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(4) Designing for a Sustainable Community
 Jamie Russell (pictured) at McKenzie Strickland Associates’ Crieff office, has worked for established architects’ practices in Edinburgh and London where he further developed his knowledge of Resources and Technology with emphasis on Energy Efficient Design on a series of award winning commercial and residential projects focusing on energy efficiency and sustainable design.
Whether David Cameron’s coalition will change the face of British politics remains to be seen, but he has already had an impact on the domestic wind turbine industry when he decided to give his house an ‘eco makeover’ and caught the public imagination by installing a roof mounted micro wind turbine.
As a rule, the larger and taller your wind turbine, the better the investment. Whereas the small micro turbines mounted on walls or roofs will struggle to produce any meaningful amount of power or to have any sensible payback, commercial wind farms will pay for themselves within four or five years, as each one is capable of producing 400,000kW of electricity each year. However, the UK is currently home to many of the world’s leading producers of small wind systems which vary in their design, size, power and cost. “Micro wind” includes building mounted and domestic scale turbines ranging from 10-15 meters in height, producing 0–1.5kw power and costing £500 – £5k. “Small Wind” turbines are larger freestanding models 15-25m in height, producing1.5–15kw power and costing around £10 – £50k.
The right wind turbine in the right location will produce lots of energy - energy that can be sold to the grid, produce an income for the owner and reduce CO2. The ‘Feed-in Tariffs’ scheme is a government incentive that promises households and businesses financial payment for producing their own renewable energy. It works by guaranteeing a set price for the energy they generate as well as an additional set price for any surplus electricity that is exported to the grid.
Whether using a micro system for home or a small-medium wind turbine as a business or community investment, it is critical to establish exactly how good your site is. The best wind turbine in the world is only as good as the wind that turns it, and for a wind turbine to be worthwhile your site’s annual average wind speed needs to be at least 4.5 metres per second, any slower and a wind turbine is not for you. There are a number of online windspeed databases that will give you a good indication of local windspeeds, although the best way is to monitor the wind. Scotland has some of the strongest and most consistent winds in Europe, so if you have an exposed rural site or access to a hilltop, then there is a good chance the winds will be strong enough and hopefully significantly outperform David Cameron’s Notting Hill windmill!
Next month Jamie will be looking at Hydro Power
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