Submitted by Jeff Buster on Wed, 07/12/2006 - 10:38.
WIND TURBINES SOLD IN BIG BOX STORES
Canadian Tire stores are located in big box mall slots all across Canada. If you aren’t familiar with Canadian Tire http://www.canadiantire.ca/index.jsp , they are a hybrid of tire/battery sales/service, auto parts, hardware and paint, home wares, lawn care, bbq, and sporting goods. Canadian Tire’s gimmick is their issue of “Canadian Tire Money” as a premium on every sale to be used against future purchases. Your kids usually end up with it.
Against a backdrop of fossil fueled power boats (got me thinking about http://www.electriclaunch.com/ ) and automobiles, I felt a slight glimmer of hope for the global environment when I walked into a Canadian Tire store in Ontario last week I was looking for a DC to AC inverter for a solar powered battery system and thought Canadian Tire might have one.
Not only did Canadian Tire have a dozen sizes of inverters, they had a half dozen wattage sizes of solar panels, both amorphous and crystalline, and charge controllers, AND they had small wind turbines in bright yellow boxes ready to put on a shopping cart.
The wind turbines are still too pricey at Canadian $1,000 (400 peak watts 28 mph) and Canadian $3,000 (Whisper 100, 900 peak watts 28 mph) http://www.windenergy.com/products.htm but the GOOD NEWS is that wind turbines are being mass produced and carried for sale in a big box store along side every other consumer item.
Has anyone seen wind turbines in big box stores in the USA?
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How cool is that!
Man I would love to see that here! I have done some research on getting my own small wind turbine to mount in my back yard. I thought it would great to combine that with a small solar array to power a small wireless network that I would feed my street with broadband happiness.
Maybe sometime soon my area will have that available, we'll see.