My husband and I are looking into putting up a wind turbine for our own personal use. We have lots of wind and no problem with space so we think it should work but we need the wind to help us with heating our home more than in reducing our electric bill, although that would be nice too. We have a new home with radiant floor heat that presently is heated with a boiler and fuel oil. We were told that it would not be cost effective to try to use the wind to heat our water for the radiant heat and we should look into solar thermal. We live in northern new york and the solar is great in the summer but the winters aren't so good for solar. Can anyone give us advice on this?
Thanks in advance.

Dear Kris,

go ahead any technical Item is market available. To design the specific need and size of Trubine I recommend to seek consultancy.

Many small sized wind island systems combinet with
Photovoltaics to compensate low wind periods in summer. You could design your system 100 % grid independant (batery storage, Solar etc.) or you could install switching devices in order to switch public supplies when the Wind is low.

But if you don fear the challage i aadvice to install a Trubine bigger than 600 Kw in order to gain scalling effects. This Trubine will probably supply much more than your consumption, but to a very ecomomic rate. (8-12 cents /kWh)

If we consider small scale Turbine the production cost double of more, because of higher specific investment.

Windy Regards form Germany

Heiko