Ed Miliband has unveiled plans to make it easier for homeowners to install wind turbines in their gardens as part of a mass expansion of green power.
The Energy Secretary has announced a consultation on relaxing planning rules governing the construction of turbines on residential and commercial properties.
The aim is to make it easier for farmers, people living in semi-detached houses and business owners to install the machines on their land.
Garden or rooftop wind turbines can help homeowners and small businesses cut their power bills by generating electricity for direct consumption. Excess power can be used to charge batteries or be sold to the grid.
Small ones don’t generate back their production consumptions?
What’s changed?
Tchah
Build yer own easy enough. I’m sure all the bits are there in an old washing machine.
So the gardening work in the semi-detached house will now include cleaning up chopped up birds. Maybe that will help with food sustainability though? I mean, it doesn’t get more km0 than that!
I think we mocked this a couple of weeks ago.
“Excess power …” a likely story.
“The aim is to make it easier for farmers, people living in semi-detached houses and business owners ”
All the people Labour really hates?
I don’t think I want one on my roof. The direct noise from the blade tips and the noise coming down through the structure would be unbearable pretty soon.
Gosh, you can tell Ed is really serious about this with a consultation on relaxing planning rules presumably with any actual effect less important than the headlines now.
It’d be hilarious how inept these wankers are, if they weren’t destroying the country at pace.
I don’t think I want one on my roof.
You don’t want one on your neighbour’s roof either. Oh boy I can see this is going to start some rows.
I understand that Minibrain came up with this idea after people started laughing when he proposed floating solar panels. The main objectors were said to be all of those Labour politicians and supporters who had swimming pools.
Excess power can be used to charge batteries or be sold to the grid.
So the UK’s going to go the same way as Spain, is it? Well, at least you won’t have to turn the lights out when you leave.
And on that subject, I yesterday had a long conversation with yet another mate who’s contemplating fucking off. Has a Thai wife so thinking about heading east. I have my amiga over in Bahia, looking at property. It’s amazing how cheap it is away from the tourist infestations. Becoming very tempting. So’s Maranhao. Means learning Portuguese but WTF? The upside’s never ever meeting another Englishman.
Did anyone else have a flashback to Mao’s making iron in backyard furnaces when reading this, or is it just me?
Socialism and “we don’t need capital, the people can do it all themselves”…
“We tried local planning and permitting, but it didn’t work: councils kept making wrong decisions.”
What’s changed?
The depth of religious fervour.
Diddler on the Roof
I know solar is getting more efficient (more wattage per area). Maybe wind’s improved as well and can now cover its production costs over its lifetime?
The politics is, as usual, a Milliband shitstorm, but maybe the base economic calculations have improved?
EROEI on solar PV is pitiful (if not actually negative) across northern Europe, where the sun don’t shine that often, and when it does it’s fairly weak (and unlike tropical climes, output doesn’t coincide with demand (for a/c)). Why we’re subsidizing them is a scientific mystery, but politically bloody obvious.
Wind is a bit better, as long as it’s (a) onshore; and (b) large scale – but individual rooftop installations are batshit mental.
@Chris Miller
Wind is a bit better, as long as it’s ………….. c). somebody else’s problem paying for all that costly storage/backup generation that stands idle earning no revenue until the wind stops blowing for a week or two.
The only “Green” option that works (i.e. pays for itself without a subsidy) in England is rooftop solar water heating panels – but of course Labour avoids supporting them (the Tories briefly did when someone explained to them but Labour cancelled support).
Onshore wind (the costs of getting offshore-wind-generated-electricity to the grid exceeds its value) will reduce CO2 emissions while the wind is blowing but the capital cost is money down the drain because you need Reliable back-up (usually CCGT) for 98.7% of maximum wind-power and you need name-plate capacity of 150% of that.
If we could generate more hydroelectricity that would help but there aren’t many suitable sites which do not already have a power station.