Cool Technology of the Week

My parents recently moved to a new home on a hillside in Southern California. It has a great view and frequent gentle breeze. My father and I were talking about windpower as means of adding green energy to their property. Green energy sounded great, but I was not sure it was ready for the mainstream of the average homeowner. It's not as if you can buy wind turbines or Bloom boxes at Home Depot.

Whoops - it never pays to bet against the rapid advancement of technology. You can buy a complete home wind turbine at Lowe's right now for under $600.

The Southwest Windpower 400 Watt Wind Generator generates 400 Watts at 28mph, has 3 Carbon fiber composite blades to ensure low wind noise, and electronic torque control for overspeed protection up to 110mph

What can you do with 400 watts?

Remember back to physics - Watts= Amps * Voltage i.e. work is done at a rate of one watt when one ampere flows through a potential difference of one volt. 1W=1V×1A

In my cool technology of the week on February 26, I outlined my effort to replace the light bulbs in my house with high efficiency LEDs.

I've found that I can light an entire room brightly with 50 watts of LED power (each 40 watt equivalent bulb uses only 8 watts to generate 350 lumens of light)

That means I could easily light my entire home with wind power.

Hey Dad, maybe wind power from Lowe's for Father's Day?