B&Q Wind Turbines (Merged Thread)

colinS

Flash Estivo

The Windsave turbine will certainly not make you rich, it could make you considerably poorer.

Putting £1000 pounds in a building society account at the moment would earn about the same as you predict for your turbine - if electricity prices don't fall.

This would be without the risk of invalidating your house insurance, upsetting your neighbours, having to pay a maintainance contract for you turbine (which you will do after two years or earlier if Windsave folds up), having bits of turbine falling on you head in high winds, and a host of other things that I will let others add to.

But please keep us informed about your turbine, your input is very important.

Flash_Estivo

Point taken ColinS but I'm having much more fun watching my wind turbine on the roof of my house than watching £1000 in the bank. Its a great talking point and my children love it.
To lonewolf946 I live in Daventry in an ok but not brilliant spot for wind.
I'll keep you posted.

[Deleted User]

Well,

I haven't really posted for a while, but a few bits of news for those that are interested.

21st March will see the Micro Power Annual Conference. I attended one of these events a few years back and listened to all the "spin" being put out by the micro wind manufacturers. The upshot of which at the time was that I wasn't going to put my money on any of these products. Although to digress for a moment, I did meet one company who is interesting and honest.

They are called "Quietrevolution" and are owned by their parent company XCo2. Now the quietrevolution turbine is not a micro turbine (although having had a meeting with them just a month ago, they do plan to do one in c. 18-24 months time) but it does overcome numerous problems with wind turbulance in built up areas due to it being a vertical axis turbine. I have seen their QR5 opperating at their test site and its not noisy and is a good looking piece of kit. I like their approach and they are realistic about output figures and payback periods.

Before you ask I don't have a commercial interest in the company save that their product might be useful in the work that I do and I am keeping in close contact with them to see how it develops. anyway a link to their site if you want to see it http://www.quietrevolution.co.uk/

Back to the main point, it is clear that this chicken is coming home to roost.

I cannot make the Micro Power conference this year but would love to attend to put some rather pointed questions to Windsave and B&Q. (http://www.micropower.co.uk/events/micropowerconference07.pdf for link to the agenda). Paul Johnson from B&Q I believe is their buying director who in the past has said things like "I expect to see in a few years time microwind turbines as commonly as sky dishes".

Well all I can say is that thanks to people like B&Q we probably will not for at least another 10 years as by B&Q marketing and selling this crappy product (the Windsave turbine in case your in any doubt as to what I am talking about) they will have helped kill the microgeneration market for the future.

Other microgeneration producers are having problems. I believe that Swift is having to recall a number of its turbines due to failings with them and that Ampair also is having problems.

All these people have rushed to market with products that are not fit for purpose in the hope of making a killing.

I have never received a response from B&Q (see my earlier posting on this board on this topic) and despite all of B&Qs CSR the fact is they are only interested in profit of course.

I hope that B&Q in the near future withdraw the Windsave product and I hope that people like Lonewolf will take this matters of his useless product up with the CEO of B&Q.

I would certainly encourage you Lonewolf to find the other forums (some I have linked in previous posts) which talk about micro wind and get your experience noted for others to pass on.

We must stop buying these products and force the manufactures to revise their claims and start being realistic.

I want micro generation to work for all of us and for our children and their children because the message does need to get out that we need to save our resources and start being sensible with the enviroment that we live in. Micor generation if done well could educate so many people to this fact and make a significant contribution, but only when the product is properly ready to bring to market.

End of Rant

Freddix

magyar

For what it's worth it's clear to me that this is all about moneyspinning for B&Q and nothing for the environment. My worry is that in a year's time people will look at their return on investment and see very little, which will damage the whole wind industry.

It's quite telling that you don't see many major developers putting up turbines in anywhere other than the windiest of areas.

colinS

Flash Estivo,

You have summed up the Windsave turbine just right - it's an expensive, partly funded by taxpayers, child's toy that some grown ups also like.

On a more serious note, could you do me a favour? If you installers have not yet arrived, when they do, could you ask them how the turbine's braking system works? I am sure it is not a mechanical brake, like, for instance, those on bikes or disc brakes on cars. I think it could be that the electric current is passed back into the generator windings and copper loss slows the blades down. The switch on the box, which looks so reasuring, is just a manual override which comes into play when the automatic brake switch burns out.

I am only guessing all of this, and Windsave's public documentation is so sparse. I have re-read my copy of Hugh Piggott's Windpower Workshop, where he describes braking and shutdown systems, and this is the conclusion I have come up with; but as I say, I could be completely wrong.

Also a description of the generator would be nice; is it a converted electric motor (dc,induction, syncronous) or a permanent magnet alternator.

Perhaps lonewolf could put these question to his installer too, or anybody else who has had dealings with Windsave and could oblige me.

Many thanks,

Colin

Cardew

I think the point about the subsidy by taxpayers should be emphasised.

For every one of these pieces of junk produced, the manufacturer gets several hundred pounds of our money; taxpayers money that could be put to better use.

