Our wind turbines were made on site, from raw materials, here at Le Vivray. Both are 3.7m diameter design from Hugh Piggott’s book "A Wind Turbine Recipe Book" that can be found at www.scoraigwind.co.uk with optimal winding of the magneto coils to match wind and blade design, and a height including blades of 11m. The blades automatically tip out of the wind when the turbine reaches maximum speed (“self-furling”). The turbines give 1 to 2kW each in even very moderate winds, with max output 3.3kW. Now that they are tested, we will install one more, providing up to 50% of our power needs.


 

Energy produced by the main suppliers e.g. EDF is still relatively cheap compared to the initial investment if your renewable energy -producing equipment is installed commercially: it will likely be around 15-20 years before your investment is returned. And a fact not generally understood is that the giant commercial wind turbines may take even longer, due to the materials and energy used to create them in the first place. i.e. concrete and steel foundations, service equipment and roads, metals and other materials used in manufacturing and maintenance over an estimated 20 year lifespan...
 
...So, could these simply constructed, mid-sized domestic wind turbines (2-6kW) really be the way forward? Well, the pay-back time for ours is around 4 years (with careful purchasing on e-bay!), and with an est 20-30 year life-span, yes, they do it for us.

What do you think?