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Home Depot's latest small wind deal

Turbines, monitoring, and installation services from Southwest Windpower are now offered in certain states, though the software is PC only.

Candace Lombardi
In a software-driven world, it's easy to forget about the nuts and bolts. Whether it's cars, robots, personal gadgetry or industrial machines, Candace Lombardi examines the moving parts that keep our world rotating. A journalist who divides her time between the United States and the United Kingdom, Lombardi has written about technology for the sites of The New York Times, CNET, USA Today, MSN, ZDNet, Silicon.com, and GameSpot. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET.
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Candace Lombardi
2 min read

Home Depot will begin to offer small wind turbines and installation services from Southwest Windpower, both companies announced today.

Southwest Windpower makes a small wind turbine called the Skystream 3.7 Personal Wind Turbine.

 
Skystream 3.7 small wind turbine for the home will be offered at Home Depot. Southwest Windpower

The turbine is rated at 2.4 kilowatts and produces about 400 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month when operating at a minimal wind speed of 12 miles per hour, according to the turbine manufacturer.

Not all Home Depot stores will be carrying the turbines immediately. The wind turbines are initially being offering only at some stores in particularly windy states including California, Idaho, Nevada, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming.

A Skystream turbine costs between $15,000 and $20,000, depending on the location of the installation. Some consumers may qualify for an 30 percent federal tax credit. Installation is included in the price, although Home Depot employees won't be installing the turbines. Instead, installation will be handled by contractors who have completed training specifically with Southwest Windpower, according to a Southwest Windpower representative.

The turbines comes with a five-year warranty as well as Skyview, a turbine-monitoring software that allows owners to track their turbine's performance in real time. The software includes information on local wind conditions, as well as monitoring wind turbine performance. It also includes cumulative data on the wind turbine and carbon footprint analysis.

There is, however, one small caveat for Apple users.

The Skyview software is not Web-based like many home-monitoring tools, but is offered as downloadable software "for your PC (Windows only)" that can also be used "on a Macintosh system running Windows via Parallels," according to Southwest Windpower.

Wind turbines are just one of the many types of green technology that have recently been making their way into retail chains like Home Depot and into the homes of mainstream consumers. Home Depot, specifically, has made several changes to its stores by including products like LED lighting, green motor oil, and solar panels. Walgreens and Best Buy meanwhile now offer EV charging stations in some store parking lots.

Updated at 10:50 a.m. PT with pricing.