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?
harrywr2 says
“Installation costs can be substantial on these ‘micro generation’ projects. A DIYer might be able to make the economics work out. As soon as you have to hire union scale masons to pour a concrete pad and union scale electricians to hook it all up the price becomes insane. The same goes for roof top solar panels. $1/watt for the panel, $6/watt for installation.”
The non-union labor costs to have my 6.12kW system installed worked out to just a dab of $1.10 STS rated watt output. By the way we actually have sun over here in CA a lot of the year hence my 6.12kW system has generated a bit over 9300 kwh per year for 5 years running. I produced 38 kwh of electricity yesterday. In a couple of weeks once we hit summer rates out here in CA my electrical service provider will be paying (crediting actually) me $.315 for each kwh I send to the grid during peak hours.
“Bleakhouse Primary School”?
Somebody dig up Dickens. He needs to sue.
@paul birch
Seriously, a wind turbine would be very useful for teaching lots of stuff about engineering, science, geography, meteorology, economics, politics, civics, etc. — cheap at £5000, when upgrading a school to modern requirements costs ~£5million a shot!
Examples please of exactly how the physical presence of such a turbine (don’t forget it is a simple machine designed for domestic use only) on a school site helps in each of these.
5 grand may be only a drop in the ocean to a ‘public servant’ but its a very very wasteful way to spend my taxes and generating twetny quid’s worth of electricity.
@paul birch
First off, even if manufacturers had such a “free” scheme (which so far as I’m aware they don’t, because the domestic and industrial scale turbines are manufactured by different firms), it would have cost the council considerably more than the titchy £5000 they did spend to arrange it.
So not only are council ‘sustainability officers’ not expected to be able to understand anythign about the technologies of sustainability, their counterparts in negotiations aren’t capable of cutting a good deal with suppliers either. But then they are only local government officers anyway.
Three hints..
1 If there is more than one supplier.. you get them BOTH to give you try and buy. If not, you can’t do an open tender anyway.
2. If a supplier won’t offer try and buy don’t do business with him. He’s putting nothing into the game to make a success of it.
3. There is no such thing as a free lunch. The supplier takes the upfront risk and gets it back through the life of the contract.
In next week’s instalment of Uncle Lat’s helpful hints….
Elementary commerce for ‘public servants’
To cover: accounts, audits, negotiating, cash, revenue, cashflow, doing deals …and all those scary nasty things you hear about on the telly. No matter how long you’ve worked for the government you know that one day you’ll have to understand them a bit. They won’t go away.
Paul Birch,
If windmills are so efficient, we should eliminate the subsidies. But that would, of course, eliminate the windmill industry.
We could also put people to work pedaling bicycles connected to generators. With a sufficient subsidy, proponents could claim success. Just like with windmills.
Quis:
You provide for an interesting scenario. With an amazingly high return of 31.5¢ per kwh at the direct expense of your neighbors, let’s see what happens when solar becomes more efficient, and enough people install solar power to take advantage of that lucrative payback scheme.
Soon most folks will have a solar system providing excess power to the grid. Then the minority that is buying power from either SoCal Edison or PG&E will have to pay ever higher electric rates to cover the artificial subsidy, thus forcing them to install solar power, and making the grid obsolete in the process. We can’t all be selling each other electricity that is priced far above its production cost.
Final result: you will no longer receive your subsidy.
What We Brits would Like to Say about This Kind of Story:
– (splutter) “What?? That’s unbelievable!”
What We Brits are Getting Used to Saying about This Kind of Story:
– (yawn) “Absolutely damn’ typical. Any tea left in the pot?”
The ‘physical presence’ was to brainwash the children – what are 5, 6 and 7 year olds going to learn about physics, meteorology etc etc.
The question that should have been be asked is how the council could so blatantly steamroller their own planning permission rules. Mr Joe Public would not have a proverbial snowball’s chance of erecting something like that in his own private back yard/garden.
There would be endless complaints about ‘noise’, ‘flicker’, ‘loss of amenity’ (the view), possible/imagined distraction to motorists. The list is endless.
The two most important things that The Council would have certainly used to stall Joe Public would have been…..
