Going Solo

As featured in Energy Engineering, June 2010 issue.

In 2008, David Kindred, a freeholder from Preston, wanted to be carbon neutral and so took the decision to generate his own energy by installing a wind turbine.

“Our property is surrounded by open farmland near the coast, making it ideally suited to wind power. We wanted to capitalise on the constant high winds of our rural location to reduce our carbon footprint to zero if at all possible and save on rising fuel prices,” he explains.

 

Having received planning permission from the local council and having secured a £2,500 government grant from the Carbon Buildings Trust, Mr. Kindred installed his turbine. Although his turbine has a 6KW capacity, the majority of the time it produces between 1 and 3 kW. It provides enough power to run general appliances - fridge, TV and some lighting.

 

Mr. Kindred believes that selling power back to an electricity supplier is the only way to go.

 

“On windy days we get paid for any energy that we generate but don’t use, as it is automatically exported back to the National Grid. We chose to work with an independent supplier, Opus Energy, as they both purchase our surplus power at a competitive price and supply us with electricity from the Grid when we need it,” he says.

 

“Our turbine is Ofgem accredited, meaning that Opus Energy can purchase the Renewables Obligation Certificates (ROCs) we generate. Two ROCs are awarded for every megawatt hour generated and each ROC is sold for a fixed price of £45. So we get £90 ‘cash back’ for each megawatt hour regardless of whether the energy is used by us or sent back to the Grid.”

 

In the first six months Mr. Kindred was able to sell over £400 of excess electricity back to Opus Energy. He also received over £250 for the ROCs generated by the turbine.

 

“As we only used about £600 of energy from the Grid in that time, so in effect we have free electricity and a small cash bonus of £50 left over.

 

“The winter months were relatively still this year, but we still generated over 9.75 MWh in the first 12 months. In a normal year we would generate between 10 and 11MWh so we actually expect to sell much more energy back to the Grid going forward, increasing our cash bonus at the end of the year.”