Beginner's Guide to Utilizing Solar and Wind Generated Electricity

Free Money for Your System

Many states offer incentive programs for folks to buy renewable energy programs to offset the costs of purchasing and installing systems. The incentives range widely. Many folks are completely unaware of the programs that are offered in their states, and miss out on a large opportunity to offset the costs of their system. Want to find out what incentives your state offers? The University of North Carolina offers a great, comprehensive database of state incentives. Click here to pop up a window with their site.

Backup Power

If you are interested in wind energy to provide back up power during utility outages in your area, we still suggest doing whatever you can to increase the efficiency of your home first. A back-up power system like this is generally used to provide power for "priority loads " when the utility grid is unavailable. Every one has their own priority loads but they generally include the refrigerator, water pump, heater blower and some lights for example. The wind generator and battery bank are sized to power these priority loads for a period of a couple of days or how ever long you typically are without power. This system can be set up so that it powers the priority loads all the time or so that it only comes on when the grid goes down. This system also can be as small or large as your budget allows. The smaller the budget the more selective you will have to be about which loads to run.

If you want to pursue a back-up power system, the next step is for you to identify your priority loads, and determine the electricity draw (in watts) and hours of run time for each one. Further information on how to do a load calculation is located in our Learn section. Remember that if you want to pursue a utility intertie system we must have some idea of your budget or what portion of your electric bill you would like to try to offset.