While catching up on emails, I found this gem from our friend Fran Kunz: Wind turbines at Boston’s Museum of Science produce less electricity than expected

While we at Allegheny Treasures don’t discuss the home market, this is a telling article worth sharing to inform consumers interested in purchasing a wind turbine for their property.

Here is the opening line from the Boston Globe article:  “Experimental wind turbines installed on the rooftop of Boston’s Museum of Science have produced less electricity than predicted, prompting researchers there to urge caution before homeowners mount a turbine on their property.”

It seems four of the five turbines had issues, while all were consistent in one thing – poor performance.  The prediction was that “the turbines would collectively produce enough electricity to power almost two average American homes for one year.”  The result was that the turbines produced only “60 percent of the electricity used by a single average American home.”

On the positive side, according to the researchers, “the turbines have killed no birds nor has the museum received complaints about noise pollution or view obstruction.”

Impressive, huh?  The clunkers don’t produce appreciable electricity, even to their own standards, but, at least they didn’t kill anything in the process of failing to perform.  Now that’s the technology we need for our energy future.

Oh, and the cost?  While the museum knew that the experimental turbines would not be “cost-efficient,” one of the purposes of the lab was to record “real world” test results, said  (Wind Turbine Lab Analyst Marian) Tomusiak.

“There is no hard data on how these turbines perform, and we are willing to release the data to the world,” said Tomusiak.

And we’re happy they did release the data to the world.

But again, our real beef is with industrial wind projects, not what a homeowner wants to do with their property.  But if you’re seriously considering purchasing a wind turbine for your home generation of electricity, you might want to have the installing company provide a performance guarantee so that, if your results are similar, at least you can get your money back.