Hazzah!

Oh my dear; I've found it a Cheap windmill. Oddly enough there's a lot of irony to be had by purchasing "Green" technology made in China, due to the complete lack of environmental regulation chances are whatever windmill or solar cell you may be considering to purchase was probably made there. Don't believe me? I dare you not to believe me.



So me being the semi-anarchistic down with the man with his hands in my pockets kind of guy would like to build my home out of recycled shipping containers. That means i have to find a local source for these things; the closest major port to my home town is Montreal and I can get 40 ft High-Cubes sent over for around 3000 each used. That's around 350 sq feet of living space ($8.50 / sq foot) with an unfinished 9'6" ceiling. So I could buy 4 and lay a foundation for them and then get a whole bunch of industrial building materials including crazy insulation; more on those here:



Container Bay



Now it's called sustainable living, since I cannot find a tire dump anywhere near by; Automobile tires must be recycled by law! Dumps will actually give you money to take them away and once filled with around 16KG of dirt each they tend to make very good walls after a light coating of concrete, not to mention in glass and mass designs you end up with a 3' thermal mass, in terms of solar heating that's about a weeks worth of heat. But I digress this posting is about the irony of Chinese wind mills being sold to Americans under an American branding. Obviously you lay the filled tires like interlocking brick.



Here's the Raw Jiggy:



Water Treatment, power distribution, heat generation all in one place, brilliant idea and the company is in Mississauga:

Eco Nomad



Now it's all nice and good to have a home with in floor radiant heat with bamboo flooring and Italian and German kitchens and baths and lot's of large solar windows with furniture that was made in an environmentally friendly manner however without power what good is it?



We forget that most things in this country are made in China even if they are branded here. Here's the excellent example:



Bergey Wind Power is probably one of the most if not the most successful supplier of 5Kw and 10Kw windmills. The windmill by itself from them directly (the 10Kw is actually a 7.5Kw) is around 10K; that's roughly $1.33 per Kw, not including the requierd Tower to mount the thing you'll want at least 18M to 20M so another $5K to $10K there. So a 10Kw windmill made in the USA for 20K all told puts the cost of that KW of production even higher.



Bergey Wind Power



Now, enter China Best; they are a portal with lots of good engrish! I love engrish; it makes me laugh.

China best Wind Power

Now they sell a 20Kw windmill with an 18M STEEL MONOPOLE TOWER for around a $1 / KW. I'm in sheer amazement, I'm assuming slave labor, the killing of small tracts of land via coal based steel production somewhere in mainland china and the raping and pillaging of some other small African country is involved (re Darfour) in the completely low low price. Or maybe they just have really really really cheap labor. Note the 5Kw looks a lot like the Bergey.



As for Batteries and control:

Outback Power is the world leader in the design and sales of Charger / Inverter / Controllers. These systems allow you to take your windmill and or solar panels and connect them to a battery bank since it's not always windy or sunny.

Outbackpower



As for batteries when dealing with backup power deep cycle lead acid gel packed batteries are what are required. The technology was originally developed for Diesel electric submarines during WWII, then utilized by the Telecommunication industry as a means to maintain ring voltages on lines only recently removed the legacy of which is a -48V power standard.

Again China to the rescue:

BSB Power's GEL Plus2-2000

This thing is a 2V 2000Ah battery with a service life of 15 years. At $500 each one could build a 2000Ah battery bank for 12K + shipping. Hell they even sent me wiring diagrams.



So all told freedom from the grid may be had for around 45K, since I'm hoping to save that much or more on building materials my home will still cost around $120 per sq. ft however my utility bill will be replaced with a cheque and I'll have enough power to have at least two racks of computer equipment on site. Now if I could just find a cheap rural optical provider I'd be set, then again "Cheap" and "Optical" never reside in the same sentence.



Well I guess once i have a fusion reactor on site I can simply use Boron and Hydrogen but that's at least a Decade away.