Castle Farm in the Kent Messenger (UPDATED)
The Castle Farm Community project made news today with inclusion in the Kent Messenger newspaper. In a reasonably balanced article they provided some of the essential details of the scheme but left out a few key facts:Read more
Wednesday Nights "The One Show" on BBC1
Like many people watching BBC1's "The One Show" on Wednesday we were horrified by the case of a giant wind turbine (80m hub height, 125m to blade tip) sighted less than 70m from a residential property. The report quite rightly highlighted problems caused by noise, shadow flicker and even large chunks of ice falling from blades during winter.Read more
A new twist on the polluter pays?
Wired.com is reporting that nations most effected by climate change are now thinking the unthinkable - starting legal action against those countries deemed to have caused the damaging pollution:Read more
Monbiot is wrong - had to happen!
In his latest article, George Monbiot heavily criticises the UK Feed In Tariff scheme for being a "rip off" and a "pricey conceit with little benefit".
We disagree.
While its true that FITs will be paid in part by all bill paying electricity consumers, the amounts are small and the benefits of de-centralised, local generation at the point of consumption are real and valid. Moreover, on the same day the Government announced the "pay as you save" scheme to allow lower income households to have micro-generation technologies installed without paying a penny - so Monbiots other claim that only middle class households could afford to install PV and the like would also seem to be false.
FITs may prove to be far from perfect and the laws of unforeseen consequence might one day prove it was folly. But right now its what we've got and it could be a step in the right direction to a lower dependence on fossil fuels.
UK Feed in Tarrifs (FIT) - ETA April 2010
Current expectations are that wind turbines in the 200 to 250 KW class will attract a generation tariff rate of 18p per kwh (when averaged over the scheme lifetime). The FIT scheme will run for 25 years and unlike many of other tariffs (eg PV, small wind) this particular one will not reduce over time.
In addition to the Generation Tariff an Export tariff of 5p per kwh has been agreed with the major electricity suppliers. This value is likely to increase over time in line with energy inflation.
With a fair wind we expect the DWP-24 turbine to generate approximately £90,000 per year from the two combined tariffs.
