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Residential wind has some issues:

1) Performance - best performance is when the wind blows in a straight line, houses and other features will deflect it making it turbulent.

2) Noise - turbines are noisy, you're not likely to have neighbors appreciate it.

3) Mounting - Mounting one requires either a pole, or it can be mounted to the roof. However, roof mountings tend to cause issues (read damage) due to vibrations transferred through the mounting.

Not good for a residential neighborhood, but perhaps if you've got several acres of clear land?



Aren't there turbines with a vertical shaft, which don't need a large tower? I saw one a few months ago, built especially for city rooftops where you don't have that much space and generally need something not that expensive. You'd still have the problem of turbulences though (i.e. non-optimal performance generation)


Yes but vertical axis windmills take more ground space and make even more noise than their horizontal-axis counterparts.




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