Originally Posted By: crazyplums
my father-in-law has a 15m (height) wind turbine on his farm which is pretty pokey. cost is about £20k, 25% grant from the green energy people brought that down a bit. what he doesn't use on the farm goes back into the national grid, which in it's first 1/4 earned him £2k ! paid for in two years barring any major catastrophy. i think it's probably more green than most other options.

Yeah. But that is because it is at the top of a 15m pole.

There are small wind turbines that you can buy to fit onto your house. They're pretty useless however. One company make one that they quote as being able to generate 1.25KW but once you dig through the specifications you find out that you need around 15m/s windspeed to generate that. 15m/s is gale force 7. At the average wind speeds they quote it will generate less than 100W.

The unit costs around £2000 as well so it will take a long time to recoup that.