Living Like Ed (24 page)
Authors: Jr. Ed Begley
I’m such a big fan of wind power that I’ve owned half a Zond turbine since 1985.
Wind Power
In Chapter 2, I mentioned that a sailboat is probably the most efficient form of transportation there is—because it’s powered solely by the wind. That’s not the only way to put this resource to work; wind can be harnessed to generate electricity and power your home.
Before I put a single solar electric panel on my roof, I was already putting ten homes’ worth of green power into the Southern California energy system, and I’d been doing that since 1985. Not just enough energy for my house, not enough for two, but ten homes’ worth of power.
How did I do that?
By investing in a wind turbine, a portion of a wind farm in Palm Springs, California. Specifically, I own half a Zond, a Danish wind turbine. And that half of a wind turbine has produced enough energy to power ten homes this size—maybe half a home Candy Spelling’s size—since then.
If you put a wind turbine—a high-tech kind of windmill—in the right windy location, you can harness that kinetic energy. So the wind turns the blades on a turbine. Then, in most cases, the turbine spins gears in a gear-box (like a car’s transmission), and the gearbox turns a generator, creating electricity. It’s beautifully simple.
The idea has been around for centuries. Windmills have been used on farms and in rural areas to pump water. The windmill has even become something of a nostalgic symbol of simpler, more bucolic days. Modern windmills can actually bring back some of that bucolic lifestyle. Nobody wants to live next door to a smoke-belching power plant that’s burning coal or crude oil, but wind farms are actually quite attractive.
Wind farms also operate pollution free. They don’t create
any
harmful emissions that could end up in the air and water, and they don’t use up any natural resources, like coal or oil or natural gas. Wind is abundant and free.
Best of all, wind farms can be every bit as cost effective as a modern coal-burning or natural gas-burning power plant.
When I invested in my wind turbine back in 1985, I was no millionaire. I’m not a millionaire now. But if the people who
do
have the dough would do what I did—invest in this clean, green power—that would be the end of coal and nuclear. And by the way, that wind turbine has been a good investment, too.
Residential Wind Turbines
So far, we’ve been talking about commercial wind farms, also called
large wind.
There’s also
small wind,
which refers to turbines that have a capacity of 100 kilowatt-hours or less, and these turbines are being considered more and more for residential use.
Here’s how it usually works. The wind turbine provides all—or some—of the power you need for your home, but your house is still connected to the grid. That way you can get electricity from your local utility company during those times when there’s no wind or not quite enough. If the wind turbine produces even more power than you need, you can feed that excess power into the grid via net metering—so again, you’re literally selling electricity to the utility company.
With this kind of residential wind power system, there’s no need for a battery setup like I have at home. But if you install a wind turbine and you’re not connected to the grid—if you live in a remote area or if you choose not to connect for whatever reason—then you would need a means of storing power at your home. A stand-alone battery system would provide a reserve for those days when there’s not enough wind.
It’s very common for wind turbine owners who have totally electric homes—that is, people who have no gas appliances whatsoever—to pay as little as $8 to $15 a month for their utilities nine months out of the year. True, those bills are likely to be higher in the summertime, when the air-conditioning is running, but for three-quarters of the year, they pay next to nothing for electricity, beyond the price of installing the system, of course.
What does this type of system cost? According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), a small turbine can cost anywhere from $6,000 to $22,000 installed, so the investment is not insubstantial. But in several years it will pay for itself, much like my solar electric system has.
It’s important to note that the typical residential wind turbine is not appropriate for every home. These are still pretty large devices, and the rule of thumb is that you need to have at least an acre of land to install one. They’re not legal in many more densely populated areas, they can be noisy, and they’re not always bird or wildlife friendly. It’s like having a giant Cuisinart spinning away in your backyard. To be honest, they kind of scare me.
But now there’s another option. A new type of small wind turbine is much better suited to an urban environment, and it’s more affordable. It’s called a vertical-axis wind turbine (VAWT), and I just installed a 500-watt VAWT on the roof of my garage.
This way I’ve got solar during the day and then, when the sun goes down, I’m still making energy with the VAWT, which actually runs 24/7. So you could say I’ve got a true hybrid power system for my home.
I’ll let my friend Ken Johnson, COO of PacWind, tell you more about wind power and VAWTs.
