Doesn it take a really windy area to make wind turbines effective, limiting their range of application?
Actually, the economies of scale in small wind turbines makes them particularly competitive in cost for sizes above 250 watts. For daily loads as small as one kilowatt-hour per day a wind turbine will be less expensive than diesels, grid extension, or photovoltaics for virtually any wind resource above 4 m/s (9 mph). This wind resource is available in most of the developing world. For larger daily load requirements the economics of wind power get progressively better. For a 10 kW wind turbine a wind resource of only 3.5 m/s (7.2 mph) will usually make wind the least cost option. There are not many areas of the world that have average wind speeds below 3.5 m/s (7.2 mph). Much of the wind data in developing countries shows average wind speeds in the 2-3 m/s (4.5-6.7 mph) range; should wind still be considered? An all too common mistake made by project planners is to predict wind turbine performance based on historical wind data without first checking the reasonableness of that data. Mete
