Wind energy

I was looking through my facebook and happen to see a post from my friend posting about wanting Entrepreneurial ideas and the will to do it and so I wrote to her mentioning the idea of starting a green energy company and installing Honeywell's Wind turbine. http://www.windtronics.com/

I dug around information of cost for this innovative design (no gears, it has the magnets on fan blade tip and coil generators are surrounding the tips to cut the flux and hence generate electricity) and came by this interesting article:

http://www.ecogeek.org/component/content/article/2871-would-you-buy-honeywells-home-wind-turbine

Many good points were pointed out and debated (from financial aspect, to turbine design types, to even a political view point), a good resource of references, calculations and even a free software to help you determine what's the best bet / feasibility of renewable energy: http://www.retscreen.net/ang/home.php

Check out the various designs advantages & disadvantageous in wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine

Overall I think Honeywell does have an innovative design, though the cost is quite very pricey and it's huge... about 6 feet / 1.8 meters diameter and weighing up to 150 lbs. And as usual there will be aesthetic debates as neighbors / residential management community may sue you for "putting that ugly windmill" thing.

I'm now in Seattle WA, checked out the wind maps and Seattle is so - so:

http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/wind_resource_maps.asp?stateab=wa and I know MO from where I was before this, only the NW corner would be viable and not downtown St. Louis.