Wind Turbine Electricity

Russell Tencer, CEO of United Wind talked to me about a program he offers to farmers who have a wind resource on their property. “How it works is, we look at a customer's utility bills to estimate how much they are paying per kilowatt hour over a year and how much they are using on an average month over the year. Based on that information, we are able to determine which size turbine we can offer them and how much electricity it will produce based on the wind resource on their property. We give them a proposal which says you are currently paying the utility, for example, $.11 or $.12 per kilowatt hour and you are using 100,000 kWh per year. Now we can replace that hundred thousand kilowatt hours with an on-site turbine and you can pay $.09 or $.10 per kilowatt hour. So they get an immediate discount which grows over time. We fix their costs had a low fixed escalator and that is a hedge against rising electricity costs for the next 20 years. Customers are putting up no capital to get affordable wind energy on-site and it is a turnkey solution. As soon as they sign a lease we get a building permit and connection agreement with the utility. We pay for the installation, the connection, the equipment.