First the promise, perhaps a bit overrated:
The article goes on to say:
The borough already has one publicly-owned turbine — a 33ft Air Dolphin turbine at a location off Taylors Lane, Oldbury, near the civic amenities site in Shidas Lane.
Through monitoring the performance of the turbine it was hoped the council would be able to find out how practical it would be to harness wind power on a large scale in the borough
Here is what it looks like:
Interestingly, right below the picture on this sale page for the wind turbine, they say this:
With the average price for 1kWh of electricity in the UK at around 11 pence, this wind turbine is predicted to save its owner just £55 to £154 per year giving a pay back period of 45 to 125 years!
I kid you not, that’s actually what they say. In tips and notes, UK blogger Derek Sorensen calls our attention to this FOI request regarding the production of the very same wind turbine on Taylors Lane, Oldbury.
Source: http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/wind_turbine#incoming-163689
Roy Mccauley
Sandwell Borough Council
31 March 2011
Thank you for your enquiry about the Taylor’s Lane wind turbine in
Oldbury. The answers to your questions are as follows:
1) Could you please tell me the total cost spent on purchase and
installation of the 33ft Air Dolphin turbine at a location off Taylor’s
Lane, Oldbury?
£5,000 (plus VAT) was the total cost of the Taylor’s Lane micro wind
turbine in Oldbury, including foundations, tower and connections.
2) Could you also tell me how much has been spent on the turbine since?
Nothing has needed to be spent since it was installed.
3) How much electricity has been generated by the turbine and how much has
been spent monitoring the performance of the turbine – e.g. cost of
setting up a computer/software etc.
No money has been spent monitoring the performance of the micro wind
turbine at Taylor’s Lane.
However, the council paid £750 for 3 years of monitoring an identical
micro wind turbine at Bleakhouse Primary School in Oldbury. We chose to
monitor just one of the turbines to minimise costs. We wanted to track
performance, establish whether predicted wind speeds in Sandwell were
accurate and use the technology and readings for educational purposes in
schools.
For the 12 months between May 2009 and April 2010, the Bleakhouse Primary
School micro wind turbine generated 209 kWh of electricity.
If you are dissatisfied with the handling of your request, you have the
right to ask for an internal review. Internal review requests should be
submitted within two months of the date of receipt of the response to your
request, and should be addressed to:
Freedom of Information Unit
Oldbury Council House
Freeth Street
Oldbury
West Midlands
B69 3DE
Email – [1][Sandwell Borough Council request email]
If you are not content with the outcome of an internal review, you have
the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a
decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire SK9 5AF
Please remember to quote your reference number above in any future
communications.
Roy McCauley
Sustainable & Economic Regeneration Unit
======================================================
Dereke writes:
Sandwell Borough Council paid £5,000 a pop to install several wind turbines in their area, and then paid another £750 to have the output of just one of them monitored.
The monitored turbine, which was installed on a primary school, generated 209kWh of electricity in the twelve months it was being monitored. That’s about 20 quid’s worth. So each turbine will have to run for 250 years without breaking down or requiring maintainance, just to break even.
Such a deal. Since the FOI request was granted on March 31st, and the Express and Star News story was February 24th, do you think the Sandwell council may have had time to consider these massive energy production figures for their toy £5000 toy turbine?
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209 kWh per year from a 1kW turbine gives a load factor of 2.3%. That sounds about right; you would expect local government idiots to fork out £5k for something useless; but never mind, they mean well and are saving the planet. The school kids will no doubt be indoctrinated into what a good idea this wind turbine thingy is.
Just wait till they have to start paying maintenance costs. 209 kWh at £0.11/kWh is £23/year, which won’t cover the call-out costs for a maintenance technician.
Don’t these people do wind studies of the sites then intend to put turbines on to get some idea of the production they’ll see?
Yes, but when the European Union rules shut down our coal-fired power stations and the price of electricity rockets to 50 pence per unit the windmill will break even in only, oh, about fifty years. Brilliant! And it won’t matter if it’s not windy because we won’t be able to afford electricity anyway.
Its mechanical, and probably made in China.. I give it 5 years before its kaput !!!
And that’s being generous 🙂
“on a blustery day”?
How much more efficient, if they were to mount it inside the counsel’s meeting room[!]
Maybe they should mount it in a chimney, exiting the ceiling above them… surely they would achieve virtual perpetual motion[!!]
Oh oh oh! Mount one to each of their cars and they can each drive around, collecting all the FREE wind energy they want[!]
Steeptown:
Just wait till they have to start paying maintenance costs. 209 kWh at £0.11/kWh is £23/year, which won’t cover the call-out costs for a maintenance technician.
That amount of money won’t even pay to keep it painted…
45-125 year payback for a device that most likely won’t survive 10 years. Government folly at its peak.
