Windmills have been around a very long time. People have been harnessing wind power and putting it to work for them long before the technology we have today was available. Thanks to the advances we've made we can not only use the wind too, we can use it much more effectively.
While the huge wind farms with the gigantic turbines have been around in the U.S. for a while now, it's only been fairly recently that the technology has advanced to the point where we can convert the energy of the wind into electricity more efficiently therefore making smaller scale turbines feasible for home use.
Before you go out and buy a windmill though, there are some things you need to keep in mind. For one thing, you have to decide if you want to buy a turbine or build your own. Just keep in mind that buying one will be expensive and will therefore take you longer to recoup the investment.
On the other hand, you can build your own simply and inexpensively without sacrificing the amount of electricity you will generate. Either option, buying or building, will allow you to generate around 60% of the electricity your home needs daily. That will add up to about an 80% savings on your electric bill.
Multiply that savings by every month for the next ten years, or so, and you can see that the savings is going to be huge, well worth the investment particularly if you've built your own unit and have much less 'start up' cost.
If you build your own turbine for $200 you can probably recoup the savings in a month or two, whereas if you've bought one for a few thousand dollars it could take up to a few years to recoup that amount.
So, yes, you really can benefit from wind power. The only real question is how fast do you want to recoup your investment?