The price of energy from my wind turbine
These are only preliminary figures, but they won't be far out...
My turbine is 1.4m in diameter and delivers about 30W
on average, at times when the wind is blowing, which means 90W for an eight-hour
day assuming 100% battery efficiency; enough for my computer and some lighting.
Turbines of this size usually cost about £1000, with
another £1000 for the inverter, electronics and fitting, according
to a recent report on the BBC.
The energy produced in a year will be:
30W x 24hrs x 365 = 262,800 Watt-hours
or 262 kWh.
At 15p a unit, that's about £39.
If the turbine lasts 20 years, each unit of electricity will
have cost me about 50p, if I ignore the interest I could have
had on the £2000 (£60 per year at 3%). If I include the interest
it will have cost me about 80p per unit.
On the other hand - I will have been independent of the Grid
for office work, and won't have been affected by power
cuts, which are likely to get much more frequent...
It's interesting to compare these figures with
some of the claims made on pro-wind-energy websites.
I'm pro-wind-energy too, but I object to people being
cheated out of their hard-earned cash. We need truthfulness
when discussing energy, and at the time of writing, especially
on certain energy-based websites, it is in
short supply.
ND/Jun 2006
