What's
wrong with this
picture?
Rooftop wind turbine madness in the UK.
(Picture from Paul
Gipe's
site.)
THE ENERGY SAVINGS TRUST
•Wind turbines do work but only when installed
properly in
an appropriate location.
•There is a potential for delivering carbon savings and energy
generation from domestic small-scale wind turbines in the UK.
•The highest potential for successful household small-scale
wind installations is in Scotland.
•Wind speeds are difficult to predict and highly variable.
The Energy Saving Trust recommends that potential
customers first utilise the best available wind speed
estimation tools and then, where appropriate, install
anemometry to determine the wind speed distribution.
Data gathered through the field
trial
indicates that none of
the sites with building mounted turbines had average annual
recorded wind speeds of 4m/s or greater, and only a third of
free standing pole mounted turbines had average annual
recorded wind speeds of 5m/s or greater. It is therefore
likely that many sites in the UK have less of a wind resource
than previously predicted....
No urban or suburban building mounted
sites generated more than 200kWh or £26 per annum,
corresponding to load factors of 3 per cent or less. In some
cases, installations were found to be net consumers of
electricity due to the inverter taking its power (up to 10W)
from the mains supply when a turbine was not generating.
A
review by Paul Gipe
The Ampair perspective
New
Energy
Focus report
Dutch small wind turbine trial suffers low wind speeds
HAWTs generally score much better than VAWTs in this test but there are
exceptions, notably the Swift (shown right) which seems to me to be a
bit of a disaster - a shame considering what nice people they are, and
near to my home town of Edinburgh.
A new Carbon
Trust
study into the potential of small-scale
wind
energy has found that small wind turbines could provide up to 1.5
Terawatt Hours (TWh) per year of electricity (0.4% of total UK
electricity consumption) and 0.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide
(MtCO2) emission savings. This is based on 10% of households
installing turbines at costs competitive with grid electricity, which
is currently around 12p per kWh.
The study also indicates that for the UK as a whole, the
majority of
electricity and carbon savings are available from small turbines in
rural areas - four times as much as urban areas irrespective of costs,
and considerably more given economic drivers. This is mainly due to
wind speeds generally being higher in rural areas. Turbines in
some
rural locations could provide cheaper electricity than the grid, but it
appears that in many urban situations, roof-mounted turbines may not
pay back their embedded carbon emissions.
The report published today marks the culmination of 18 months
research by the Met Office and Entec, and is partly intended for
government policy makers. It makes important recommendations to improve
existing policy measures, including that:
• A criterion should be used in any new grant schemes to
measure
likely carbon savings. This is to help ensure grants are awarded
to
installations which save reasonable amounts of carbon; and
• Higher
height limits for stand-alone turbines should be allowed under
permitted development rights. This is to help maximise the
overall
carbon savings of small-scale wind energy, given the sensitivity of
electricity generation to height.
|
in the city
(updated with response from RD Swift
turbines, and my email to BWEA)
Mostly now when I see these 'Swift' turbines they are under repair for
some reason. It looks awful.
The new certification body BRE have come out with new
guidelines for
estimating windspeed on urban sites that you can download.
These rules of thumb (see appendix suggest that the windspeed at
rooftop level is approximately 50% of what you would expect from using
the DTI (NOABL) data set that everyone relies on. That means 1/8
of the energy production.
The Carbon Trust have also brought out
a new
Windspeed
Estimator on line that is much better than NOABL
for built-up areas.
The Warwick
Urban Wind Trial project has
engaged
in depth with the new market for urban, building mounted
wind turbines at a critical time in market
development. By taking the customer perspective and
combining technical monitoring with social research into the
impact of installations on public perceptions of energy
efficiency and wind, the project is providing the most thorough
and complete assessment to date of the efficacy of urban wind
systems in supporting UK energy and environmental
policies.
Further
evidence from the Warwick Wind Trials shows that most of the new
generation of rooftop turbines also fail to meet their claimed output,
often only achieving 30% or less. In many cases the inverter's
standby power consumption exceeds any power generated on urban sites.
The final
report is now available and it makes essential reading
for those who want to know about small scale urban wind realities (as
opposed to marketing spin).
SOME
NOTES ON THE BWEA
AND OTHER TRADE BODIES
Recently I was persuaded to
re-join the British Wind Energy Association. I had not been a member
for a couple of decades. It's too expensive and offers me no
advantages. I am not sure why I rejoined but I have come to the
same conclusion again. Being a member has kindled my curiousity
about BWEA and brought certain facts to my attention.
The BWEA conference is host to
charlatans
Maybe it's not
that surprising, given that they will take anyone as members and are
basically open to anyone who will pay, without any discrimination
regarding ethics or technical credibility. It's funny how easy it
is to con the public just by having a grand title. Companies such
as Renewable Devices and Broadstar Wind Systems can make absurd claims
on a BWEA platform and get away with them.
Put a lawn mower on your roof and get 30% more power. It's
embarrassing! What did we do to get such a trade
association? Their conference was just a zoo.
Small wind turbines are useful in the right environment, but just now
they are a playground for those who wish to make a fast buck by
exploiting people's ignorance, and it can only end it tears. BWEA
ought to do something to stop this but instead they help promote it,
and they profit in the process.
I will be at the BWEA (now called RenewableUK)
small wind conference in about a week in Glasgow (end of april 2010) so
it will be intresting to talk through some of these issues face-to-face.
|
WARNING
CNN
IBN TV video
Delta / Zeeland
windtest 
E-mail
me at: