Via MetaEfficient, I read about Windspire, a narrow, 30-foot tall windmill targeted at home use. From an article on EcoWorld:
Mariah Power’s “Windspire†has the potential to be installed in places where a horizontal rotor might not be practical. Because the rotor turns around on a single tower that depends on one concrete pier anchored below ground, there is a smaller footprint for this unit. The unit is designed to facilitate easy installation, and is rated to survive in winds up to 100 mph. The minimum wind speed necessary for the unit to begin generating power is only 8 mph.
You can also watch a video (WMV) of the Windspire in action in particularly high winds.
I shouldn’t pick on Mariah Power, but their website copy and design is shamefully poor, and doesn’t reflect what’s apparently a pretty cool product. They make the classic mistake in the copy–they write about the company and products instead of writing about their customers and how they (can, will and do) use the windspire. I couldn’t find answers, in layman’s terms, to my two very basic questions: how much power will it generate (and therefore how much money will it save me) and, practically speaking, what wind speed do I require to make it worth my while.
They need to hire us, stat. Besides, we’ve already worked with another wind energy company.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
The geek in me wants a graph of power output ( in watts) vs wind speed. At the very least, they should have a downloadable pdf of the specs,
Darren, Gar: if a wind-turbine company won’t post performance numbers, they’re effectively saying it’s terrible.
And indeed, a little Goo-wiking later, I find that this product is an implementation of a Savonius design.
The line on Savonius turbines? “Savonius turbines are used whenever cost or reliability is much more important than efficiency.”
I suspect you’d be better off powering your house with a stationary bicycle.
Ryan: “if a wind-turbine company won’t post performance numbers, they’re effectively saying it’s terrible.”
In light of how many other questions the website doesn’t answer, and how poor their information design is, your logic is faulty. There is a world of difference between “won’t” and “doesn’t”.
I don’t want to say you’re wrong, but here’s the thought soundtrack from my experience:
“Oooh, a ‘new’ application of an old technology, maybe they’re onto something. Looks interesting, small footprint, low noise, hmmm what’s the wattage? Only 1kW, that’s low, so I guess it’s a tradeoff. How much does it cost. OK, it’s a beta product, they’re fishing for customers. But there’s no risk and no commitment, heck, I should really sign up in case this goes somewhere.”
You see, I live in a somewhat windy place, and I like the idea of renewables, so I’m half considering putting a windmill on a mast on my garage–you could call it my permanent carbon offset. But it’s a dense neighborhood, and I don’t want to get into a fight with my uphill neighbor about his views, so this design has significant advantages to me. In this light, Ryan’s dissing is really just egocentricitry–hello, there are other people in this world with needs different from yours.
In all this, the website design (or your alledged lack thereof) was absolutely of no relevance to me. I found enough information (maybe the wattage was added after you mentioned it to them–you did give the courtesy of emailing your comments to them simultaneously, I hope). You are correct that the wind speed specs (or Gar’s power graph) are important, but since it’s a beta–which is hinted at but can’t really be admitted to in a non-internet company, I imagine the design isn’t final. In other words, like Flickr et al. they’re tweaking it in response to the potential customer interest. I imagine it’s a very small company (those 3 email addresses on the page you link) with a single product, and I imagine VC isn’t as plentiful in their field.
After rereading your post, I went to the website again and looked at the design (that is, I subtracted my subjectivity due to interest in the product). I find it is simple and fairly clear, nothing fancy, but easy to navigate. Sure there are some amateurish gaffes like the page title “product” and their homepage has some extra whitespace on my browser, but I think they do an honest job presenting their tiny company in a decent light. The lack of info that you sought is a developmental problem, not a display problem. So I think you were rather unfair to them, and personally I wouldn’t be inclined to give my business to someone who treated me like that.
Disclaimer (sadly necessary): I am in no way affiliated with or compensated by any business mentioned in this thread, nor any competing businesses in the same field(s).
Andy: I hate because I love.
Specifically, I think that solar/wind have fairly good chances of eventually becoming functional choices for both personal and general power. The problem is that neither technology is especially good (though give them a few years…), and there are real problems that their fans rarely acknowledge, and lots of people are selling products that are marginal at best, and if I value cost recovery in a reasonable timeframe, it’s because I think if nothing else, that’s a pretty important bright line for mass adoption. It worked for compact fluorescents….
I can understand that if footprint and visual obnoxiousness are key considerations, the Windspire has much to recommend it.
But surely trashing a power-generating device for not producing much power is still within the realm of reason, not egocentricity!