Anyone want to take bets when this firm will go bust?

lonewolf946

Mark Installations engineers arrived this morning but unfortunately I hadn't read the above postings before they came so I couldn't ask the questions. I had previously felt some people were rather cynical about these things, but I'm more convinced now about conspiracies than ever. I'm getting different stories from everyone and it sounds like a massive damage limitation exercise.
The woman from Mark Installations who originally called me to book the appointment told me they would be fitting a modified tail fin and new inverter/transformer. When the engineers arrived they said they were only here to check over the system and knew nothing about the tail fin other then one apparently did fall off somewhere but the HSE were satisfied it was a one-off. They told me just under 150 of these turbines have been fitted by them personally over the South Wales area since they started (not sure when that was). They say they haven't installed any at all in my vicinity, that being the Neath, Port Talbot, Swansea area of South Wales. Staff at B&Q however told me they were selling an average of 10 a month during the last quarter of last year - so where are they.
It's clear from other postings that some kind of circular has done the rounds at B&Q telling store managers to keep officially selling the product to avoid embarrasment, but shove them in a corner out of the way.
The install engineers told me that all installations are now on hold whilst Windsave 're-engineer' the inverter/transformer box.
Personally I don't want my windmill removing if it can be made to work reasonably efficiently, but reading the postings I am becoming doubtful that this will ever be possible. I am tempted to write to B&Q initially to express my concerns and disappointment with the system and raise some of the 'disinformation' issues that are occurring. If they do change the box over then they should also re-start the 2 year warrantly from that date. It's also tempting to go public in some way. I'm sure there will be some consumer programmes more than interested in this issue but to be honest - the last thing I want to do is give bad publicity to green issues. As a previous contributor pointed out, the bad publicity caused by this whole issue will put things back by 10 years or more and give negative publicity to wind power in general. I shall keep you updated.

[Deleted User]

Lonewolf,

There are a number of articles being published stating how poor the performance of micro and small wind turbines are.

There is one in NCE (New Civil Engineer) from Feb 8th on a Proven WRT2500 turbine which the owner states has managed to generate 27p worth of electricity in a 3 week period (and the weather has been windy during January). This is a small turbine as opposed to a micro turbine and cost the owner £11,500 to install, so you can imagine he is not best pleased.

The reason for going public is just that to inform the public how poor some of these turbines can be in performance terms. This would allow a would be purchaser to make an informed choice rather than a choice based on the PR and marketing of the manufacturers.

We need to get a rapid change from all the manufactures in the way that they market and sell their products. If they became "honest" then the there would be very little damage to the market, as buyers would know what they are letting themselves in for.

There are still plenty of people out there who would purchase a turbine because it is a least doing something which is better than nothing (although that doesn't factor in the embedded carbon issue - for those that don't know this term it relates to the energy cost and associated carbon emissions created in actually manufacturing the product to start with, and if you take the case of the Proven turbine above, if it continues to only produce 27p worth of electricity every 3 weeks the chances are that it won't even offset its embedded carbon cost, never mind make a significant contribution to reducing the owners carbon emissions) and these people will be more than happy to act as guinea pigs so that the manufactures can improve the product to the point that it will work on a mass market basis and be attractive to all.

So I ask you please do contact a newspaper The Times or The Guardian and let them know I am sure they will make an interesting feature on it, or the Daily Mail heaven forbid.

regards Freddix

Cardew

lonewolf946 wrote:

It's also tempting to go public in some way. I'm sure there will be some consumer programmes more than interested in this issue but to be honest - the last thing I want to do is give bad publicity to green issues. As a previous contributor pointed out, the bad publicity caused by this whole issue will put things back by 10 years or more and give negative publicity to wind power in general. I shall keep you updated.

Thanks for the update.

I appreciate your sentiments about not wanting to generate negative publicty for green issues.

However I feel that the whole subject of firms cynically cashing in on environmental products, that fall way short of their implied claims, needs to be tackled as in the long run it will do far more damage to the green movement.

I have been 'banging on' for a long while in this forum about solar heating/generation and wind generation having no merit in money saving terms.

While firms can make huge profits by selling overpriced equipment by making unsupportable claims they will continue to do so.

They really need to be exposed!

magyar

Cardew wrote:

Thanks for the update.

I appreciate your sentiments about not wanting to generate negative publicty for green issues.

However I feel that the whole subject of firms cynically cashing in on environmental products, that fall way short of their implied claims, needs to be tackled as in the long run it will do far more damage to the green movement.

I have been 'banging on' for a long while in this forum about solar heating/generation and wind generation having no merit in money saving terms.

While firms can make huge profits by selling overpriced equipment by making unsupportable claims they will continue to do so.

They really need to be exposed!

As someone who works in the renewables industry I totally agree with you.

If it's any yardstick, I work in a company full of 'greenies' who are about as aufait with wind turbine technology as you can get and I can tell you that not one of us has a microturbine installed.