Distributed wind has limped for years, but now it might be spurring innovation and attracting competition.
Democratic Senator Harry Reid has one in Searchlight, Nevada, and Republican former President George H.W. Bush has one in Kennebunkport, Maine.
Small wind turbines -- machines with a nameplate capacity of 100 kilowatts or less -- are turning up in backyards and at small businesses. U.S. sales for small wind sector in 2009 (the most recent numbers) increased fifteen percent from 2008 to $82.4 million, on almost 10,000 units. Compared to solar, or standard wind, that's miniscule. Still, that was in the heart of the recession.
Southwest Windpower (SWWP), the biggest among the world's 250 small wind makers and the 95 manufacturers in the U.S., has sold 170,000 turbines since its 1987 founding. Andrew Kruse, SWWP's Founder and Senior Vice President of Business Development, said his company foresees a coming U.S. market worth two billion to seven billion dollars -- and that may not be the real small wind growth opportunity.
Problems, though, abound. Unlike solar panels, small wind turbines rely on moving parts, and moving parts break down. Maintenance, inevitably, will loom as a larger issue. Wind is also a more variable resource than sunlight. To top it off, neighborhood wind advocates have to face off against neighbors afraid of turbine noise and accidents.
Before the introduction of the Skystream 600, SWWP's newest machine, Skystream 3.7 was its product. "For the newest Skystream, what we've done is increase the swept area by one meter. When we do that, we essentially double the swept area. That's resulting in a performance improvement of approximately 70 percent," Kruse said.
The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) estimates the cost of electricity generated by an "average" well-sited small turbine at fifteen to twenty cents per kilowatt-hour.
Kruse said the 600 is essentially a smarter turbine. Through its interactive Skyview system, "We can look at the power curve that's being generated," he said. "The turbine can also tell us what the wind speed is, from about four meters per second to about seventeen meters per second. Knowing what the wind speed is, we can correlate it to performance. Given that data, we can actually change the software to optimize the performance of the machine" according to prevailing weather patterns.
Such prevailing patterns also determine whether a site is best suited for rooftop solar panels, an SWWP turbine or both. Kruse said the company's dealers are trained to work with customers to make that decision.