Gathering wind data over a year or two is good insurance against failure. About 40 years ago someone in our community put up a wind generator based on anecdotal evidence that "wind is always blowing through that valley".
I drove by it every day for two years. Not one day in ten was it spinning. An ice storm finally put it out of it's misery. The owner wasted $10K.
The problem with many turbines from that era was that they wouldn't turn in anything less than 10MPH. Sailboat turbines still have this problem.
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