Southwest Windpower (SWWP), a Phoenix-based supplier of wind turbine generators for “small wind” supplemental green power generation (i.e., for single structures – homes, commercial buildings, etc.), asked Cascade Strategies to survey online communities and summarize their point of view on the viability of small wind.  SWWP was in pursuit of a Green Energy Development Grant from the US DOE, and needed to persuade the department that small wind was a credible concept when compared to large-scale wind farms, according to company spokesman Dave Sanchez.

The Cascade project discovered that many bloggers and online content providers were cautiously optimistic about single-building or small-campus wind farms, though they clung to the notion that the best contribution to the green energy movement was simply to purchase carbon offsets from their current power supplier.

SWWP used the results to support their application and received the US DOE grant.