1. The distraction part of it, its bad enough doing ‘the school run’ without a flickering noisy monster going on up in the sky..
2. The risks. Its not worth thinking about a piece of machinery, rotating at high speed descending into a school-yard full of 5 year olds.
That’s what they should have been asked – how did they justify that?
I don’t think the early commenters are taking into account the time value of money. I see the payback period as being infinite. Beyond infinite, really.
We really need to look at the whole picture. If we do, we can see that this turbine provides many other valuable services that increase the ROI:
(1) It serves as a reminder of the actual benefits of Green energy.
(2) It gives an aesthetic touch to the horizon that would otherwise be missing.
(3) It provides green jobs: painter, electrician, millwright, inspector, safety tech, and demolition crew.
(4) It kills and/or frightens away dangerous pterodactyls that might otherwise roam the silent countryside in search of prey. No one with eyes can doubt its effectiveness in this regard!
The benefits simply go on and on.
According to Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Iowa
Iowa got 15% of its electricity from wind power in 2010.
The woman from AWEA says they are, now, up to 20%. It seems likely, to me, that that’s probably about right. (They’re aiming for 50%, btw.)
The trick to wind, obviously, is a robust grid.
Paul Birch says (April 27, 2011 at 6:36 am): ‘Read the article. Why was the small turbine installed? “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”.’
Um, Paul, on the WUWT site is an ad for assorted weather equipment, including this wind logger
http://www.weathershop.com/rainwisewl.htm
“designed to meet the needs of people considering the purchase of a wind turbine”, advertised for $315. No doubt the council has access to similar equipment locally. Call me crazy, but wouldn’t such a unit have given pretty much the same answer as the much more expensive “wind logger” actually installed?
BTW, weather monitoring equipment is also “educational”, though perhaps not as sexy as a part-time wind turbine/part-time sculpture.
“Seriously, a wind turbine would be very useful for teaching lots of stuff about engineering, science, geography, meteorology, economics, politics, civics, etc. ”
That didn’t work as planned at another UK school…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/7870929/Primary-school-forced-to-turn-off-wind-turbine-after-bird-deaths.html
Here’s the evil bird mincer:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_yc-Lk62n49w/TDGNd0BAwPI/AAAAAAAAFCA/Wg-HOprZYmc/s1600/School+Bird+Killer.png
Sandwell, the “loony left” comes to mind. I don’t know what colour they are now but politicians of all colours are expert at wasting other peoples money.
http://www.expressandstar.com/latest/2009/04/27/250-blackberries-for-72-councillors/
“Councillors in a Black Country borough are set to be offered Blackberry mobile phones free in a move which could cost taxpayers £18,000.
An independent panel is recommending a £250 Blackberry for any of the 72 Dudley councillors who requests one. The council has alreadyshelled out £16,000 on 64 Blackberries for housing managers.
The recommendation is published in a report on councillors’ allowances to be considered on Thursday”
A story from 2009
Good grief 209 KWH in 12 months (more or less). My grid tie 10 KW (plate rating) solar system produces 20 KWH on a clear day. If you take away the batteries (since I wanted battery backup for ice storms in the NE winters) and used today’s prices for panels of about 2 bucks a watt, my system would cost 30->40 grand all in. A raw high voltage (400 V no batteries) grid tie system would be even less, perhaps 20 grand. I run under 100V dc since it is around a residence. If I did it again, I might put 4 panels to the string instead of 3 which would boost me up to about 125V on a cold clear winter day. The “bang for their buck” stinks. Yeah, I know they are further north, so there would be less sunshine, but still. Even if they wanted to do renewable energy, they were sold a pile of horse hockey. As a comment, when people ask me when I figure I will break even, my answer is never. And that is with electricity at 25 cents per KWH delivered in MA. The MA tariff on electricity is rather complicated. They charge for generation, distribution, sales tax, stranded asset recovery, and a lot of other things. For me, it’s a hobby (ok I will fess up to being a MIT nerd) and some insurance against the times the grid fails. With 100 KWH 20 hour rate it will keep the heat on, the net up, some light, and the refrigerators running in my 2 family. A couple of days without heat in NE in winter can lead to a major problem if you do not drain your pipes with a circulating hot water system and the water supply system.
