Yes, it would make a lot more sense to give people really substantial grants to encourage the least 'improvement minded people' to make real savings, instead of subsidising snake-oil solar sales.
Seriously, yes. What a waste of resources these fashion items are and cash. Those that purchase them should pay a "Carbon Tax" for their profligate ways!
On Wed, 19 Dec 2007 21:54:51 +0000 someone who may be John Rumm wrote this:-
Incorrect.
As does heating water. These points have been explained before.
On Wed, 19 Dec 2007 23:20:21 +0000 someone who may be Peter Parry wrote this:-
I note that you were unable to counter the point that the first thing they called for was reducing energy losses from buildings.
Can you back up that claim?
Remind us, I can't recall anything plausible...
They do indeed, it's covered in 11 words out of 620 on one page and 10 out of 240 on another.
For some reason while energy saving measures are costed ("Turning your central heating thermostat down by one degree can save up to £30 a year.") none of the alternative generation methods are.
Usefully however there are some objective figures now getting out. The Hybrolight (a combination wind/solar powered street light) study predicted that over three months the turbine at the top of the lamp column would generate about 820Ahr In fact when measured it generated
17Ahr over this period.The Warwick Urban Wind Trial Project interim report has also been published. It has some rather odd conclusions because of its aim which wasn't so much to see if energy could be generated but rather whether Windmills were good propaganda tools! (for example "The Ampairs are lighter than Windsave and appear to start rotating at much lower wind speeds. This gives a favourable impression to passers by as the system generally appears to be working even on calm days")
At one trial site (the only one with data reported) the measured wind speed was 1.25m/s compared with the predicted 4.9m/s. Up to Oct the average energy generated _per day_ has been:-
Site 1 17Wh Site 2 68Wh Site 3 16Wh Site 4 98Wh Site 5 255Wh Site 6 179Wh Site 7 174Wh The last three sites are on top of multistory blocks of flats. Note these are Watt hours, not kilowatt hours.
This almost total lack of energy generation hasn't for some reason damped the enthusiasm of the authors who write " ... sites may struggle to hit more than 100 kWh in the year based on this very early data."
So why not put some of the following figures on your web site?
Instead of "a solar hot water heater can provide the average house with almost all of its hot water during the summer months and about
50% year round." which is a meaningless figure as most people have no idea what they pay for hot water try "A single solar panel of any type will cost between £2,000 and £8,000 to install and if correctly sited collect about 1MWh of energy in one year, equivalent to a saving of about £40 if you use gas to heat your water."or for small windmills instead of the wholly misleading "some systems have been designed with urban use very much in mind, taking into account likely turbulence of the wind in these areas. It is possible to find general information on wind speeds from the Dti wind speed database:"
try
"The DTI windspeed database is of little practical value in urban environments as it overestimates the wind speed by a factor of about
Since this is all greeny marketing bollocks anyway and these things generate little energy; for marketing purposes on calm days, they can be powered from the electricity supply such that they rotate, enhancing the feel good factor for little cost in energy.
No there's a thought!
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