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Is Backyard Wind Power Worth It?
eldavojohn wonders: "In the October IEEE Spectrum magazine, I read an article on backyard windmills and their growing feasibility. With the lowest model's price tag, it's about $9,000 and lasts for around 100,000 kilowatt-hours (20 year life), which results in 9 cents per kilowatt-hour. Now, the article mentions that if the market takes off, that price will drop. However, I was wondering what price range the windmills would have to fall to (or the energy rates have to rise to) before I could consider this? Well, the price of the windmills in the article are out of my price range right now. I don't imagine many Americans have $8k-$11k laying around and the current month's rates for energy in my neighborhood are 2.2 cents/kWh for the first 800 kWh and 1.2 cents/kWh after. I was wondering what are your thoughts on being an early adopter of wind energy? Do you think that if enough people bought these windmills, the price per kWh could compete with the local power grid's? Will it ever?"
You missed #6:
6. Instead of looking at your house energy costs, look at your car. Marry this to a Zap Xebra for your commuting, and ask yourself where else you could get a transportation system for under $19,000 that frees you from sending money to terrorists through the gas pump.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
No you can't. You can sell it back (although, good luck finding an electric board which has the infrastructure to actually put in the chargeback meter and getting around the paperwork).
But it doesn't work like "a big battery". You're just enabling them to reduce their generation requirements overnight. Now, if only that EEStor capacitor/battery thing was available, you could store 52kWh in your garage in a unit that costs $2000... if only... with one (or more) of those babies and enough generation capacity you could feasibly go completely off grid.