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<TITLE>Re: [RE-wrenches] small grid-tie wind</TITLE>
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<FONT FACE="Gill Sans, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>This is similar to our experience. The price tag of wind sometimes looks appealing, but it is hard to convince a potential buyer that it is going to cost them much more than PV over 25 years for the equivalent kWhs. I am putting an increasing effort into steering prospects towards PV.<BR>
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I will say that Proven wind turbines stand out to us in the small wind turbine world. Very solid construction and a well thought out design that has been continuously improved for almost 20 years. They have largely stayed out of the electronics side of things and left that up to SMA (they’ve made a few inverters). We have installed one and are working on another. However, you pay for what you get, and if you look at $/kWh, you have to have a very very good wind site to make the Proven more economically attractive than PV. It is still a machine with fast moving parts that lives a hard life on top of that tower.<BR>
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P.<BR>
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</FONT><FONT FACE="Gill Sans, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><B>Phil Schneider</B>, system engineer<BR>
<FONT COLOR="#FF8000">Creative Energies<BR>
</FONT>www.CreativeEnergies.biz<BR>
307.332.3410 Lander, WY<BR>
208.354.3001 Victor, ID<BR>
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<HR ALIGN=CENTER SIZE="3" WIDTH="95%"><B>From: </B>"Wind-sun.com" <windsun@wind-sun.com><BR>
<B>Reply-To: </B>RE-wrenches <re-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org><BR>
<B>Date: </B>Tue, 23 Dec 2008 10:57:20 -0700<BR>
<B>To: </B>RE-wrenches <re-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org><BR>
<B>Subject: </B>Re: [RE-wrenches] small grid-tie wind<BR>
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</FONT></SPAN><FONT SIZE="1"><FONT FACE="Monaco, Courier New"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:9.0px'>Our sales in dollar amount over the past couple of years are probably around <BR>
4% wind and 80% solar (the rest is misc batteries etc).<BR>
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Of that 4%, I would guess that it accounts for around 15% of our problems, <BR>
warranty, phone and email time spent.<BR>
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While some brands are worse than others, the simple fact is that wind is <BR>
overhyped as being cheaper, especially when people look at the inflated <BR>
claims of power output that nearly all manufacturers are guilty of. Add to <BR>
that that people usually over estimate how much wind they have, poor siting, <BR>
and the mechanical nature of the beasts, and it creates a lot more issues <BR>
than solar does.<BR>
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Northern Arizona Wind & Sun - Electricity From The Sun<BR>
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