Renewable Energy at Home: A Look into Purchasing a Wind Turbine for Home Use—The Cost of Blindly Relying on One Tool in Decision Making

Abstract

Small-scale wind turbines simulations are not as accurate when it comes to costs as compared to the large-scale wind turbines, where costs are more or less standard. In this paper, an analysis was done on a decision for a wind turbine investment in Bellingham, Whatcom County, Washington. It was revealed that a decision taken based only on a software tool could be destructive for the sustainability of a project, since not taking into account specific taxation, net metering, installation, maintenance costs, etc., beyond the optimization that the tool offers, can hide the truth.

Keywords

• green communities
• energy independence
• HOMER
• wind turbines