While Mr. Pickens is planning to carpet Texas with windmills and transmission lines, lots of inventors, entrepreneurs, and homeowners see a potential energy bonanza in wind power on a much smaller scale.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has suggested that his city could sprout small windmills from hundreds of rooftops and bridges, and in fact there are operating windmills providing some power at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Another suggested venue for small turbine wind generation is the acres of flat roofs in big box shopping malls.
There are wind turbines operating on a roof at Boston's Logan Airport and the garage in California where late-night television host Jay Leno works on his legendary car collection.
Micro-turbines, machinery of a size that will fit on a residential roof, are in their infancy, but the interest is strong. For some people it has become as much a hobby as an environmental statement and everyone seems fascinated when they spot a windmill and see the blades turning in the breeze.
But before every rooftop in suburbia sprouts a windmill, there are a lot of problems to overcome.
- Many home owners' associations have rushed to pass covenants that prohibit wind turbines in their neighborhoods of the basis of aesthetics; a strange reaction from a generation that grew up under a canopy of television antennas.
- A city or a suburban rooftop is not the most efficient place to generate wind power. Sloped roofs create an engineering challenge and the proximity of trees and surrounding houses make wind currents capricious and unpredictable.
- Current technology requires higher sustained winds than is common in many places and the existing generation of micro turbines do not generate enough electricity to make economic sense.
- Purchase and installation are not cheap
Still the interest is there and is growing. Next we will take a look at what is out there in the way of equipment, where to find it, and what it costs.