go a little bigger there will not be the backlash. Some day we might get those more efficient models in our hood.

We could invest in wind farm stock, but we all know how much fun the stock market is these days.