Andy Kruse closes his eyes and sees windmills in backyards across America. Well, not every backyard. Hard to imagine wind turbines on the cheek-by-jowl lots of many U.S. suburbs.
But Kruse and his partner, David Calley, who co-founded Southwest Windpower 21 years ago, are determined to bring their Skystream 3.7 to semi-suburban and rural neighborhoods and millions more homes than can now accommodate windmills.
Kruse says he wants to turn the wind turbine into a “residential power appliance” on a par with solar panels — as essential as a dishwasher in an environmentally conscious age.
However, the $12,000, 1.8-kilowatt Skystream is largely for people with as little as a half-acre of land who are hooked to the grid but want to shave their electric bills by making their own power or selling it to the utility.
It’s built, in fact, to blend into a community: the sleek, 170-pound turbine is as short as 34 feet and works with average wind speeds as low as 10 miles an hour. Blades spin quietly so as not to rattle neighbors. The turbine is suitable for 13 million U.S. homes and possibly up to 20 million if houses on less than a half-acre receive coastal wind, Kruse says.
Photo by David Kadlubowski.
Deezar on July 20th, 2007 at 6:42 am
I wonder how long it would take the average home to save/sell back enough electricity to pay for the $12,000 price tag? If we’re talking 2-3 years, then I think this might be a great product (I’d buy one if I had the room).