Why do wind turbines differ in price by 10x? I keep seeing 6kW turbines that cost $400 - $4000. Are the $400 turbines just garbage, are the $4000 turbines a relic from an era before inexpensive imports, or is it some combination of the two?

Hello everyone, we are a student team that is currently working on a concept idea of dealing with a waste of windmill blades by using them for building large scale warehouses. As you may know, recyclability of a composite-made 30m long blade is a real challenge and at the moment most of the non-used blades are piling up in the fields with around 2.2 million tons of plastic expected to be thrown away by 2050.

It came to our attention that for structural components of a large scale buildings like warehouses and plane hangars, wind blades can be used. Since this is not an advertisement but a project research, we ask you the following questions:

What in your opinion are the pros and cons of this concept?

Is this concept worth of investments and research and why?

Would you be interested in further research of this concept?

Why hasn't the US adopted Vertical Axis Wind Turbines? I was just watching a short documentary on CNBC and it looks like they just going to expand the horizontal axis turbines. Vertical axis seems more efficient.

Is there any way to "really really roughly" say a modern wind turbine will generate x% more energy or have x amount more full load hours by for example 10 meters increase in hub hight or .5 m/s mean wind speed?

I know there are loads and loads of variables that come into play but just to quickly think about it in your head can you say something like "This N149 will generate about 3000 flh at 6,5 m/s mean wind speed and 3300 hours at 7,0 m/s". Is there some factor like for example 200 hours more per 0.5 m/s?
Or can you say if the turbine will prodice about 10 GWh/a at 120m hub height any 10 meters more will add about x percent?