When the flower pots flip over the terrace, the shutters clatter against the windows or the children’s trampoline has jumped into the neighbour’s garden overnight, there is usually a simple reason for the magic. The wind, that was it. And one of the quick-tempered kind. But instead of just letting him blow through the house rules, you could take advantage of this show of strength. What wind farm operators can do on a large scale in fields and seas, the house owner can certainly also do on a small scale.
In fact, modern small wind power has been around for a while, even if compared to photovoltaics it is more of a niche existence. Small wind turbines for the home garden basically work like their large megawatt counterparts, but serve a different purpose. Only in the larger of the small ones, i.e. systems with 30 to 100 kilowatts of power that belong to businesses and farms, is it primarily a question of generating electricity economically. In the case of the micro wind systems, whose output is in the region of five kilowatts and which are located in gardens and on the roofs of private individuals, it is less about the electricity bill. It’s about self-sufficiency. And so there are many small wind turbines in places that are so remote that a grid connection is not part of the household – in front of the hut in nowhere in America, on sailing ships or in front of the research station in the Arctic.
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