I need about 4,500kwh/year and solar is not an option

[Anssi Viljanen]

Hello,

I'm a solar consultant from Los Angeles. I have customer whose building is not conducive to solar because of too many roof obstacles. I want to still help him out and decided to turn to you, the wind experts. Can anyone refer me wind turbine sales guy? My email is AnssiissnA@gmail.com

Thanks!

[Rob Beckers]

Hi Anssi,

How about ground-mounted solar? Making energy from wind has its own set of difficulties: You need good annual average wind speeds. It's expensive. It requires a fair amount of maintenance (adding to the expense). Neighbours and zoning laws often have issues with wind turbines. You can't site it too close to a house due to noise concerns. And did I mention you need lots of wind?

If this short list is no problem then have a look at Bergey's grid-tie turbines (http://bergey.com/). They have a 6kW and a 10kW. If you have decent wind speeds then the smaller one should get you to that energy production number. Bergey is one of the few manufacturers with turbines that are SWCC certified (a big one!), and that are likely to be around 10 years from now. Their turbines actually work as advertised, which is surprisingly rare in the small wind world. They're also quite pricey...

No, I do not get any kickbacks from them, nor do I have shares in the company... :)

-RoB-

[Anssi Viljanen]

Thank you for your message Rob. Ground-mount unfrtunately wont work because of shading issues, I appreciate the tgought though. Couple of wuestions:

Is there a nifty way to figure the average wind soeed ina given area?

You mention that it should be little bit removes from the house because of noise. My thought was right on the roof of the house. How much noise are we talking about?

Is there a way to check what the zoning says about it?

Thank you already.

Andsi