Cost Of Wind Power Turbines Is SkyRocketing

You can still buy the engines themselves for about the same price but unless you have a masters in engineering putting it up is the hard part. I'll be attempting this in the future sometime so I'll be crossing my fingers for the best.

Let's not forget that there is a huge potential in urban wind solutions like the following:

http://www.aerotecture.com/

Home and small scale wind is not efficient. If you are thinking of making an investment in wind power you are better off putting that money into utility size wind power. Sadly this is a case where bigger is better.
Wind power increases
1. at heights - higher towers get much more wind
2. By swept area - a 20 meter blade is 4 times more efficient than a 10 meter blade.
3 better turbines. Engineering counts!

The House of Representatives just passed a bill that makes a major new investment in clean and renewable energy technology like wind.

You can find out more about what we did here

I want to go green, but bottom line is that it's certainly much cheaper than not....which is a problem if we want to save the environment.

The flipside of it is that this will kill some demand. Yaaaay free market! Not!

Nice concept, and close to viable, but urban windmills are dangerous, noise and inconvenient to service. It is bad enough having squeaking vent caps, A/C compressors and pumps bellowing out their noise pollution. Lets not add more noise pollution while making our cities even uglier.

And a little reality check on Aerotecture. $15,000 per installl to produce 1kWh produced in 32 mph wind, or basically I can run my hairdryer on medium on a very, very breezy day.

Average wind speed is often taken as 9-13 mph in suitable locations, and not blowing all the time, and wind energy is exponential. Even if it were linear (helping Aerotecture's position), their device is still highly expensive. 1kWh in a 13 mph wind blowing 1/3 of the time would take 63 years to match the price of supplied electricity (@$0.20 KWh).

Keep swinging boys.

Nice concept, and close to viable, but urban windmills are dangerous, noise and inconvenient to service. It is bad enough having squeaking vent caps, A/C compressors and pumps bellowing out their noise pollution. Lets not add more noise pollution while making our cities even uglier.

And a little reality check on Aerotecture. $15,000 per installl to produce 1kWh produced in 32 mph wind, or basically I can run my hairdryer on medium on a very, very breezy day.

Average wind speed is often taken as 9-13 mph in suitable locations, and not blowing all the time, and wind energy is exponential. Even if it were linear (helping Aerotecture's position), their device is still highly expensive. 1kWh in a 13 mph wind blowing 1/3 of the time would take 63 years to match the price of supplied electricity (@$0.20 KWh).

Keep swinging boys.

Nice concept, and close to viable, but urban windmills are dangerous, noise and inconvenient to service. It is bad enough having squeaking vent caps, A/C compressors and pumps bellowing out their noise pollution. Lets not add more noise pollution while making our cities even uglier.

And a little reality check on Aerotecture. $15,000 per installl to produce 1kWh produced in 32 mph wind, or basically I can run my hairdryer on medium on a very, very breezy day.

Average wind speed is often taken as 9-13 mph in suitable locations, and not blowing all the time, and wind energy is exponential. Even if it were linear (helping Aerotecture's position), their device is still highly expensive. 1kWh in a 13 mph wind blowing 1/3 of the time would take 63 years to match the price of supplied electricity (@$0.20 KWh).

Keep swinging boys.

"The flipside of it is that this will kill some demand. Yaaaay free market! Not!"

It will only "kill" the less efficient demand. Those that can put wind turbines in the best spots will still buy them, and those who wouldn't get as much from them will wait.

And it's not really killing anything since there isn't the production capacity to meet demand anyway. It's just allocating wind turbines to those who want them the most (are ready to pay more for them) and sending the signal to entrepreneurs to increase production.

Yay indeed!

I disagree. I have not yet made one myself but plan to.

Hugh Piggott's book helps you make cheap generators and the design was the basis for African Wind Power which does 2KW for less than $10k.

Kits and DIY generators that can do around 5-10KW would likely not be so bad and cost very little and these designs have few moving parts and don't make noise.

Problem with the ones you buy pre-made is that they cost so much they don't pay back unless you get really large. DIY, kits designed to leverage the lower building cost (but unskilled labor) could become cost effective. Large nice blades alone would foster tons of designs.

The big issue is the towers and how high you can go in your area. The higher the better. Safety is an issue, but I don't see it as being a problem with reasonably built generators. I'm more concerned about an SUV squishing me than a tree or small tower falling on me.

Urban areas are ugly already.

The real news is that the world is increasingly turning to wind for new power generating projects. Part of this is the low cost of fuel (free as the breeze) and assurance of it's future uninterrupted supply.

Sales are at 100% of production capacity. It is no surprise to see the cost of installations increase due to supply-demand factors. This will no doubt cause a massive increase in supply and let even more of our world electricity become wind power generated.

It is a win win win with the biggest winner being our environment.

Windmills, modern and old, are beautiful on many levels. Ugly is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.

Christian and J.Blit, you may be interested to check out this link for urban turbines.

http://www.quietrevolution.co.uk/qr5.htm

If you are talking about any wind turbine you need to match its output with the average wind speed at your site. Turbine ratings are extremely misleading. For instance I believe the Bergy Excel is rated at 10kw, but that rating is for 29mph wind. Very, very few people have 29mph average wind speeds. If you do, its great, but if you have a 12mph site you might be producing only a few hundred watts. Every manufacturer should have a wind speed/power output graph in their literature. Since there are no national or international small scale wind turbine testing standards, you then have to decide whether or not you trust the company to rate its own products.

