Southwest Windpower Gets Funding for Home Turbines
For all the talk of a new “Apollo Program” or “Manhattan Project” to meet America’s energy needs, is the answer to think small?
Plenty of big-name energy investors think so, pouring fresh funds into a company that makes tiny wind turbines for residential use. The idea is to bypass the traditional model of big, centralized power generation stations—whose need for equally large power transmission systems are creating such an expensive headache–to provide electricity on a home-by-home basis.
Investors including GE Energy Financial Services, Altira, Rockport Capital Partners, NGP Energy Technology Partners, and Chevron’s CTTV Investments participated in a new $10 million funding round for Southwest Windpower, based in Flagstaff, Ariz.
In the context of hundreds of billions of dollars of federal stimulus spending, the amount is miniscule. But the idea is big. Southwest Windpower’s Skystream residential turbine can meet more than half a typical home’s energy needs, the company says—and more cheaply than by buying power from the grid. On windy days, residential systems can sell power back to the electric grid, helping shave power bills further and giving power companies access to clean energy.
Government policy is certainly lining up behind more small-scale power. The stimulus package tweaked federal tax credits for small-scale renewables, so that homeowners can now get 30% tax credit for projects like residential wind and solar installations without a dollar limit on the project cost.
The draft Waxman-Markey energy and climate bill also would give so-called distributed power a boost. It would give utilities that tap into clean-electricity generated by residential systems three times as many credits towards meeting renewable-energy targets as they would by building a sprawling wind farm.
Not that Southwest’s system is a silver bullet, or even applicable in many parts of the country. Home turbines need plenty of space—at least an acre—and plenty of wind. Finding the right site, the company says, makes “the difference between a machine that give you lots of energy and a garden sculpture.”
