How much does a Home Wind Power generator system cost?

Answer 1

There is a person living off grid a few miles from me. When his house was built it would have cost $15000 to get poles installed to connect to the power grid. That became his budget for the solar/wind energy system. He installed solar heating panels, solar PV and a 1kW wind turbine to charge a battery bank, and even purchased a small portable generator. The system has been operating for several years. Payback on this system was immediate, and he hasn't had an electric bill since.

I'm putting together a small wind system in my back yard. So far I have the concrete foundations installed for a 80 foot guyed tower. Inside, the equipment rack is pretty much complete with the exception of the dump load. Pictures and diagrams are on my web page.
http://members.rennlist.org/warren/wind.html

Payback on the system is somewhere on the order of about 15 years, but I'm not building it to save money. If I were to smoke or go bar hopping regularly an equivalent amount of money would have been spent long ago. This way I have something concrete at the end of the day and it gives me something to experiment with and learn about.

Answer 2

Too much - otherwise everyone would have it. You have to consider the 'payback' involved. If you spend $15,000 for a system and save $1000 a year, that is 15 year simple payback. The question then is would you have gained more money than that by investing it elsewhere. You would normally look for items with a 1 to 5 year payback for home, unless you are sure you are planning to stay there. In this case if you stay for 15 years, you would break even. You wouldn't have saved anything.

Answer 3

anywhere from $3 to $3,000,000 depending on what you want to power. but you may be able to get a system installed for around $15,000 that will work for most of your needs...just think if we as a nation spent our war department money on building this sort of thing instead of killing people Wal-Mart would sell them for $4.00 like generic drugs...