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Windsave rooftop wind turbines
By RumiUK, Section Wind Posted on Fri Oct 27, 2006 at 04:04:08 PM MST
Comments invited

Windsave have got together with B&Q a uk DIY store and are selling their latest turbine rated at 1kW at 12.5m/s this has been critqued by me and others at www.newclearpower.org a UK RE info site. These things are a big con and I fear they will bring the industry in general into disrepute and hey whats the alternative.... Nuclear!

Windsave rooftop wind turbines | 10 comments (10 topical)

Re: Windsave rooftop wind turbines (3.00 / 0) (#1)
by fungus on Fri Oct 27, 2006 at 10:58:53 AM MST

I definitely agree with you. The power claims are absurd and I also think your site is very good. Good detailed info on the windsave generators. :-)

'Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.'-Albert Einstein
Fungus - www.reenergy.co.uk

Re: Windsave rooftop wind turbines (3.00 / 0) (#2)
by AbyssUnderground on Fri Oct 27, 2006 at 10:59:22 AM MST

Can you explain how these are a con? You cant come on saying they are a con with no evidence.

http://www.repowered.co.uk - My Renewable Energy site.
msn[at]m3ezw.co.uk - my msn if you want a chat.

Re: Windsave rooftop wind turbines (3.00 / 0) (#3)
by Flux on Fri Oct 27, 2006 at 11:28:24 AM MST

Here in the midlands at a good site we have at best 10mph average wind speed.

At a site that I monitored for some time it was nearer 8mph at 30 ft, near an airfield. You can guess what it will be 6ft above a house in a town.

Take the best possible case of 10mph average.

Michael Klemens figures for a good turbine claim 2 kWh/ month/ ft^2.

Windsave is 6ft diameter, 28.3 ft^2 that gives you 56.5kWh/month or 678 kWh/year.

At 6p per kWh that will generate just over £40 per year.

Assuming £1000 cost after grant, payback tine is 25 yrs, after that you save £40 a year.

Not a bad deal if they give you the thing but I don't want to wait 25 yrs to see a profit from a thing with 2 year warranty and a life of 10 years.

Perhaps you don't regard it as a scam, but it is a pretty poor deal "to be seen to be green"
Flux

[ Parent ]

Re: Windsave rooftop wind turbines (3.00 / 0) (#4)
by fungus on Fri Oct 27, 2006 at 11:41:44 AM MST

Flux are you in the UK? Well also there is the fact that on their website they say: As can be seen in the graph the actual extractable power in the wind even in a perfect case disappears to zero around 3m/s (21W at 3m/s and the parasitic cost of conversion is approx 20W)
?and 3 m/s is about 10mph so there would be almost zero power output.

'Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.'-Albert Einstein
Fungus - www.reenergy.co.uk
[ Parent ]

Re: Windsave rooftop wind turbines (3.00 / 0) (#5)
by Flux on Fri Oct 27, 2006 at 12:07:56 PM MST

Klemen's figures are based on a Rayleigh distribution, where there will be significant wind speed above the average, so things are not impossible at an average of 3M/s, but even so it's not a viable proposition.
Flux

[ Parent ]

Re: Windsave rooftop wind turbines (3.00 / 0) (#7)
by CG on Sat Oct 28, 2006 at 03:18:53 AM MST

If you want to argue for Windsave, get yourself over to selfsufficientish.com. There's a bloke there from Windsave(he builds the inverter, and I know from other postings here that is what interests a lot of people the most on this site) trying to defend them. It's like Custer's Last Stand, he's shot through with anti-Windsave arrows, he could use some more cavalry coming over the hill. Just google "windsave chocolate teapots" and you will arrive in the middle of 4 pages of comments.

[ Parent ]

Re: Windsave rooftop wind turbines (3.00 / 0) (#6)
by powerbuoy on Fri Oct 27, 2006 at 08:41:20 PM MST

I guess at $3000.00 for this unit it'll be a long way to payback, even if you'd get 20 cents per KW ...

Powerbuoy

Re: Windsave rooftop wind turbines (3.00 / 0) (#8)
by powerbuoy on Sat Oct 28, 2006 at 11:39:22 AM MST

On another note ... the newclearpower.org (or is it nuclear power dot org?) is not very elaborate either. It seems to be that it was not primarily set up to give an unbiased opinion on a variety of products, but to slander one product only ...

Powerbuoy

Re: Windsave rooftop wind turbines (3.00 / 0) (#9)
by fungus on Sat Oct 28, 2006 at 11:55:32 AM MST

And in his links section he has the website that is in his profile. There he sells wind turbines that make 300w at 12m/s(which he specifically said against) that are more expensive than the B&Q wind turbines.

'Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.'-Albert Einstein
Fungus - www.reenergy.co.uk

Re: Windsave rooftop wind turbines (3.00 / 0) (#10)
by jamesjones on Wed Nov 01, 2006 at 08:08:33 AM MST

I initially thought, when I saw the B&Q turbine, "That looks good! A well known company is finally pushing windpower!". Then I read the sites linked to in this thread, and realised that whole Windsave thing is a waste of money. A BIG waste of money, as all the experts involved have said. Imagine if just a thousand potential Windsave customers paid £1,500 into a co-operative to buy a wind farm with three or four megawatt turbines, for £1.5 million. (Please excuse me if the price per turbine is wrong, I haven't had much time to look up the market prices yet). For £1.5 million they could surely get hundreds of times more electricity from a proper turbine(s) than from each house having their own tiny little Windsave turbine, giving out 10 watts if they're lucky.

As the thread on the 'Windsave chocolate teapot' Google search said, this is going to make wind energy simply look bad - I can see it now, thousands of disgruntled customers telling everybody they know what a disaster it was, and then them telling everybody they know that wind energy is a con, etc.

Another thing that confuses me is that every time I read a book or a website about a wind turbine, it almost always says that the life of the turbine is '20 years', as if the blades, nacelle, generator, gearbox, and tower, can never be repaired or replaced, if and when necessary, and they always say how it would be easy and cheap to clean up after 'removing' the turbine. Surely if the turbine works there would never be any reason to stop using the site? (I realise it's helpful to show that wind power can easily be dismantled and cleaned up IF it's necessary, unlike, say, a nuclear power station, but it always seems to be implied that it WILL be taken down in 20 years. Surely if all the parts can be repaired and/or replaced, the cost per kilowatt will continue to go down and down, once the purchase cost has been paid back by electricity sales?

Windsave rooftop wind turbines | 10 comments (10 topical)

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