Wind Turbines for households

[swc123]

Hi all,

 

I was wondering if any of you have, or know someone, who has installed a wind turbine for their home in Shetland.

 

What have your experiences been?

[marlin13]

I think theres a guy in Unst thats installed one and loads of the halls have them.

The new proposed feed in tariffs make it even more financially viable at up to 28p per unit if your grid connected. You should get around 4k in a grant.

Turbines generally work well but do need a back up for the odd calm days that we get.

[MJ]

be aware they can interfere with older electrical appliances.

Beware if anyone has a light sensitivity problem.

They're not silent.

 

Must admit the second 2 observations are mainly from friends south who found their windmill unuseable. A very sore point. They were given very poor advice about where to place their windmill.

 

Do not place windmill to west of buildings, (think low lying sun and blade shadows), and remember not to place too near sleeping areas.

 

Otherwise great idea and please don't let me put you off. Just with some thought before hand there things shouldn't be a problem.

[Frances144]

At the moment the Shetland grid is not taking anymore windmills for the foreseeable future.

 

I received this from Shetland Wind Power:-

 

We are writing to all current and potential future customers who have expressed an interest in installing a wind turbine in Shetland.

 

We received quite unexpected news last week by means of a phone call to inform us that the Shetland grid has no capacity left for renewable projects, and that no more connections would be processed until 2013 or 2014. This includes several applications that have been lodged for a considerable number of months.

 

SO WHAT WOULD THIS MEAN TO YOU?

- Without a grid connection, the most cost effective access to Feed-in-tariffs is not available meaning you will lose your income of (23p/kWh)

- You cannot be paid for any energy you may have had available for export (5-6p/kWh)

- You cannot achieve ROC’s payments without expensive energy to condition your renewable energy.

 

Since receiving the phone call we have contacted Scottish & Southern Energy directly to verify the statement. We have also had lengthy discussions with Patrick Ross-Smith of Community Energy Scotland, Steven Coutts, Shetland Branch of Energy Savings Trust, and Tavish Scott, MSP for Shetland. We are working hard to overcome the situation and have received news earlier today that Scottish and Southern will allow G83/1 connections of up to 3.8kW per turbine. This means that we would need to limit each 5-6kW turbine to only produce 3.8kW per turbine, which means a potential reduction in available efficiency of 24-36%, which we find completely unacceptable.

 

SO WHAT HAPPENS NOW?

- We, along with Community Energy Scotland, The Energy Savings Trust, and Tavish Scott, will continue to speak to Scottish and Southern Energy to try and encourage them to review available capacity on the local grid as these domestic scale systems have a minimal impact on the local grid

- We will continue to explore other avenues for cost effective technical solutions

In the meantime we have unfortunately had to cease site visits until we can reach a resolution on the grid connection situation. We hope to have this resolved reasonably soon and will write to you once “normal service is resumed!â€. We can only apologise for any inconvenience this may cause you in the meantime.

 

If you have any questions regarding the above information please do not hesitate to contact us.

 

[Magnie-na]

Yes have been thinking about it - but didn't know about the older appliances potentially breaking. Knew about the noise factor but not about the potential loss of spare units due to saturated grid.

 

Haven't worked this one out yet - would that mean a pointless installation due to prohibitive costs?