The purpose of this section is to show the relative cost per kilowatt-hour of the different technologies described in this report. This report focuses on the home and commercial scale units available on the market today. A full hybrid system may also contain a controller that switches between the various generators and storage according to the load requirement. When considering the wind turbine for the system, the price per kilowatt drops considerably as the size of the turbine increases. Large turbines range in size from 600 kilowatts to 2.5 megawatts.
Large turbines are usually more efficient as well.
Below are five steps to evaluating the cost benefit of a wind hybrid system and its components. These steps may be followed sequentially or the reader may wish to skip to the information of interest. Step One - Determine Energy Needs and Current Costs. Here, the amount of energy that is typically used or desired from the wind hybrid system is entered. There is also a place to enter the cost being currently paid for electricity from the local utility.