Home Depot is now selling personal wind turbines at select stores in Idaho, Nevada, Texas, Utah, Wyoming and California.
Similar to Lowe's teaming up with Sungevity to offer shoppers affordable, in-store solar leasing options, the Home Depot has partnered with Flagstaff, Ariz.-based company Southwest Windpower in an effort to bring clean, renewable wind-based power to the masses.
As reported by Preston over at Jetson Green, the particular product being offered by Home Depot is the sleek, grid-connected Skystream 3.7, a unit described by Southwest Windpower as "the first compact, all-inclusive personal wind generator (with controls and inverter built in) designed to work in very low winds." Included with the actual turbine is Skyview monitoring software that allows homeowners to track the Skystream 3.7's performance from the comfort of their PC. Weighing 205 pounds, the unit comes with a five-year warranty and is capable of producing up to 400 kilowatt hours of clean electricity per month (based on preliminary data).
The total price for the Skystream 3.7, including installation costs, varies by location but the units alone are in the ballpark of $6,000. Homeowners, if qualified, will be able to knock off a few bucks of the sticker price as the turbine is eligible for local, state and federal incentives including a 30 percent federal tax credit. And although the turbines will only be available for purchase at select stores in the aforementioned states, the company plans to expand the program to "windy locations across the United States."
Source: Mother Nature News Network
Comments
HOAs
Mon, 07/11/2011 - 12:13 — readeracctHome Owners Associations are gonna love these! Buy two for your backyard.
Math...
Mon, 07/11/2011 - 11:02 — paulvailSo I pay a local unnamed electrical coop nearly $0.12/kwh presently (note to Duke/Progress customers: see, you could be a lot worse off...). By my math, 400 kwh/mo produced by the windmill is about $48. My breakeven for this device is 125 months, and for those keeping score, that's a hair over a decade.
I love the thought of green power. I want to embrace it. And I generally think very long term. But a breakeven period of anything over 10 years is a deal breaker for most folks. Everyone has a sweet spot (for large items like this, mine is at least through the warranty period -- 5 yrs). I cannot and do not want to buy something that has to be subsidized. We don't pay the true cost of energy already (nuke, coal, oil, nat gas -- it's just as subsidized as solar and wind). So there is no way to determine what the true cost will be unless we fire Congress and start over without subsidy programs. Like that'll happen. (A boy can dream.)
So here we are, with a product that doesn't pay for itself for 10 years, but the warranty dies in 5. My CFL live three years, and are at breakeven at 8 months, so I'm ahead for every old bulb I ditch now. My insulation pays me back in under five years of energy savings, and doesn't ever die (insulating is a no-brainer, best money spent). Solar hot water's payback if 4-8 years, depending on how you use it. Until this windmill is half its cost (or electricity is $0.24/kwh), it's dead out of the gate. Manufacturers need to recognize this reality. Or we pull the price supports out from under the existing big boys and really let the 'free market' demonstrate to the consumer what their energy use costs.