You are very right and some are noisy! You may have bylaws that state size and running times.
Be sure to investigate then prior any purchase, also chat with your local utility there are so many green programs running you never now what you may get in reimbursement or inf what they may pay you for any power you generate.
The isolation in case of a power outage is usually their main concern. No feed back please.
In Ontario every kWh generated is paid back at 47 cents and you can even use your self and it never even sees the grid, silly but true.
I do not know how as it take a few wind mills to make enough power for a house. I priced it out and to get 5 amps enough for a freezer basically it was 15k cdn. Again we are only at a 2.98 in the wind department.
I would be scared to use my garage a separate building might be better as all the gas build up from the batteries. Not sure about gel batteries.
Edited: krakyn on 29th Aug, 2008 - 7:05pm
I was watching a documentary on CBC last night and the were looking at a proposal I think it was Ronald Regan had made to put solar collectors on the moon or as satellites. The moon station would be harvest and built on the moon then it would be able to supply 5 time the power we need today.
They claimed they could end up reversing a great amount of the damage we had already done. Any thoughts on that?