NREL Solar & Wind Estimator

The National Renewable Energy Lab is the innovation and testing arm of the Department of Energy. If you're interested in that sort of thing (as all thrifty homeowners probably should), browse around that site. It'll take you days to get through it all. A lot of it gets too complicated for me, but it does make me hopeful for our future energy independence.

While you're there, be sure to check out the In My Backyard (IMBY) tool. It lets you find your house on a map, then you draw where you could possibly install solar panels or wind turbines on your property. It then calculates how much energy you could generate from such a setup and how long it would take to breakeven. I've already looked into solar and knew it would take me quite a while to breakeven on that, but it's nice to see something like this from a government agency. I did have some problems with trying to load this IMBY page, so be patient.