McKenna wind turbine hits milestone

Friday, May 27, 2011

by Brian S. Orban

McKenna Charter High School's wind turbine not only provides power to the school, it's also used as a teaching tool.

Nearly 10 months after its students finished construction on an alternative energy project at its campus, a local school reached a milestone of sorts in early May.

In recent weeks, the wind turbine at Richard McKenna Charter High School passed the one megawatt-hour mark by generating 1,000 kilowatt hours.

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Can they make me one?

I'd love to cut fuel bills and have free energy that does not take the resources of our childrens future.

-- Posted by mlatchu on Fri, May 27, 2011, at 3:13 PM
We plan on getting one of these for our farm. They run around $15k after GOV rebates and such, but Im sure it will pay for itself real fast with all our wind. There are several companies in Boise that install them. They tie them directly to you powerbox, so when you are not using the energy, Idaho Power is buying it from you... real nice set up, one of the best for our area. If you are looking at getting one, have them come out and do a wind survey, we are lucky, our farm is sitting in a nice wind tunnel between the other houses in the area, not good in the winter though.. all the snow drifts...

-- Posted by scoutin on Sun, May 29, 2011, at 10:39 AM
Just a quick note on this, the results of the McKenna turbine are not typical due to its less than optimum installation (lower monopole tower height and multiple obstructions close by). We have the same turbine, and its produced 450 KwH in the last thirty days, that's close to half of what the McKenna turbine has done in the last ten months (those results also not typical, as it has been a very windy last thirty days...). However, for the same amount on money that was spent on the turbine our tracking solar array, on average, produces almost twice the power of our turbine. Although we're happy with both projects, if you're looking at something like this our recommendation would have to be solar versus wind.

-- Posted by Northside on Sun, May 29, 2011, at 11:46 AM

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