Environmental Engineering Reference
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FIGURE 10.1 Small wind turbine, 50 W, remote household, Inner Mongolia, China. Note rope on tail for
manual control, even though it has hinged tail for automatic furling.
for remote households (Figure 10.1). The small wind turbines provide enough electricity for a couple
of lights, a radio, and a small black-and-white TV. The unknown in China is how much of the present
production is for replacement of old wind turbines and how many are upgrades from the 50-100 W
size units to 200-500 W and even 1 kW turbines. Marlec and Ampair in the United Kingdom and
Southwest Windpower in the United States produce large numbers of micro wind turbines.
The United States is a leading producer of small wind turbines in the 300 W to 50 kW range.
The total installed capacity in the United States is around 70 MW, with most of the units up to 1 kW
being off-grid. In 2006, 6,800 units (capacity, 17.5 MW; average size, 2.5 kW) were sold in the
United States, with 98% produced in the United States [8]. The export market for U.S. manufactur-
ers in 2006 was 9,000 units (capacity, 18 MW; average size, 2 kW).
The National Wind Technology Center (NWTC), National Renewable Energy Laboratory
(NREL), has a development program for small wind turbines and a small wind Turbine Verification
Program [9]. The American Wind Energy Association has a small wind section, which includes
Global Market Studies, 2005 and 2007, and U.S. Roadmap [10]. The Roadmap estimates that small
wind could provide 3% of U.S. electrical demand by 2020.
10.3 DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS
Distributed systems are the installation of wind turbines on the retail side of the electric meter for
farms, ranches, agribusiness, small industries, and small-scale community wind for schools, public
lighting, government buildings, and municipal services. As an example, in Lubbock, Texas, the
American Wind Power Center and Museum installed a 660 kW unit, a cottonseed oil plant installed
ten 1 MW units, and three school districts in nearby towns have installed eight 60 kW units.
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