Serious question. I live in a hilly area where there's a lot of wind much of the time. Is there some kind of residential analog to rooftop solar I could install? Or is the infrastructure just too expensive and complicated for a hobbyist?
You can buy something in the 1-3 KW range at Home Depot. I've seen one in person at an off-grid house and the owner couldn't understand why people even used solar. This was 15+ years ago though, so solar was MUCH more expensive than today while a turbine I'd imagine was about the same?
I assume it'd be super expensive to grid tie it though, right? Sorry. I'm a total noob at this stuff.
I suspect the intermittency of wind is higher and requires a decent amount of energy storage to smoothen the output. As energy storage gets cheaper, probably off grid installations can complement their solar installations with wind as well, depending on the location.
Residential wind power? Wind energy is something that greatly benefits from scale: it’s why the current and next generation of turbines have rotor diameters exceeding hundreds of meters. You’d probably be much better served by using solar panels.
Sure. I just meant for fun or for a project. The biggest cost is probably grid tying, right?