We have all seen the development of the Wind Renewable Energy industry with our own eyes as the landscape increasingly is being taken up by wind farms. The industry saw a 30% increase in installed capacity in 2008 and it is expected to grow by 155% from those levels by 2012. Wind is seen as a very safe and clean method of energy generation with certain areas of excellent wind conditions actually producing energy at costs lower than traditional fossil fuel power generation. What’s more, the UK is the windiest country in Europe with 40% of European winds blowing over the island. The UK Governments Renewable Energy Strategy (July 2009) targets 15% of all UK energy needs to come from renewable sources and wind is seen as a major component of this. Currently wind produces 3% of the UK energy supplies and this is expected to increase rapidly in the years to follow as some £60billion of investment is pumped into the industry.
Whilst wind farms have proven to be a very effective way to generate energy, not all of us are likely to install one in our back garden or business car park, so what about smaller scale wind generation projects, known as “microwind”? This page will generally look at the smaller end of the wind market as those looking at wind farms will generally know most of what is in here already. In Jan 2009 the Energy Saving Trust released the findings of its long running study: “Location location location – The Energy Saving Trust’s field trial report on domestic wind turbines”. The report found that small wind systems could be a major renewable energy source for the UK, generating 3,250GWh of energy – the same as UK Hydro plants and enough to power some 850,000 UK homes – and that whist location was a major factor in the performance of small wind projects, some 450,000 household locations in the UK could be used to generate wind energy, with half of these locations being in Scotland. It was also stated that there was scope for numerous agricultural, industrial, public housing and leisure sector projects. However, it wasn’t all good news, with the report showing that no urban or suburban sites with roof mounted systems generated meaningful results. That said, technological developments are improving these systems and we will look at some of these later on this page and update this page with the newest, proven technologies available.
Finally, given the abundant wind in the UK, it is no surprise that the UK is the worlds’ largest exporter of small wind systems and a leading manufacturer in the global industry. Export revenue in the small scale systems market doubled between 2007 and 2008 and it is the only microgeneration technology in which the UK holds global leadership. However, we are not a global leader in the amount of wind energy we generate: that plaudit goes to the US followed by Germany and then Spain. Indeed, Spain generated some 40% of its energy requirements from wind in March 2009 – a world record, whilst the US still only generates 1% of its energy needs from wind. Globally, around 50,000 wind turbines are generating 50 billion KWh of energy every year.
There are 2 basic structures of wind turbines available:
- Mast mounted turbines: free standing structures
- Roof mounted turbines: smaller structures attached to the roof of a home
There is a significant amount of debate within the micorwind industry about roof mounted turbines. Some say that they are inefficient, unreliable and prone to faults. Also, the vibrations from the blades being blown by the wind often creates structural problems for the building, whilst increasing safety requirements are necessary in built up areas and noise pollution does become an issue. As such we will generally be focusing on mast mounted systems within this page. However, technology is developing and we do mention some roof mounted systems that are seen as efficient and overcoming structural problems within the Future Technology section.
Visit the Wind Home page
Other pages of interest in this section:
- What is Domestic Wind Power?
- How does it work?
- How much energy does it produce?
- How much does it cost?
- Are there Grants and Funding available?
- What is the Payback Period?
- Future Technology
- Overall Assessment