Ed’s Green Friend: PacWind
Wind power is, and always has been, the most inexpensive form of alternative energy available to us today. And because of this, it is also one of the fastest-growing segments of the alternative-energy sector. Our winds are ever present, and the amount of wind available to us is infinite. Wind turbines produce zero emissions. They relieve our dependence on foreign oil. They help keep our environment clean for future generations. And they help educate all of us about the need for constant awareness of our fragile environment.
When you think of wind power, you probably picture massive towering structures with swooping blades in our mountain passes and cornfields. This type of wind power comprises the “large wind” industry. This industry supplies clean wind energy to our power grids with the hopes of meeting future demand for power and also the critical need to convert our energy supplies to clean, renewable sources worldwide.
On a smaller scale, when people are looking to rid themselves of their ever-increasing electric bills and to help maintain our environment, they generally utilize a small wind turbine. This is a great way to produce power in rural areas. But to put a sizable dent in our current climate and energy crisis, we need to be able to harness the power of the wind in the populated areas of our world.
Propeller turbines, which dominate the current small-wind industry, have several severe drawbacks that prevent their use in these populated areas, including very high noise levels, instability, and safety concerns. So, then, how do we utilize our infinite supply of wind where we need it the most: in our cities, towns, and backyards?
PacWind has created a full line of revolutionary vertical-axis wind turbines that address this problem. The PacWind designs spin on a vertical axis, rather than a horizontal one, as propellers do, which makes them more adaptable to all types of urban and rural environments.
Our vertical-axis turbines are:
• completely silent
• stable
• safe in all wind conditions up to 100-plus mph
• virtually maintenance-free
• built to last a lifetime
And they can be installed nearly anywhere—around buildings of all shapes and sizes, on homes, boats, bridges, telecom sites, oil rigs, billboards, streetlights, parking lot lighting, and irrigation/water pumping stations. Wherever the wind blows, you can install one.
PacWind turbines can also be stacked vertically in tower configurations where large amounts of power are needed in small amounts of space. We believe these designs will change how we all look at and utilize wind energy. We like to say: Urban wind power has finally arrived.
—Ken Johnson
An Easy Way to Go Green
Say you don’t want to make any kind of an investment in your home, even the modest deposit fees involved in leasing solar equipment. Or perhaps none of these options are viable for your location. You can still get greener power into your home—probably through the very same utility company you are now using.
Here’s how it works. The local utility company goes out and buys
new
green power in the marketplace. In turn, that company offers you the chance to buy this power for your home.
This is something you can do in most places in the country. You can sign up to buy green power from Austin Energy, or from the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, or from the Eugene Water & Electric Board. You can get it from the Omaha Public Power District or the Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities or Colorado Springs Utilities. Many municipal and public utility companies across the country are offering these green power programs.
Even if your current utility company does
not
have this kind of program, your state may still allow
retail electricity competition.
If so, you can just take your business elsewhere and buy green power from another supplier that does offer the green option.
The good news is that these green programs are introducing
new
green power into the grid. It’s not a case of the companies trying to get credit for existing green energy sources—“Oh, we took title to a hydro-plant out in Idaho from 1937. We own it. See? We bought it!”—because then, what’s the
new
influence on the grid? That hydro-plant’s been cranking out green power for years.
What the LADWP green power program does is put new green power into the grid that we all use. The DWP purchases new wind turbine power. It purchases new geothermal power, new solar power—some kind of alternative power that is clean and green.
Now, there’s a little footnote to this: In my area there is an additional charge for taking part in this program.
Originally, the service was offered free to low-income customers; they could have green power for no charge. This enabled the DWP to say, “We have 100,000 homes signed up for this green power program!” They didn’t advertise the fact that it didn’t cost 50,000 of them a cent, but another 50,000 did sign up to pay an extra penny for every kilowatt of power.
Me, I pay an extra 3¢ per kilowatt-hour because I said, “Look, I heard this green power program is only 20 percent green. I want 100 percent green. Do you have such a program?” And they said, “We’ll get back to you.”
After a few days, they called back to say it would be a lot of money. I asked, “How much money?” They replied, 3¢ per kilowatt-hour more. Ooh! Three extra cents! I figured I’m using so little power anyway that the difference to my bill would be negligible, so I told them, “Fine. Charge me three cents extra a kilowatt-hour.”
Now, remember, I buy nearly all my power off-peak, and that off-peak power starts at less than 4¢ per kilowatt-hour. Even with the 3¢ I’m adding to it for the green power program and some other various charges, I’m still paying only 9¢ a kilowatt-hour, which is very cheap for power. (The average Joe or Jane in California is paying more than 12¢ per kilowatt-hour for the same power.)