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$18k for your own windmill

The Chronicle Herald Business
May 10, 2008
www.thechronicleherald.ca
By Brian Medel

MAVILLETTE, Digby County — Micro turbines are coming.

They’re not toys for rambunctious boys. They’re actually personal wind­mills for families in need of cheap elec­tricity.

“It was designed to power a single home," said Robert Foster, who installed one only days ago.

A Skystream 3.7 micro turbine is up and spinning this week at his Digby County home where the wind seldom stops blowing.

A generator weighing 77 kilograms sits atop a 15.25-metre pole near Mavillette Beach on St. Marys Bay, about 10 kilometres south of Meteghan.

When the three fibreglass composite blades are spinning, they have a diame­ter of 3.72 metres.

On a breezy day it sounds a lot like a group of racing bicycles speeding past — in low gear.

Not very noisy.

It’s held in place by some 12 tonnes of concrete.

This windmill is 21 metres from Mr. Foster’s back door. Sitting in his kitch­en, he can’t hear the blades whirring away.

He works in the home improvement industry in Maine and summers at Mavillette. Now he manages a new Nova Scotia company, Western Shore Windpower, which specializes in residential wind­mills.

Fifty of the units are now up and running in Maine but the Mavillette turbine installed this week is the new Nova Scotia company’s first.

“They were engineered in collabora­tion with the U.S. Department of Ener­gy as an alternative energy source to power a single residence," said Mr. Fos­ter “It will collect, probably out here, somewhere between 600 and 800 kilo­watt hours a month, which is all I need," said Mr. Foster, who lives alone. A busy family of four would use more juice.

“This will cover between 60 and 100 per cent of household (electricity) needs," depending on the size of the family," he said.

Mr. Foster said purchasing a person­al wind turbine still makes economic sense. “The price of power here is still pretty reasonable," so it could take 12 years or so to make a unit pay for itself — maybe less in Nova Scotia, he said.

He’s hoping to install them here for under $18,000.

The units are guaranteed for five years but have a lifespan of 20 years, said Mr. Foster.

Annual maintenance is minimal and really involves observing the unit. And there is no annual greasing or paint­ing, he said.

Initially, these units are much less expensive than solar setups and pro­duce greater energy yields, he said.

“In terms of best value for your dollar, wind energy has it hands down." These units can be mounted on tow­ers as low as 10 metres or as high as 33 metres.

Mr. Foster said he’s unaware of any special zoning regulations in Nova Sco­tia for micro turbines because they’re so new.

However, there is something called an interconnection agreement one must sign with Nova Scotia Power when erecting a private windmill.

“It’s basically a contract between you and Nova Scotia Power," he said. The homeowner is still hooked up to the power grid, and will have to pay for any electricity not produced by a wind tur­bine.