Ten Steps to wind farming for people who want to profit from- rather than curse- every windy day. Depending on the conditions at your site, that profit over the lifetime of the turbine may be significant. Windy days here are a sure thing; wind farming is a new aspect of living in northeastern South Dakota and other agricultural areas.
Another certainty in life are increasing costs for gasoline, natural gas, coal, and petroleum products. Revenue from a turbine will reduce the "sting" of those increases and preserve your quality of life. If you're thinking we're full of "hot air" (or some other substance), you can read about what is happened to a in states all over the U.S.
Harvesting electricity from the wind can be done by individuals, small business owners, ag business operators, community groups, and investment groups. (It is no longer rocket science.) They may wind farm to
- diversify income from their land
- sell grid-quality electricity to power companies and co-ops or
- sell green credits/tags to reduce the burning of fossil fuels and its pollution.
Ten Steps is the Wind Rush roadmap to harvesting electricity from our wind, power that can't be embargoed, monopolized, or limited by bad intent. From the Upper Great Plains to the Missouri Breaks to the plains of Kansas, wind power can be harvested as a year-round crop.
The Ten Steps roadmap is based on Ten Steps in Building a Wind Farm, from the American Wind Energy Association, [Retrieved from source, 20 October 2005].
Electricity consumption will continue to increase along with the inevitable upward climb of petroleum products, ensuring higher value of wind power for decades to come. Ten Steps highlights the actions you can take to profit from the wind we once wished upon our worst enemy.
Most people, before they pick up a roadmap and go, figure out how much it's going to cost. It doesn't matter whether you're building something, planting something, or shopping for the best deal; if it's going to cost too much, most people won't waste their money.
(Big Oil knows this and tests the upper limit of gasoline pricing; last year it was $2.80 a gallon, this year it was $3.10. We can expect the cost of gasoline to continue drifting up based on the test results.)
A wind turbine works for you every day the wind is 17 mph or more, harvesting electricity to reduce your utility bill or for selling to a power company. It generates its "rated power" (in parenthesis below) at 30+ mph wind speed. Depending on the size of wind turbine you or your group want to install, you can expect to pay
- $1,000 - $6,000 or more for a micro wind turbine (300 W - 1.5 kW) and tower
- $27,900 - $44,900 for a small wind turbine (10 - 20kW) and
tower - $110,000 for a mid-size wind turbine (100 kW) and tower and
- $725,000 - $2,000,000 for a large wind turbine (700 kW - 2 MW) and tower.
Do contact me if you want to buy any of this blog's content or would like to have other specific content uncovered.
'Til next time. Best Wind.
