Brian Micklethwait points us to an article from Times Online, illustrating that things are not quite as rosy for local power generation as we're sometimes led to believe:
Posted by Nicholas at February 19, 2007 01:39 PMHaving spent £13,000 on installing a wind turbine at his home, John Large is disappointed at the return on his investment, which amounts to 9p a week.
At this rate, it is calculated, it will take 2,768 years for the electricity generated by the turbine to pay for itself, by which time he will be past caring about global warming.
The wind turbine was installed at the engineer’s home in Woolwich, southeast London, four weeks ago and has so far generated four kilowatts of electricity. An average household needs 23kw every day to power its lights and appliances.
Mr Large said that his difficulties highlighted the problems faced by consumers who wanted to buy wind turbines to save money and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
If you put a wind turbine in the wrong location what do you expect?True, but if someone is willing to invest tens of thousands of dollars, you'd think they'd at least have done the necessary homework to put the turbine in the most advantageous position on the property. If not, then he's incredibly careless of his money, and the vendor is nearly as culpable . . . in a start-up industry, referenceable clients are gold. You don't try to piss them off by not advising them on where to have their new expensive toy installed for best effect. Posted by: Nicholas at February 28, 2007 02:08 PM
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