Word: windings
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...already installed solar panels on his house in Coopersville, Mich., but he was eager to get a little bit greener. So the 52-year-old Navy veteran bought something that might seem more at home in the Dutch countryside than in a small town in western Michigan: a personal wind turbine. The 33-ft.-high (10 m) machine, whose blades span 7 ft. (2 m) in diameter, sits next to the pole barn 100 yd. (90 m) from Morrell's home. (Turbines like Morrell's convert the energy of the wind to electricity, while old windmills are geared for mechanical...
Thanks in part to a new tax credit put into place by Congress in October, owning your own wind turbine could be the next green trend. While it's true that wind power has taken off in the U.S. - adding more in new capacity to the electrical grid last year than any other power source - most of that increase comes from utility wind farms, vast fields of turbines more than 300 ft. (90 m) tall. For homeowners seeking renewable-energy sources, however, better-known solar power has always dominated. Home solar power currently generates 12 times as much energy...
What's really held back residential wind power has been the lack of federal subsidies, which have fed the growth of other renewables like solar and large-scale wind. "We've had zero federal assistance," says Ron Stimmel, AWEA's small-wind expert...
...when Congress passed the bailout bill this fall, it added a 30% tax credit for small-wind projects, which Stimmel believes will enable the industry to grow 40% next year, even in a down market...
...other words, small wind may not be small potatoes for much longer. And that could be a boost for domestic green businesses as well: U.S. firms control 98% of the small-wind market, in contrast to large-scale wind and solar, in which foreign manufacturers dominate. "Since the tax credit, our phone has been ringing off the hook," says Andy Kruse, a co-founder of Southwest Windpower, a major small-scale-turbine producer in Flagstaff, Ariz. "It's really exciting to see the market coming...