Backyard wind: Turbine installer hopes to ride wave of credits

Mikkel Pates,Agweek
Published: 10/27/2008

LESTERVILLE, S.D. — Even with the always-windy election cycle winding up Nov. 4, Douglas Auch is pretty confident there’ll always be an abundance of wind on the Dakota prairies.

Electrical and other energy costs are rising and there new federal tax credits for “small wind” generating systems. He’s banking that farmers and others will want to install more wind towers for farm and home use.

Setting up shop

Last summer, the Auch family established D&Z Energy Systems, a new company that markets a variety of energy products and is a dealer-installer for the wind towers throughout the state into southern North Dakota, as well as Iowa and Nebraska. The “D” is for Douglas and the “Z” for his son, Zachary. His wife, Lynette, and daughter, Crystal, also work with the business.

The business is based at his acreage home, just a half-mile west of Lesterville, about 20 miles northwest of Yankton in South Dakota’s Yankton County.On Oct. 16, Auch put up a 45-foot tower, topped with Skystream 3.7 wind turbine, which delivers more than 1.8 kilowatts per hour but can push up past 2.6 kilowatts per hour. It is what he calls a high-efficiency, high-tech, small-scale system. It seems clear that the “small wind” soon will become a hotter topic.

On Oct. 3, 2008, Congress passed legislation for new tax credits under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. H.R. 1424 included a federal tax credit investment program that will encourage small business, farmers and homeowners to invest in small wind. Any owners that install a 100-kilowatt unit or less will be eligible to receive a tax credit of up to $1,000 per kilowatt of capacity not to exceed $ 4,000. This tax credit is available from Oct 3, 2008, through Dec. 31, 2016.

While tax credits are lesser known, a lot of people want to be “self-sufficient and harvest the wind.” Others simply want to reduce electricity costs.

Much of Auch’s career has been in construction.

He graduated from high school in 1980 in Menno, S.D., and attended what is now Mitchell (S.D.) Technical Institute. He farmed three years with his father in Lesterville, but in the mid-1980s, plagued by excessive rains and flooding, Auch sold out, went to work for a construction contractor, a manufacturing company in Yankton and then another contractor. For several years, he’s been building new homes, remodeling homes and recently started installing hoop barns for Shur-Co and their Rushmore Buildings products.

Choosing his system

At the same time, Auch has been educating himself on small wind electrical generation for nearly two years. He looked at various manufactures, but settled on Skystream windmills from Southwest Power of Flagstaff, Ariz.

“What I see right now, in the future, electricity cost is not going to go down at all,” Auch says, noting his local utility increased prices in January.

The wind generator is installed on top of a tower that converts the wind energy into electricity. The system is designed to deliver 30 percent to 80 percent of the power required by a typical home.

With this kind of system, the home is served simultaneously by a local utility and by the Skystream. It requires a wind of more than 8-miles-per-hour, “cut-in” speed to start working. It works up to 60 mph and then shuts down for safety purpose.

As the wind increases, the proportion of power provided by the generator increases and the utility power goes down. If the Skystream produces more electricity than the household uses, it can be hooked up so the utility meter can “spin” backward and supply power back to the grid. The tower can be used to reduce consumption during “peak load” periods, which the utilities tend to like.

Auch acknowledges there are several brands for small wind production on the market.

His story is that the Skystream system is a fraction of the money of other brands, costing $12,000 to $15,000 installed. The Skystream’s system has an “inverter,” which charges the electricity, all built in the head. That makes it quieter and more efficient than other designs. The only thing in the house is a monitor.

“Other systems don’t have that, where you can adjust and ‘tune’ the top right from the house,” he says. “If something goes wrong with the inverter, the manufacturer can diagnose and adjust the problem remotely, via computer.”

Another major brand, Bergey Windpower Co. of Norman, Okla., has been around since the 1970s and has machines operating in all 50 states and 40 countries. On those systems, the generator is at the top and the inverter is below.

Another bigger player is Endurance Wind Power, with sales and administration offices in Canada’s British Columbia, with research development and manufacturing in Spanish Fork, Utah. The Endurance systems are sized to closely match energy consumption of the average U.S. household demand (10,000 to 15,000 kilowatt hours per year) when installed in a moderate wind resource (10 to 12 mph).

Auch says the needs of a houseshold or business use vary dramatically. Some people he knows in the Yankton area use 7,500 kilowatt hours per year, while others average 2,600 kilowatt hours per year.

“If a farmer milks cows, it’s a different story. He uses a lot more electricity than a farmer who grain-farms,” he says.

Personal wind generation towers are going up “like crazy” in the Rapid City, S.D., area he says. Many are putting them up with new home installations. He thinks there may a half-dozen dealers in the state and maybe 24 working systems in the state.

For information, contact D&Z Energy Systems, (605) 364-7318, home; (605) 660-5731, cell; or e-mail dzenergysystems@gmail.com. More information can be obtained at www.windenergy.com.