Wind power cost reduction has really made progress in recent years. There was a time when installing even a small wind turbine at your home would cost $1000s. Now, if you are prepared to do some work yourself, you can reduce that down to $200 or less.
Generating electricity from wind power is becoming more and more attractive, as people take more of an interest in where their energy comes from. For small-scale generation, for example for homes, wind power is very often the first choice due to the simplicity of the technology, eliminating the need for expensive maintenance, and the widespread availability of wind. Living in the UK, I know all about days where the sun doesn’t shine, but the wind is blowing, believe me!
One of the main things holding people back from wind power is cost. Even now, fully installed systems can be more than $10,000. At this level, you may be doing something to help the planet, but you are not helping to reduce your costs, as the payback period for such an expensive system could be 20 years.
When you think about it some more, you also wonder why these systems are so expensive. Put simply, a wind power system is made up of 3 major components:
- A turbine. Like a propeller in reverse. The wind blowing on the front of it makes it rotate.
- A generator. Sounds complicated. In fact it’s just a simple dynamo. Like the one that keeps the lights on your bicycle alight without batteries. Or the one that recharges the battery on your car all the time, without you even thinking about it.
- A storage system. As you can’t change the wind’s schedule to ensure that it blows most when you need to run the washing machine, you need to store some of the electricity which you generated for future use. Fortunately, the technology for this is very well established (originally invented by Volta in 1800!).
Being so simple, there must be a way of making systems cheaper. And of course, there is:
- There are many self-assembly kits available. They are much more reasonable than the ‘fully installed’ systems, but you do need to put them together yourself. The advantage is that you get everything in the box, along with instructions of how to do it.
- If you can manage that, you might also be interested in the complete do-it-yourself solution. The costs are even lower for this type of system, but you will need to source the components yourself. This need not be daunting, as we know that all the components are relatively simple, and therefore easily available. If you know where to look it is even possible to get some of the parts you need for free. That sounds a lot better than $10,000, doesn’t it? That means that a total system price of $200 is achievable, just for doing a bit more of the work yourself. At this level it is very easy to get a payback period of less than a year.
If you know how to handle a screwdriver, why not find out how to build your own wind power system?
Click here to find out how to build your own wind power generator for less than $200.
