I live in a class 3 wind zone. Large 750kw and larger turbines are within view of my store. The wind is here, no worries there. We often have to chase our trash cans down the street because the wind is so powerfull. It's not blowing everyday but this area has an average wind speed of 11 to 15 mph. Good enough for wind turbines.

Conserving is pretty hard to do in my case. I have a store with a grill that uses large walkin coolers and freezers as well as all the equipment to go with it including 20tons of A/C. We already conserve what we can and cutting back anymore would mean turning off the A/C and then I wouldn't have any customers coming back :-) The store is large (over 3700sf) and we're open 15 to 17hrs a day 7 days a week.

At this point we're maxed out on consevation and now need to move into greener power. I'm fairly confident I can cover most of the cost with a wind farm. Doing it myself will cost half as much as dooping into buying a professional setup of this scale. Some people like Tom here recommends buying a professional system but that's if you can't build one yourself or don't have the time. I prefer to get more for my money and build them myself. One system is out of the question, more like 3 or 4 turbines should cover it at about 5 to 7kw each. Again, it wont cover it all but maybe half.

Ed pointed out 30kw as being a starting point and my early on figures before I posted were almost dead on. I think going a little higher is required to completly cover my usage but 30kw will get me going.

And again, Tom, get off the computer and get a life. Theres more to life then sitting around waiting to flame a post, really.