WIND TURBINES SOLD IN BIG BOX STORES

Canadian Tire stores are located in big box mall slots all across Canada.   If you aren’t familiar with Canadian Tire    http://www.canadiantire.ca/index.jsp , they are a hybrid of  tire/battery sales/service, auto parts, hardware and paint, home wares, lawn care, bbq, and sporting goods.   Canadian Tire’s gimmick is their issue of  “Canadian Tire Money” as a premium on every sale to be used against future purchases.  Your kids usually end up with it. 

Against a backdrop of fossil fueled power boats (got me thinking about http://www.electriclaunch.com/ ) and automobiles, I felt a slight glimmer of hope for the global environment when I walked into a Canadian Tire store in Ontario last week   I was looking for a DC to AC inverter for a solar powered battery system and thought Canadian Tire might have one.  

Not only did Canadian Tire have a dozen sizes of inverters, they had a half dozen wattage sizes of solar panels, both amorphous and crystalline, and charge controllers,  AND they had small wind turbines in bright yellow boxes ready to put on a shopping cart. 

The wind turbines are still too pricey at Canadian $1,000 (400 peak watts 28 mph)   and Canadian $3,000 (Whisper 100, 900 peak watts 28 mph) http://www.windenergy.com/products.htm  but the GOOD NEWS is that wind turbines are being mass produced and carried for sale in a big box store along side every other consumer item. 

Has anyone seen wind turbines in big box stores in the USA?