When Rena Wilson Jones and her husband, Drew, were building a house 10 years ago in a subdivision near the edge of Urbana, Illinois, they knew the property was likely to be windy, bordered as it was by open fields to the north and west. But they did not realize how fierce the winds would be until construction of their house was under way. In the decade that followed, the wind drove Wilson Jones crazy from November through April, she said, whipping across her yard and making it difficult to work in the garden. At times, it was hard to walk outside.
Eventually, the couple decided to capitalize on their affliction. Last summer, they installed a 17m wind turbine in their yard to draw electrical power from the wind.
They did the work themselves over a weekend, digging a hole for the foundation and raising the US$13,000 turbine with a winch on their Jeep. It was spinning by early September and their electricity bills dropped sharply, from US$90 to US$10 for last month -- one of the windier ones.
"Now, the faster the wind goes, the happier I am," said Wilson Jones, a director of nursing at Community Blood Services of Illinois.
Until recently, wind turbines were used primarily by those who lived outside the range of local utility lines, or who wanted to live completely off the grid. But reductions in their size and cost, along with improvements in their efficiency, are allowing suburban homeowners with no dissident leanings to speak of to install them in growing numbers, with concerns over rising energy costs and global warming driving the demand.
Sales of wind turbines have been growing steadily since 1990, when the American Wind Energy Association, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington, began tracking them.
Last year, about 7,000 small wind turbines -- defined as those that have a capacity of up to 100 kilowatts, roughly enough to power a large school -- were purchased in the US, according to the group, which said it expects sales to reach about 10,000 this year.
Residential turbines, which account for half those sales, are typically 10m to 30m tall, with outputs of 2 kilowatts to 10 kilowatts. They cost between US$12,000 and US$55,000, but in recent years, 19 states -- including California, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and Ohio -- have begun offering incentives and rebates that can cut purchase prices by up to 50 percent.
And last week, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would help states provide grants and low-interest loans for residential turbines, as well as solar panels and geothermal heat pumps. It would also offer a 30 percent federal tax credit on turbine purchases, up to US$4,000. The Senate is now considering a similar measure.
A 10 kilowatt turbine in an area with an average wind speed of 19.3km per hour can lead to a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to removing 1.3 cars from the road, according to the wind energy association. But for some, the financial savings made possible by turbines are at least as important.
Marc Schambers eliminated his payments to Southern California Edison after he installed a turbine in his backyard in the town of Phelan five years ago. Schambers, the owner of CleanMessage, a spam-filtering service, opted for an unusually tall 36m model because his electricity bills were as much as US$1,000 a month in the summer, he said, as he was paying to cool both his home office and his 167m2 house.
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