A micro wind turbine is a very small wind turbine designed to provide electric power to a home or other local site for a variety of applications including:

 

AC power

DC direct supply to fluorescent lighting

DC supply for water heating

Battery charging (transport)

Hybrid ground source heat pump systems

Hybrid micro wind/ photovoltaic systems

 

Micro wind turbines are becoming rapidly more popular around the world. Especially when coupled with solar modules, they have already revolutionized living in remote homes off-the-utility grid. The increasing popularity of micro wind turbines has also opened up new applications previously considered off-limits to wind energy, such as charging electric fences and powering remote telephone call boxes, once the sole domain of solar cells.

 

StealthGen wind micro turbine

 

Micro wind turbines have been around for decades for use on sailboats but gained increasing prominence in the 1990s as their broader potential for off-the-grid applications on land became more widely known. Over the next decade they promise to play a major role as a distributed energy resource.