Moving Like Water

Woohoo! Good news out of Reno, Nevada via Jetson Green. Mariah Power is now taking reservations for Windspire, their $3995 vertical axis wind turbine. I first wrote about Mariah Power and the Windspire back in September.

The price is a critical component of a successful small wind venture because, as I always say, if it doesn’t make sense financially, it’s not going to take off. We need massive scale changes to drive real energy policy reform.

I’ve written about several interesting small wind options coming up in the near term, some have even been deployed. The Windspire is one of my favorites because it combines great power output (1.2 kw) with attractive looks, low maintenance and quiet operation. The Mariah Power folks have also thought through the objections that would cause a consumer to hesitate a purchase of this sort:

Installation is simple, and can be completed by a professional installer in a matter of hours. The Windspire kit comes complete with everything you will typically need, except the concrete, so installers do not need to source numerous other components. Once installed, you can “plug ‘n produce” – plug it into your outlet to begin drawing power from the wind. Alternatively you can have it hard-wired into your building. Regular maintenance is limited to a couple of minutes a year to oil the bearings, located 9 feet above the ground.

Plus they’ve added some sizzle features, “The Windspire also includes an internal wireless modem that can continuously transmit power production information directly to your computer so you can check your power production at any time.”

Sweet!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 7:28 pm and is filed under Wind Power. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.