Pictures from my Oklahoma trip

[Marilyn]

Originally Posted by Janet

That is exactly what some are doing in our county and a few counties to the west of us. They have it for personal use. Sounds like a pretty nice set up, although I haven't really done too much research. Just what the neighbors are saying.

I did a little research into this. The personal windmill itself is only about $4,000, but when you add in the tower and the equipment needed to transform the electricity generated to usable electricity for your home, and import and export, the cost was much much more. One windmill would not generate enought power with our average winds in this area and with the energy requirements due to our hot summers, so you would need several to do the job. It's been a while, but I figured it would take about 20 years or so to break even and that's if you never have to do any maintenance on the system. I was subscribing to a magazine for a while that was devoted to wind and solar energy. There was lots of really good information in there, but that's where I got the data to do my evaluations.

It may be that in a cooler climate with higher wind speeds it would be more feasible. Hubby and I would like to someday be totally disconnected from the grid. The only way we have been able to figure a way to do that is to have super efficient foam insulation and geothermal HVAC system utilizing a combination of wind and solar power. The insulation and equipment is soooo expensive though for even this setup the payback is pretty long with current technology and pricing.