Wow. I can't believe how expensive solar panels are. This really is a great tool to give you an idea how much solar panels would cost. What about wind... does anyone know of any affordable residential wind turbine solutions?
1) Performance - best performance is when the wind blows in a straight line, houses and other features will deflect it making it turbulent.
2) Noise - turbines are noisy, you're not likely to have neighbors appreciate it.
3) Mounting - Mounting one requires either a pole, or it can be mounted to the roof. However, roof mountings tend to cause issues (read damage) due to vibrations transferred through the mounting.
Not good for a residential neighborhood, but perhaps if you've got several acres of clear land?
Aren't there turbines with a vertical shaft, which don't need a large tower? I saw one a few months ago, built especially for city rooftops where you don't have that much space and generally need something not that expensive. You'd still have the problem of turbulences though (i.e. non-optimal performance generation)
under Solar City's finance model (and possibly others) payments on solar panels are less than buying the same amount of electricity off the grid. That includes maintenance on the panels for 30 years.
This is assuming you get adequate sunlight, which we do here in Denver.
