Wind Turbines - From Hillside to Home
Vestas has a worldwide installed wind turbine capacity of about 590GW.
Siemens has about 100GW of wind turbine capacity in operation.
GE rounds out the top three manufacturers with a total installed capacity of 62GW.
A GW (gigawatt) is a billion watts. It's enough to power about 725,000 homes.
These are giant machines, the things you see rotating in the distance on hillsides. What if you want something for your home?
No problem, try a VAWT (vertical axis wind turbine). These things are around 2 feet in diameter and several feet high. Their capacity ranges from 100 watts to about 5 KW. And prices start at just a few hundred dollars.
Could one of these power your entire house? No, but it could help. The average house needs about 5KW. So if one doesn't do it buy two or three. The wind is free and it doesn't care how many VAWTs you deploy.
And unlike the sun, the wind is in action overnight. So just connect your VAWT to a high-tech storage battery. Then you have free wind energy even when the wind doesn't blow!
Content written and posted by Ken Abbott abbottsystems@gmail.com