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Big small wind power!

As a piece of farm machinery the windmill or wind pump has been around for hundreds of years. Windmills used to be on every hilltop. Now the reliance on expensive electricity sees a new viable farm use for wind power.
IskraWind

Introduction to small scale wind turbines

When someone hears that I work for a small wind turbine manufacturer they usually get all the wrong ideas! Small does not always mean pocket sized or the tiny battery chargers on boats.
The small turbines produced by Iskra wind turbines have a 4.8m diameter rotor and sit on a 12m tower, not something you could sell door-to-door! However for a farmer with a high power demand who is feeling the pinch from constantly increasing power and fuel costs, a really small wind turbine will not help the load and a big wind turbine is certainly out of the budget.

Iskra AT5-1 5kw wind turbine

The Iskra AT5-1 5kW turbine is just the right size! The cost of renewables is often a turn off, even for enthusiasts. Getting together the large outlay for a piece of new equipment is always going to feel like a risk. In reality paying upfront for your electricity for the next few years is probably the most sensible decision you could make, looking at the way power costs are going.
If you were buying a house in a period of runaway inflation and someone offered you a fixed rate mortgage for 10 years and then nothing to pay for the 10 years after you would jump at it! It is time to start looking at energy costs in that way.

Wind turbine economics

The Iskra turbine is designed to last 20 years; the average payback time on its cost is 10 years and that is based on electricity prices staying at about 7.5p per unit. Basically you are paying upfront for 10 years' worth of electricity at a fixed rate, then getting 10 years free. One farmer in a particularly windy spot in Yorkshire recently worked out that his turbine would pay for itself in 4 ½ years! Admittedly that is an extreme example, not many people would choose to live somewhere quite as windy as that. Not only do the economics stack up, the government is doing everything possible to help wind turbine buyers.

Wind turbine planning laws

The planning laws have changed recently, much to the annoyance of the anti-wind lobby, to bring some sense of scale into the process. The fact that farmyard scale turbines and wind farm scale turbines are just not the same has filtered through to the planners. It is now possible for small generators to sell power back to the grid and also collect tradable carbon credits, which work like shares that can be sold to electricity companies. If this all sounds complicated there are even companies that will do all the paperwork for you, selling your excess power, monitoring your production, collecting your carbon certificates and selling them for you. You just get issued with a regular cheque if you generate more than you use! For a landowner who has the space to install a turbine, £13,000 invested up front for 20 years of low or no electricity bills more than just common sense.

Conclusion

My background is as a science teacher and environmentalist, not as a salesman! I cannot believe that, with the tidiness and the economics of home wind power that more farmers and schools have not jumped on the bandwagon.
If I had a suitable piece of land it would be one of my first purchases! Iskra have installed 5 turbines in the East Midlands recently and have orders for several more. Anyone who would like to visit one of our installed turbines can do so at the Rushcliffe Country Park near Ruddington, south of Nottingham.

Our website has pictures of some of the recent installations (www.iskrawind.com) anyone who would like further information can write or email me for an info pack:

Click here to email Jerome Baddley 50 Kentwood Rd, Sneinton, Nottingham, NG2 4FP

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