Urban wind turbines are very quite, it is a myth that they create large amounts of ambient noise. There is far worse noise pollution at street level.

Putting wind turbines on building rooftops accelerate the wind speed increasing efficiency.

Although urban wind turbines may not produce utility scale power it is more efficient in respects of transmission. The best thing we can do is produce our power where it is used and eliminate the losses introduced through transmission. This concept is termed "distributed generation" and has a very promising future.

Let's not forget the rising cost of oil makes this a relative increase in price.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_price_increases_of_2004-2006

Not familiar with the cost of coal however.

And J.Bilt.....you want to talk about 1kW not 1kWh, this clearly indicates you are not educated on the subject of power generation. Let's leave it to the experts huh. Let me explain: you could produce 1kWh in half an hour if you were producing 2kW instantaneous.

Urban wind turbines are very quite, it is a myth that they create large amounts of ambient noise. There is far worse noise pollution at street level.

Putting wind turbines on building rooftops accelerate the wind speed increasing efficiency.

Although urban wind turbines may not produce utility scale power it is more efficient in respects of transmission. The best thing we can do is produce our power where it is used and eliminate the losses introduced through transmission. This concept is termed "distributed generation" and has a very promising future.

Let's not forget the rising cost of oil makes this a relative increase in price.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_price_increases_of_2004-2006

Not familiar with the cost of coal however.

And J.Bilt.....you want to talk about 1kW not 1kWh, this clearly indicates you are not educated on the subject of power generation. Let's leave it to the experts huh. Let me explain: you could produce 1kWh in half an hour if you were producing 2kW instantaneous.

John B,
Not all cities are ugly. There are some stunningly beautiful urban settings, precisely because local ordanaces has stopped hideous things like billboards and windmills. It is possible to have green energy and attractive cities.

GMcD,
Thanks for the link. However, this is a $70,000 windmill (including installation) for 10,000 kWh per year in an ideal install. I pay about $0.20/ kWh for my electricity for supply, transmission and all other charges. Thus it would cost me $2000 for the same electricity, giving a simple payback of 35 years and $0 maintenance. Buying wind energy from a wind farm is much cheaper.

Of course, I could take my $70,000, stick it in the stock market, and get my historical average return of 7%-ish, and pay for my green electricity and grow my capital.

The webiste is coy about how they calculate their energy production and has some other unsupported claims, but I like the idea. I am just unconvinced by the economics. Add to which, no large moving object is maintenance free, hence the 2 year warranty.

Supply and demand is driving all green industries...other than a small amount of govt meddling which seems to be doing more harm than good. The increase in price for wind is a positive for the environment is pure good since it indicates an excess of demand...and supply is sure to follow. As painful as it is, we need to thank the high cost of oil.

Colin:

"Putting wind turbines on building rooftops accelerate the wind speed increasing efficiency."

So you are stating that you can add energy to the wind and extract more energy from it? Interesting notion of energy. Or perhaps it is your writing. Anyone can type a mangled sentence, so I'll assume that you do not mean that the act of placement increases efficiency, but that rooftops are a good location for windmills.

And would you like to refute the argument, rather than pick on a typo? Let me explain, The Aerotech windmill is DOA. Not because it is a bad idea, but as proposed, it is an economic dead end. I can get cheaper, greener electricity without the eyesore in my city.

Colin:

"Putting wind turbines on building rooftops accelerate the wind speed increasing efficiency."

So you are stating that you can add energy to the wind and extract more energy from it? Interesting notion of energy. Or perhaps it is your writing. Anyone can type a mangled sentence, so I'll assume that you do not mean that the act of placement increases efficiency, but that rooftops are a good location for windmills.

And would you like to refute the argument, rather than pick on a typo? Let me explain, The Aerotech windmill is DOA. Not because it is a bad idea, but as proposed, it is an economic dead end. I can get cheaper, greener electricity without the eyesore in my city.

Has anyone had experience with Pacwind?

http://pacwind.net/

GE has been buying up the other wind turbine companies for several years now. Draw your own conclusions about constrained supply.

The cost of high grade coal has more than doubled in the past year, shooting past $100/ton on both the US east coast and in Australia and even higher in the UK. In the UK they are paying $50 shipping for $100 worth of coal = 1 ton. In the Western US we don't even have any high grade coal left, all we got is low grade junk.

US anthracite coal production peaked in the 1920s and has been downhill ever since. Energy economists have cited it as a contributing factor to the Great Depression. 200 years ago it was laying on the ground. Now they're blowing up entire mountains now to get at what's left.

Hi D.J.
I just briefly visited pacwinds website, and with no personal experience with the company or its products, it did appear that their turbines are what are called "vertical axis turbines." I was fortunate enough, recently, to attend a conference on wind power which brought in experts, proffessionals and enthusiasts from across my home state. It was noted by one particularly knowledgable epanelist (whose expertise is wind technology engineering) that vertical axis wind turbines are not what he considers the best technology and that he would not recommend them.

thanks