By: Deborah Johnson Wood
Cascade Engineering said this week that sales of the Swift Rooftop Wind Turbine have doubled every month since its launch last October. The numbers are still small with 32 sold to-date, but the company expects March sales to number between 20 and 30 units, installed.
The Swift is a small, super quiet model designed for rooftop mounting on houses, commercial buildings and light industrial plants. On average, the turbines can generate 1,680 watts of instantaneous power at any one point. With an average 12 mph wind speed the turbines can produce 20 percent of an average home’s electricity.
The expected sales increase is partly due to warmer weather, and partly due to a 30 percent federal tax credit.
“The credit is 30 percent off the total project including installation costs, whether it’s one turbine, 10 turbines, or whatever,” says Jessica Lehti of Cascade Engineering’s renewable energy division. “We do direct sales and installation in West Michigan, and we’re creating partnerships with dealers in the U.S. and Canada who also install at the customer’s location.”
“For every one kilowatt we don’t have to purchase from a utility company, we save 2.4 kilowatts that don’t have to be generated to convert coal, natural gas and nuclear energy to electricity.”
Cascade Engineering manufactures the 7-foot-diameter blade assembly in Grand Rapids, pairs it with the rest of the components that are manufactured in Scotland, and creates kits here. The kits sell for $8,500. Completely installed and connected the price tag runs between $10,000 and $12,000.
“Sometimes customers look at the cost and they’re a bit taken aback,” Lehti says. “But the cost of wind energy isn’t going to change once you install the turbine, where cost of the utility is only going to increase.”
Source: Jessica Lehti, Cascade Engineering; Amanda Passage, Lambert Edwards & Associates
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Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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