I would, however, point out that what little we know of the Windspire’s performance should lead us to suspect it will not power very much. But at least it will show off your green cred to the neighbours, and it costs less than some bicycles.
Darren: your point about “won’t” versus “doesn’t” is well taken. I’ll be cautiously pessimistic until I get some power-per-wind figures. Nah, that’s no fun: I will rashly assert that knowing what little I do about this windmill, it probably will sit at the inefficient margins of the already-marginal home windpower industry.
Disclaimer: okay, I am a little egocentric….
i dont see how you think the western wind energy is so much better than mariah’s page.. i think you are just out for the self promotion..
and btw, this site is created with wordpress, i bet you cant even write html, css, js or the like.
self promoter: Maybe you missed the URL for this site. That’s my name, so, yeah, I occasionally promote stuff I’m associated with. If that’s problematic, go visit my Links page and check out some other sites.
“i bet you cant even write html, css, js or the like.”
You wound me, sir! You cut runs deep! Daylight…fading…must recover…to respond…
Dude, are you serious? Does this look like a standard WP template to you? It’d be cool if there was a standard template with my photo in it, but I don’t think people would go for it.
For the record, I have intermediate web design skills. I could build a decent website, but I wouldn’t call myself a web designer.
And, out of curiousity, why would you choose that strange insult? Is that your first measure of a man?
Andy: I’m glad the site’s design has no relevance to you. It’s got plenty to nearly every other web user. We always judge a book by its cover, and a website by its design.
I don’t have the time to itemize the sundry design and writing mistakes they make, but by modern standards, they are legion.
There are plenty of one person companies who have great-looking, informative websites, so their company size is no excuse. In fact, if their website is all the marketing they can afford, then it had better be fantastic. This is doubly true if its ‘beta’.
As for the wattage–I specifically indicated that they didn’t answer my questions in layman’s terms. I don’t know, practically speaking, what 1kW means, and I don’t think most other consumers do, either. Simply listing the wattage, therefore, is insufficient.
They should be contextualizing the power generation in terms that their average site visitor can understand. Will 1kW power a lamp or all of my kitchen appliances? I don’t know, and they should tell me.
Two threads:
1. About the value of the the windmill itself: in the summer after my first year of college, I worked full-time to buy a 486 PC for about USD 2700. I mostly played games on it, but I doubt I ever played enough Tetris, Duke Nukem, or Revenge of Doh to make it worthwhile (assuming an arcade credit costs 25 cents). Sure it was cool and ran fractint faster than my roomate’s 386, but if you factor in the wasted study time at the rate I paid for college, it was a net loss. When I think back on it, I wonder what was so fascinating in that time before the internet that would entice me to plunk down my savings from a whole summer of work. The moral of the story is that I like to think of myself as a rational consumer, and yet 1kW sounds fine to me, because I like the idea of having a windmill.
Ryan, I just don’t see how you can rationally criticize what is being sold as a consumer product. Do you criticize the 19-inch TVs at your local appliance store for being too small? Once we can see more specifications and the final price (it says USD 3995 on the signup page), then we can compare it to other products and say weather (pun intended) the price per kW or the price per inverse dB of noise is better or worse. I understand your wanting it to be better, we’re all waiting for the magic renewable energy that will power the future, and this is _probably_ not it. But I don’t see what good it does to dismiss the incremental steps and false paths it takes to get there. I sometimes laugh at the early adopters myself, but now I find myself wanting to be one. I justify this by thinking that early adoption of renewable energy is less frivolous than that of computers/tech.
Another factor that might actually make this an economically rational decision for _ME_ is that electricity costs about 0.35 USD/kW where I live, about 3 times the US (and assuming Canada) average. Also, there is no power grid on an island, so outages can last longer, in which case it might be nice to have a source of potential backup (I know, the wind isn’t reliable either–and I’d need to manually override the grid intertie). And what about 3rd world applications in places where lack of sun makes solar photovoltaics impracticable, this might be a low-cost low-maintenance alternative for the few kW they need.
2. About the quality of the website: the windmill might suck (or maybe I should say blow), but the website got the message across and got me hooked. You can fault it for a lot of things, but you can’t call it ineffective (without further audience studies–more on this below). Darren, I think you’re applying online marketing and web-based business logic to a brick-and-mortar outfit. I know there is a tendency to mimic the online business model offline (“fantastic marketing”), I can’t fault you for self-promotion, but as long as comments are turned on I can tell you I think it is misguided.
