by vaxomatic
Check out my post at Path to Sustainable about residential wind turbines where I do the number crunching.
Essentially, a company is building turbines, which can be put on residences, that cost about $500 and can generate 40 kWh a month. This does not sound like much but, after doing some number crunching, if every residential user of electricity in Seattle placed one of these on their home, they would produce electricity equal to about 5% of the total electricity usage in Seattle.
If Seattle had to build a new hydroelectric power plant to generate this much electricity (which is the cheapest electrical production method), it would cost about $1000 per resident.
So, City Light could buy and install a turbine for every resident and it would still be cheaper than building the equivalent cheapest electric power plant. And if the utility could get the turbines cheaper, it could put up 2 or more and still save money.
Now there are some things that need to be verified (such as the 40 kWh number) but it is these sorts of approaches that can help us do better with our energy uses.
Technorati Tags: Environment, Science, Sustainability