More Mickey Mouse economics from a Council. You can tell it’s not their money they’re spending!
Looking at the Airdolphin specs, a measely 1Kw in a 26mph wind, enough to boil a kettle.
The support tower also needs replacing every 25 years, so that’ll further increase the payback period.
Do these Sustainable & Economic Regenration people ever actually look at the results and projections in support of these monstrosities..?
A payback time of 250 years for instance..?
A 200 foot eyesore which, ‘in blustery conditions, COULD power 20000 homes’..?
And the other 90% of the time..?
When will this madness stop..?
I cannot understand why it would be profitable for this turbine at 11p/kwh. Even at the price I pay today, 28p/kwh, it woulds not cover all costs. Typical socialist council wasters.
If the data comes from guvment, national or local, don’t trust it, especially when it promises big, much savings, lower costs, better efficiency, etc!
A slight amendment. The cost of each turbine was £5000 plus VAT, (for non-UK folk, this is Value Added Tax which is collected by the British Government and which at that time would be seventeen and a half percent.)
That puts the payback time to around 300 years.
That’s what you get when you establish a Sustainable and Economic Regeneration Unit.
Perhaps Dereke would now like to find out the annual cost of the Unit to the ratepayers of Sandwell Borough Council.
I think the information should be checked before jumping to any conclusions. 209kWh is not enough to keep a standard 3kW electric fire going for 3 days. The figures must have been misquoted.
It is gesture politics with the tax-payer footing the bill. They are demonstrating their green credentials at our expense. Never mind the quality feel the width!
Wind and hot air.
Councils are good at that.
How many Kw do you think one installed over the council chamber would generate?
Our countryside is dotted with these white elephants which will never last long enough to cover their installation and payback costs.
My only hope is that they will leave them up as a monument to PC thinking and South-Sea Bubble mentality for our grandchildren to reflect upon.
Our local energy company has been forced by an idiotic government to hit a “renewables” target in the near future. Fortunately, it is a publicly traded company, so they are also required to disclose lots of financial information. The depreciation rate for wind turbines is 5% straight line, which means they have a 20 year useful life, and have an estimated maintenace cost of 3% of capital cost, per year. It is good these things are white, it makes them easier to imagine as elephants.
The “pay back period of 45 to 125 years!” has been estimated given the present electricity price of 11 pence/kWh.
After the nuclear plantss will be dismantled, the electricity price will be around 1 pound per kWh. This reduces the pay back time by some factor 10, i.e. to 5 to 12 years.
This will be a reasonable investment then!
Posted also at Derek’s site:
Unless my arithmetic is badly wrong, that is an average output of 24 Watts. Which is not even pathetic.
My little pump for my garden waterfall takes about 45W. The nightlight in my Mum’s hallway takes 7w. My laptop when plugged in chews a huge 65W.
The entire electricity needed to power my little 3 bed semi is about 150KWh per month. So I would need about 9 such installations to power just my house…assuming that I could make the wond blow art the right time…when I wanted to cook Sunday lunch or run the washing machine.
Windmills are a complete waste of time and money. The ydo not do what it says on the tin. This experiment shows it.
And if I were a council tax payer in Sandwell, I would be asking my local representative searching questions about why they feel the need to conduct such experiments at all. And why they employ people – presumably at salaries far in excess of £5,000 to conduct them.
How the hell can it possibly cost 750 UK pounds to ‘monitor’ the output of the turbine?
That seems really high.
That turbine has a 1.8m rotor diameter according to the website. Much smaller than the “33ft” quoted, which I suppose is the height at which it is mounted. A similar model over here in the states might run you about $1000. And they paid 5000 british pounds each? Somethun’ aint right…
If the capital cost is factored in at say 5% interest rate I think that payback time might extend well past the lifespan of the solar system.
In Hobart, Tasmania at the moment we still have a couple of dead wind turbines on the roof of one of our gummint buildings. They operated feebly for about a month and then flaked out. They have spent the last year in a static state of semi-collapse.
Seeing as they are so concerned about c02 it would be interesting to know how much c02 it produced and how long before it ‘recovered’ that same c02?
Here are two recent reminders about the failures of wind – here and here.
It seems to me they will only abandon windpower when disaster strikes in mid-winter. From the top two references it shouldn’t be long – they just have to push full speed ahead for the next decade.
So each turbine will have to run for 250 years without breaking down or requiring maintainance, just to break even.
I now have to wipe off my monitor because I was having a sip of tea when I read that.
I would go a carbon tax if they would just promise to get rid of these irrational alternative energy monstrosities.
You beat me to it! Apparently VAT on wind turbines is 5% which puts the cost at £5,250. Sooner or later there has to be maintenance costs which puts the payback time even further.