Hattip to Inhabitat and Treehugger for this story:
Famous housewares/furniture designer Phillipe Starck (he of the “cheap chic” Target line) has unveiled a miniature wind turbine that can be used to generate home power. The turbine, which will supposedly be available in September, purports to provide somewhere between 20-60 % of the energy needed to power the average home.
While the official specs have yet to be released, it appears, from the scale in the images, to be about the size of the average television set, which means it might be useful here in NYC. The proposed price point, and this is just for the turbine, not for any additional power storage/wiring necessities, is around $600 US.
Grain-of-salt time: with no official specs available, there’s nothing to say that this is a useful, sustainable product. Also, the all-plastic blade design is a worry, as there may be more negative impact from the production of the windmill than just simply doing a better job conserving power on your existing fossil fuel supply, or even requesting wind power through ConEd. Finally, the other parts required (power inverter, grid relay to pump overflow back into the grid, battery systems for home storage, etc.) to install a home wind system seem to be not included in the $600 price point, and would put the seemingly cheap solution out of reach for most home budgets. However, the fact that a well-renowned, widely known designer like Starck is even remotely interested in solving the problem of cheap, fossil-free home electricity is promising, if for no other reason than the attention his product will bring to the idea.