Yes, I know I’m talking about the website of a brick-and-mortar company here, but more in terms of web 1.0 (product presentation–which admitedly they don’t do perfectly–and mailing lists), as opposed to the web 2.0 create-a-buzz-and-let-it-spread-through-connected-communities (I know I’m being unfair, but that’s my interpretation of “join the conversation online and tell the web your story”“).
Most of all, Darren, I think you are misinterpreting this company’s audience. You are successful at marketing to the online digerati (those who use web apps, online voting, etc.), and perhaps an offline company may want to reach those people, but I think that is not the case for this renewable energy startup. I think they want to reach people who will install a wind appliance within the next year, or those likely to be convinced to do so. I see those people as homesteaders, outdoors people, homeowners, tinkerers, green voters, Mother Earth News readers, organic gardeners, etc. Of course there may be some cross-over with the people you can reach effectively, but not as much as you might think. And for the audience I just mentioned, I think the website is quite adequate, and therefore assuming the cheapness you see means it was cheap, I assume it is quite cost-effective.
The best example is precisely the wattage. Anyone seriously looking into alternative energy (again, their target audience bulls-eye) understands wattage at least broadly (and their website says 1000 Watts, I’m the one who abbreviated to 1kW). I have to assume you grew up with incandescent light bulbs and thus can tell the difference between 25W and 100W (even though most energy is dissipated as heat with incandescents). I’m also assuming you can do division and see that 1000W can power 10 bulbs rated 100W–or 37 compact fluorescents rated 27W giving off the same light. The fact that you can make a nice website and feign ignorance of household basics suggests that the geek you speak is not this company’s preferred method of communication to its potential customers. Obviously, they could want to grow in that direction and you might be the person to help them, but to repeat myself, given what I percieve about their company from their website, I think you were unfair to fault them for doing what they did.
By the way, I did forget to thank you for blogging about this product, I just signed up on their mailing list. I need to research zoning and building codes in my area before I sign up for their waiting list.
PS: Enjoy la douce France, I am myself being renewed by springtime in the foothills of the Austrian Alps at the moment.
Andy: Every company needs a good-looking, easy to navigate, well-optimized, well-written, compelling website. That’s whether they sell hair gel or do, I don’t know, online Web 2.0 integration bollocks. The principles are, in fact, almost exactly the same.
In addition to the online marketing work that’s becoming our bread and butter, we write websites. We recently wrote this one, for example, and this one. That’s why I mentioned Capulet at the end of a paragraph about poor web copy.
You find the website adequate, I don’t. I think the writing is lousy and uncompelling, the information design is poor and the site failed to answer my basic questions. I don’t think I’m going to change your mind, so that’s fair enough.
I will say that I disagree with your analysis of the product’s potential customer base. Green products and alternative energy sources are very mainstream these days, and so any potential home builder might be interested in such a product. I fall in that category, despite my ignorance of what, practically speaking, 1 kW means.
My message, at the end of the day, is that a good product deserves (and requires, once there are competitors) a great website. This one isn’t even adequate.
Tracy here – from Mariah Power. Great discussion. I’ll be the first to admit the website needs work. We’re actually in the process of developing a new site, which will go live sometime in June, and which will be a huge step up from the current site. Unfortunately this means the current site is in a slightly neglected form, but better than nothing. I appreciate the suggestions that have surfaced in this discussion (good ones, and all in the works for the new site), and I hope you will all check back in June when it’s live.
In answer to a few questions: It produces up to 1 kW. The power it generates depends on your wind (like all wind turbines), and our power curve is very similar to that of competitors (Southwest, Bergey). It generally makes sense for places with an average wind speed of 12 mph or more, although in places with particularly high electricity rates or particularly good rebates, it can make sense in areas with about 10 mph average wind speeds. It sells for $3995, including everything but the concrete base (much lower than any other 1 kW wind turbine system). Is 1 kW small? Yes, it won’t supply all your household electricity, unless you are amazingly efficient. But like solar, you can size for the use (use 2 or 3, as long as they’re lined up perpendicular to the prevailing wind). Is it for sale yet? Not quite. We’re taking informal reservations, no $ down for now. These folks will have priority when it comes to the first real orders, and you can reserve units on our current website. What’s the delay? We aren’t selling until we have independent test data to verify our numbers (really important for a new design and product in the wind industry), and all the electric code certifications. We expect to be shipping the first units this fall.
Any other questions, you’re welcome to contact me: ttwist@mariah-power.com. You can also sign up for an email list on our website – we only send press releases to this list, so it’s very low frequency.
Tracy: Thanks for dropping by, and answering some of our questions. And that’s an awesome last name for somebody who works at a company that makes wind turbines.