Find out if your house could use a wind turbine
I’m a bit sick of the wind. It’s insidious, all-consuming and just straight-up doesn’t pack it in. Ever.
Wind sneaks all its nastiness in the back door while everyone focuses on moaning about the rain.
I mean, at least rain is nourishing and helpful, and causes pretty plants to grow.
Wind does nothing in my book. I know it’s meant to shape the very land itself, bear aloft the birds in the sky, pollinate flowers and all that, but it makes my games of tennis somewhat imprecise affairs, and tries to blow me off my bike into the path of cars.
However, of greater concern to the world in general is that it can be harnessed to produce energy.
As a Government fact sheet helpfully notes, “the UK is a very windy country”.
In fact, according to the BERR, the UK’s wind resources are the greatest in Europe. What with us being an island – with all those hundreds of miles of exposed coastlines – we have the potential to generate three times the energy that we actually consume each year.
The thing is, though, that building farms of wind turbines doesn’t always please everyone involved.
And for every person who likes the faraway glint of turbines lazily turning on a hillside, there are others who are unconvinced about the benefits of wind energy.
Doing a ‘Dave’
One answer to generating electricity without the need for giant wind turbines is to do it yourself at home. ‘Doing a Cameron’, as it’s (unofficially) called after the man-of-the-people Tory leader installed a turbine on his roof.
However, some have claimed that wind turbines in urban areas are nothing more than a symbolic gesture, as gusts never get strong enough to produce meaningful enough amounts of electricity to be cost effective.
And now the Energy Saving Trust (EST) has released a simple tool so any householder can work out if it’s worth their while setting up a wind turbine, by entering their postcode and stating whether they live in an urban, suburban, or rural location. Some could even save up to ?
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Originally posted 2009-07-31 15:37:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
