Small, airborne and traditional wind: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Small, airborne and traditional wind covers rooftop and farm turbines, kites and windpumps. Costs depend on generators, towers and batteries, and they compete with cheap solar panels for off-grid power and water pumping.
Proxy US PPI: turbines and turbine generator sets index (BLS base period =100) · monthly, Jun 2011 to Sep 2026There is no free public price for small, airborne and traditional wind itself, so this tab uses the closest public series as a stand-in. Read the numbers as an indication, not as the price of this exact item.
What its price moves with
Selected linkSmall, airborne and traditional wind and Lithium iron phosphate batteries
Monthly changes -0.03 little or none correlation 12-month changes -0.03 little or none correlation Last 5 years -0.02 monthly changes Lead or lag +5 mo Lithium iron phosphate batteries tends to lead by 5 months (r 0.25) Price function, Jun 2011 to Sep 2026 Small, airborne and traditional wind ≈ 3.92 × (Lithium iron phosphate batteries)0.61 R² 0.84 On this fit, a 10% higher lithium iron phosphate batteries price goes with a 6.0% higher small, airborne and traditional wind price over the long run. Units: index (BLS base period =100) and index.Chart: Small, airborne and traditional wind and Lithium iron phosphate batteries prices rebased to 100 at Jun 2011, log scale
Both prices rebased to 100 at Jun 2011, on a log scale so equal percentage moves look the same size.Chart: Small, airborne and traditional wind price against Lithium iron phosphate batteries price, monthly, log scales, with fitted line
Each dot is one month; paler dots are older (2011), darker dots recent (2026); the ringed dot is the latest month. The dashed line is the fitted price function. Both axes are logarithmic.Off-grid solar panels have become much cheaper than small wind turbines, which need moving parts and good sites. Solar has taken most of the off-grid market that small wind once served.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Off-grid small turbines need batteries to store power for calm periods. The US battery index and the turbine proxy show no link, with monthly moves at -0.03, as the proxy covers large turbines.
little or none co-movement month to month · 179 months Show chartsTowers and many rotors are steel. The proxy is a US turbine price index shared by several power technologies and mostly reflects large machines, so it does not track steel monthly (0.05).
little or none co-movement month to month · 184 months Show chartsMost small turbines use permanent-magnet generators with neodymium. Magnet prices are a bigger share of cost for small machines than for large ones. Chinese export rules on magnets therefore hit small turbine makers hard.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Traditional windpumps lift groundwater for farms and livestock. The value of these pumps depends on water needs and the cost of rival diesel or solar pumps. Solar pumps now win most new sales.
little or none co-movement month to month · 96 months Show chartsHow to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.