4. WIND POWER: Are backyard turbines in your neighborhood's future? (Greenwire, 07/14/2008)

Jenny Mandel, Greenwire reporter

HARRISONBURG, Va. -- You think you know the face of wind power -- towering turbines that stare down from ridgelines at farms, villages and highways -- but there's a backyard version, too.

Turbine makers are starting to promote pint-size installations that can take a house or small business off the grid or take a bite out of an electric bill. For people who live where the wind howls -- and where government subsidies can be had -- home-brewed wind technology holds promise.

Chesapeake Renewable Energy, a small company that sells renewable-power generators of all kinds for homes and small businesses, ran a hands-on demonstration of backyard wind technology at James Madison University here last month in a bid to demystify small turbines.

After Jim Madden, the company's president and co-founder, discussed the basics with a curious audience, he led the crowd up a small hill to where Dale D'Alessandro had attached a 1-kilowatt turbine to a prone 45-foot tower.

Dale D'Alessandro of Chesapeake Renewable Energy explains the set-up process for a small home wind system. Photo by Jenny Mandel.

After letting folks paw the turbine's rubbery blades, D'Alessandro clipped a cable from the top of the tower to a small winch on his truck's bumper. From there, black and red cables disappeared underneath toward the battery.

With little ado, D'Alessandro started the winch, the cable wound tight and the pole rose, drawing guy-wires taut as though he were raising a tent.

Once the setup was upright, the turbine blades started turning slowly, then they found wind and became a blur within 30 seconds. The crowd applauded.

Madden said such a small system is ideal to pair with batteries for an off-grid, weekend getaway cabin. The company also sells larger systems of 10 kilowatts and above that can take over power production for a modern house or provide power to a farm or another business.

Swaying local governments, neighbors

Like their gargantuan cousins, small wind towers are best installed in very windy places where they are likely to spin day and night.

To those considering a home setup, Madden has this advice: "If you think you have wind, you probably don't. If you can tell me stories about wind, you probably have enough that we can talk."

For example, he said, one potential customer had anchored the bottom of his wind chime to a porch railing, explaining that otherwise he would spend too much time on the roof fetching it.

Madden said the bungee cord was one tip that the meeting would be productive. Another is when trees on a potential customer's property show branches "flagging" to one side of the trunk from day-in, day-out gusts.

Unlike the big turbines, small ones are straightforward enough that expert installation is not strictly required. At least one manufacturer offers a system that arrives compacted to fit onto a shipping pallet, with instructions to unbox the parts into a working power system.

But installers like Madden help customers examine wind maps and assess their wind resource, pick the right tower and turbine, decide if rechargeable batteries are needed, erect the equipment and connect it all to a home's electrical system and, if possible, the electric grid.

Madden said the basic rules of thumb for a good site include winds of at least 12 miles per hour at 100 feet above the ground (what Energy Department wind maps and other sources label Class 3), an open space away from large structures set on at least an acre, and a distance of 800 feet or less to a building where the electrical equipment can be housed.

In many areas, a structure more than 35 feet tall requires a zoning or building permit, and Madden warned that most localities will take some time to wrap their bureaucracy around a small wind project.

Two former customers of Madden's who joined the seminar stressed that as important as the township's buy-in is the neighbors'. Richard Murphy, a retired engineer who put up a 35-foot tower topped by a small turbine at his Augusta County, Va., home, said he talked with his neighbors before the system went up.

"They're often concerned about what it looks like," he said, adding that he was lucky to be able to point to a nearby cell phone tower as an example, a comparison that he said alleviated most concerns.

Another question that arises often concerns noise. Murphy said his system is inaudible at 600 feet. From the demonstration blades spinning above him came a faint hum that was noticeable only with concentration; passing cars on a highway in the distance were louder and similarly faded into the background when the topic changed.

For Murphy and Chesapeake's other customer, an energy education center, asking questions and showing off their turbines are part of the package. Murphy said he received about 50 visitors after writing articles about his system for some local newspapers.

"This is an investment in saving the environment," he told Waynesboro's The News Virginian in September 2006. "Every kilowatt-hour generated from the wind means I'm not using fossil fuel."

Government incentives

A big part of the small wind equation is cost, of course, and cost is the main reason why Chesapeake Renewable Energy has done only a handful of installations in Virginia since starting up five years ago.

Michael Bergey founded Bergey WindPower 30 years ago to manufacture and sell small wind systems, and today the company boasts it is the top supplier of sub-10-kilowatt systems worldwide.

Bergey estimates that a small system with batteries today costs about $7,500 fully installed, or $10,000 to $15,000 with solar panels that complement the wind output. For a 10-kilowatt system that avoids batteries by hooking to the electric grid, typical installed costs range from $48,000 to $65,000, he said.

With such high costs, subsidies are an important driver of installations, Bergey said. Federal renewable energy incentives that cover home solar installations and large-scale wind farms don't pay out for small wind, he said, so most of the company's sales are in a handful of states that offer subsidies: California, Oregon, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Vermont and Illinois.

In areas with plenty of wind and state money, a system can pay for itself in five years, Bergey said. But without that help from behind, payback can take up to 35 years -- unacceptable to virtually any investor, though he said his company's systems should run for 50 years.

The smallest systems can be lifted into place with just a small electronic winch; others rest on a cement foundation. Photo by Jenny Mandel.

"All renewable equipment sales are throttled by the government incentives," Bergey said, "it's true all over the world." He estimated that with effective subsidies -- ones that cover 40 to 50 percent of the total cost -- volumes can go up and costs down by at least 30 percent.

"Where you've got both good wind and solar resources, we're about two-thirds of the cost, or a third less than solar," Bergey said. Good sun power is more widely available in the United States, but Bergey estimates that some 20 million U.S. households could effectively use small wind.

Waiting for Congress

The American Wind Energy Association, which Bergey headed for two terms and for which he served as a director for many years, says the small wind industry grew 14 percent last year. Solid data are not available for the years before that, the group says, but annual growth is estimated at between 14 and 25 percent each year for the last decade.

Bergey stressed that it is very much a fledgling industry, one that has seen far fewer subsidies than other renewables like small solar or large wind. From his vantage point, interest in the technology has grown this year, with inquiries up 50 percent over last year. But sales have been flat compared to last year, he said, likely because the necessary incentives are not in place.

Within the next two years, Bergey thinks strong support among the public and in Congress will bring small wind into federal funding programs.

If it does, more of the country could come to look like Oak Hills in San Bernardino County, Calif., where a perfect storm of breezes and bankrolling has given the area the highest concentration of residential wind turbines in the country.

There are about 120 Bergey systems installed in a 10-mile radius, Bergey said, allowing viewers to scan the horizon and see a field of blades whirling in the wind.

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