HOME WIND CALCULATOR

Calculator to put wind in sails of small turbine industry; Carbon Trust's new gadget, the wind calculator, will help turbine owners and the turbine-curious to choose the best location
Felicity Carus, 5 March 2009 (UK Guardian)

"…the Carbon Trust has developed a user-friendly online wind estimator for small-scale turbines…the calculator is designed to help businesses and consumers work out how much power a turbine could generate and how much carbon it would save. Its data and user-friendliness have been welcomed by the wind turbine industry as an improvement on the existing wind speed database…The wind yield estimator should help installers put small-scale turbines in locations where they will generate the most power and save the most carbon.

"A Carbon Trust study last year found that small wind turbines could provide up to 1.5 Terawatt Hours (TWh) a year of electricity (0.4% of total UK electricity consumption) and save 0.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. According to figures from the British Wind Energy Association from 2008, there were 14,225 small-scale wind turbines in the UK, with a projected increase to 27,886 by next year."

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"The estimator models wind behaviour using 30 years of data from the Met Office's 220 weather stations. It asks for details such as postcode, turbine type, how close the rotor height is to the ground, tree or roof, and what the terrain is like: open countryside, woodland, or urban.

"The calculator also uses data collected from the Energy Saving Trust's micro-wind field trial, which measures wind performance, speed and direction data from 60 roof and pole-mounted micro-wind installations in the UK. Final results of the year long trial will be published at the end of May."

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"If the calculator's results are good, the Carbon Trust recommends a year's-worth of on-site wind speed monitoring. If a small wind turbine is suitable, the government provides grants towards the cost of installation through the Low Carbon Buildings Programme…

"The Carbon Trust reported last year that turbines in some rural locations can provide cheaper electricity than the grid, but in many urban situations, roof-mounted turbines may not pay back the turbine's own carbon footprint from the energy used to manufacture it...After criticism over ill-conceived placement of micro-turbines, the Carbon Trust claims businesses and domestic users will be more able to make better informed choices about whether a turbine is the right source of renewable energy for them…"