1 KW turbine strapped to a bungalow??

[gotwind2]

Hello all.

Today, I had a bicycle ride around my local area and noticed a spinning wind turbine in the near distance, obviously I had to investigate..

Here's a camera phone image.

It's a Scottish companies Windsave turbine, that are distributed in the U.K. through a large DIY superstore B&Q and to be fair it was spinning very well when I saw it, in a (very approximate) 12 mph wind.

http://www.windsave.com/

Apparently the company 'Windsave' conducts a full site assessment prior to installation so they must have deemed this site appropriate, however it's actually lower than my location 1/2 mile up the road so I'm not sure how they came to that conclusion. My turbines perform badly - I have to take them elsewhere to test/evaluate.

Also, the bugalows wall mounting seemed similar to a satellite dish mounting, this concerned me also.

I certainly wouldn't mount a 1Kw wind turbine to a small bungalow outer wall just to save a few pounds (dollars) per month.

I'll try and have a chat with the owner this week and see how he/she reports back.

Ben.

[electronbaby]

This seems a little scary. I cant see how they deemed it an ok site, specifically at that height. It would be interesting to see how the home owner likes the vibration?  With the wind out of the direction it looks like its coming out of, it seems like it would be below the wake caused by the structure of the house.

Id be curious to see the production figures.

[tanner0441]

Hi

The DIY  Store no longer sell the item and there has been a lot of controversy in  the UK press over the stated performance in sensible winds. The advertising initially said you could halve your electricity bills at this point I stopped listening. 1KW?

Look on the Hugh Piggot site there are some interesting links from there.  More than one chimney photographed laying on the driveway.

Brian

[Flux]

As far as Windsave is concerned that seems to be one of the better installations.

The whole concept of wind turbines no more than 6ft above the roof line of a house is totally crazy. It's total energy production during its life will never cover the initial cost, so the claimed saving of 1/2 your electricity bill ( I thought it was 1/3) is plain dreaming, it will never save anything except on a remote super good site.

Somehow they managed to get this scam through the government and British Gas backed them and they fooled B &Q into providing an outlet.

I suspect that the average UK brick house or bungalow is quite capable of supporting a 6ft turbine when mounted in that way and even the transmitted noise could be manageable but in every other way it has been a disaster for windpower.

I find it surprising that they didn't offer solar panels to go at the back of the building where they would be shaded from the sun and would almost certainly have a longer life span.

Flux

[CG]

As you can tell from this post,

 http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2005/12/15/101956/33 I have been on Windsave's case since the start, and I have made many postings on other boards against this con trick which dips into UK tax payers' pockets. But this is not the lowest siting of a Windsave, here in Cromer we have one on a bungalow's garage. It is on the main coastal road, with a clear sweep in front of it, so in certain wind directions it can get a reasonable amount of wind. The trouble is that the Windsave turbine cannot furl and it spends most of its time revolving around the mast. The lastest reports on the Warwick trails of urban wind turbines of various types, including Windsave, more or less finish off the idea of fitting turbines to houses in city areas. In the Warwick trials of Windsave there are also the first reports of structural damage caused by fixing the turbine to the house.