Using wind power for energy is a clean and eco-friendly way to get power to your home. The wind is fairly plentiful and is a renewable resource and installing a wind turbine to power your home can reduce your electric bill by up to 95%. Not only is wind power clean in itself, it helps to reduce greenhouse gases because every kilowatt of electricity produced through wind power is a kilowatt of electricity that isn’t produced through fossil fuels.
You can use wind power for individual residences, or it can also be applied to towns, cities and even countries. When used on a large scale, wind farms that consist of many wind turbines spread out over flat open areas are connected to an electrical grid and can produce energy for many homes. In fact, although only 1% of the world uses when power, in Denmark 19% of the electricity is powered by wind turbines.
These wind power fields can be rather small having only a couple of turbines or can be gigantic having over 900 turbines. The towers can range in height, but are usually at least 80 feet tall so that the blades can get up above any interference from trees and structures on the ground. The largest turbine tower is located in Hawaii and stands 20 stories tall with gigantic blades which are as big as a football field.
The wind turbine itself is a pole or hollow metal tower with three large blades at the top. The wind turns the blades which in turn creates electricity. These turbines have to be pretty tall and they aren’t really that pleasing to look at so if you want one for your home, you need to make sure that you live far from neighbors and have enough land to place the turbine in a place where it won’t be a nuisance. Although they are relatively quiet, making about as much noise as a washing machine, the constant spinning of the blades in the subtle noise can be a bit unnerving.
In order to consider using wind power for your home, you obviously need to live in an area that has wind year-round. In the US, this includes about 17 million homes according to one of the latest census. You need to have about 9 mph average wind speed to consider a wind turbine. Believe it or not you can buy a wind maps to see if your home is in a spot that would be suitable.
Typically what one does is have both the utility company and the wind turbine hooked up to the house so that when there is no wind, the house can be powered by the utility company. When it is very windy and the turbine is producing more electricity than the house needs, the excess is sold back to the utility company. Unlike with a the solar power system, there are no batteries and therefore no method to store the excess electricity for later use.