@Gary Young hladik
You said it all! A weather station for the children (now that really would provide some sensible education about all sorts of things and is much to be recommended!) and a windmill predictor all for less than £200. Even I would view that as good value for the taxpayer. And a primary school science teacher could set it all up as a class project. Bingo!
Instead we have employed at least one Sustainability Officer (£50K pa??) and paid 20 times over the odds for something that does far less.
Sorry -forgot – we got 20 quid’s worth of free electric.
Another triumph for our ‘public servants’ and the green movement. Only £5000+VAT+ £50000-£20 = £55,980 completely wasted.
When will they ever learn…….
Kum Dollison says:
April 27, 2011 at 11:11 am
“The woman from AWEA says they are, now, up to 20%. It seems likely, to me, that that’s probably about right. (They’re aiming for 50%, btw.)
The trick to wind, obviously, is a robust grid.”
Wind power varies with the third power of the wind speed; that’s why the capacity factor for onshore wind hovers around 20%. So as soon as you try to get 50% of your entire power needs from wind you have to install enough of them that their peak performance becomes 2.5 times your load. So during optimal wind conditions you will switch off most of them or export the power surge to unsuspecting neighbouring countries or your grid will melt down. Usually, your neighbours will not pay anything for this surge but you will pay them as they save your grid from collapse. The prize for electricity will very likely be negative under such conditions as a glut of wind power is produzed but the load doesn’t go up with it – too much supply, too little demand.
The trick to wind is, obviously, a robust grid and very, very deep pockets.
Smokey says:
April 27, 2011 at 9:41 am
“We can’t all be selling each other electricity that is priced far above its production cost.
Final result: you will no longer receive your subsidy.”
He will, but the value of the money he gets will be much lower.
Go back and read the wikipedia article on Wind Power in Iowa again, and take a critical eye to it this time:
“In 2010, power generated by wind was 15.4% of all electricity generated in Iowa.”
Anyone want to make any bets as to how much of Iowa’s electrical power is ‘imported’?
Kum Dollison says:
April 27, 2011 at 11:11 am
Your Wiki reference has an interesting definition of ‘capacity factor’ – try nameplate capacity – not actual generated capacity. Please note that Iowa did not install any additional capacity in 2010 – sounds like they hit the proverbial real world ‘capacity limiter’
Wow, only 125 years, well, well, if it includes maintenance, new generators, blades, and everything for those 125 years, I’m all game.
I was offered one of those puny propellers with a break even at 30 years, but of course the operative life time was an astounding 8 years, at which time everything of importance had to be replaced with new, such as generator, propeller heads, blades, et al (which of course wasn’t included in their break-even calculations, let alone 3-4 such replacements.)
dave ward – and obviously, as one can tell from the flag, the turbine is stationary and producing sweet FA…
I think they should install a windmill in London’s Olympic Park that is rated for, and the sole source of energy for, the main scoreboard/video screen. The fact that the scoreboard and video screen is solely powered by the windmill should be noted on all TV broadcasts continuously throughout the games. Further, TV should only broadcast results as and when displayed by this official scoreboard. I believe this could be a real teaching moment.
This is how I see wind power.
Kum Dollison says:
April 27, 2011 at 11:11 am
According to Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Iowa
Iowa got 15% of its electricity from wind power in 2010.
The woman from AWEA says they are, now, up to 20%. It seems likely, to me, that that’s probably about right. (They’re aiming for 50%, btw.)
The trick to wind, obviously, is a robust grid.
From the Iowa Utilities Board
“As of January 2010, IUB staff estimates that 17-20% of all electricity generated in Iowa now comes from wind. This output is generated in Iowa but may be consumed outside of the state. This reflects the expected annual performance of all wind generation installed in Iowa to date, not historic performance. The estimate is based on the following assumptions: Currently installed wind capacity of 3,670 MW in Iowa, per AWEA’s web site through 2009; Iowa average wind capacity factor of 33.3%, per industry consultant Tom Wind; and U.S. DOE-EIA figures for electricity generated in Iowa (from all/other sources) in 2008.”
“…not historical performance.” “…wind capacity factor of 33.3%” Yeah right.