Were we to happen upon a little extra cash, no doubt a lot of us these days would wonder whether to spend it on eco home improvements. By eco home improvements think solar panels and small wind turbines. In particular, small wind turbines of which David Cameron is a big fan and which were introduced to the mass market via B&Q last year. Placed on the roof the energy-saving turbines convert wind energy into electricity for the home, generating 1kW of energy and all for just under £1500.

Sounds like a great idea. Though, as The Observer’s eco journalist Lucy Siegle points out this week, “When the wind drops (as it does), they don’t exactly earn their keep.” Which doesn’t bode well in light of the supposed rumours going round about the turbines: that small turbines give small energy returns and that they can cause damage to buildings due to vibrations and noise levels. If this has got you thinking then the best thing to do before drawing any conclusions is to wait for two forthcoming reports on the turbine efficacy by The Warwick Microwind Trial Project and the Energy Saving Trust, due out later this year.

Hopefully the results will be positive and any teething problems will be ironed out by manufacturers. It would be nice to see domestic energy production keeping in line with the DTI’s estimation that by 2050 up to 40 per cent of electricity generation in the UK could be produced by small and microgeneration technologies, including 6 per cent from small wind-energy generation. In the meantime, as Lucy Siegle suggests why not test windspeed out for yourself with an anemometer from www.weathershop.co.uk? Enjoy!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 at 12:43 pm and is filed under Eco-home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.