The Energy Saving Trust’s (EST) published a report on the domestic small-scale wind field trial. The report on the first-ever comprehensive monitoring programme of domestic small scale wind turbines in the UK, had as its main aim ‘to determine how the technology performs when installed in ordinary people’s homes’.
The monitoring programme started in 2007 and specifically covered 57 sites across the UK, with the results overwhelmingly indicating that small wind systems could become a major UK renewable energy technology, generating around 3,459GWh. The conclusions of the report state, that the number of higher yield domestic wind locations is 455,650, approximately half of which are in England and Wales. The report states that “free standing pole mounted turbines, installed in the appropriate location with a clean-air wind resource, were seen to have very good performance throughout the UK, but observed performance in Scotland was exceptionally good due to higher recorded wind speeds. In Scotland, annual load factors in excess of 30 per cent were measured in some instances.” Commenting on the various wind speed databases available to consumers the report shows that “there are now a number of additional methods to predict the local wind speed.”
