Author: iain

There have been some big headlines in some newspapers about wind farms being paid to “not make electricity”.  These payments are called “transmission constraint payments” and happen because of the way the electricity market works.

The National Grid has to balance electricity supply and demand across Britain. At some places, particularly the England / Scotland border, the grid is pretty weak and can get jammed.  If one area is making too much electricity then it needs to be switched off.

It is easier to switch a wind farm off than traditional power plants. In 2010/11 the total cost of “Transmission Constraint Payments” paid was £170 million. Most of this was paid to coal, gas and nuclear power plants and actually 0.1% was paid to wind farms. Still, any money paid to private companies to not do something seems wrong.

The cost still goes onto our bills and the Dunbar Community Energy Company welcomes the fact that the Department of Energy and Climate Change announcement that it plans to change the Energy Act 2010 to reduce the amount of “Transmission Constraint Payments” by changing the licence rules for electricity generators.

You can see more on their website

http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/consultations/trans_const/trans_const.aspx

 

 

 

Many people are blaming wind turbines for their electricity bills going up. In fact wind turbines make up about £16 to £22 each year on an electricity bill (Ofgem). Even though this is not the reason for bills going up it’s still more money leaving our pockets and going to private companies. With a community  energy wind turbine the money comes back into the community.

What happens to you fuel bill is shown in the information sheet below.

bills

This is a big issue that the media seems to pay a lot of attention to. Hopefully this information from CSE (Centre for Sustainable Energy) helps to explain the situation.

inefficient turbines

This is a very interesting question. If something uses more energy to make it than the energy it makes in it’s lifetime, it doesn’t make much sense. It is called the energy payback time. Each wind turbine is different but here is some information from CSE (Centre for Sustainable Energy).

payback times

Some people have asked about what happens to birds and bats. Here’s some information about the effect on birds and bats.

Wildlife birds and bats

Here’s some information about safety and noise from wind turbines. The information comes from CSE (Centre for Sustainable Energy)

safety and noise

Sorry to have missed this important point. Commercial developers often build a wind farm with a grid connection “sized up” so they can add more wind turbines later. This way they can expand the wind farm.

The Dunbar Community Energy Company is not a commercial developer so does not work like that. The single wind turbine we are considering will be 74 meters ( to blade tip). That’s a 50 meter tower with three blades, each 24 meters long.

We would need to put our own wires  into the ground to connect the wind turbine to the grid. The wires will be strong enough to take the electricity from one turbine only. There are no plans to put extra wind turbines on the hill now, or at any time.

That’s totally what we should do. The problem is finding the money to pay for energy efficiency measures in our community.

If we were more energy efficient, we would need less turbines.

Community energy could reinvest profit into saving people money at home through energy efficiency measures. If that is the result of the public vote then it can create local jobs in keeping local homes warm.

 

 

As a result of the public vote some good questions have come up that we would like to answer.

How do we spend the money and who decides is one question. Basically that is the point of community energy, the community decides. In our case the board of the parent charity, Sustaining Dunbar, has to work out of it is feasible and within the aims of the charity but whatever happens there has to be at least one public consultation on how to spend the money. We are doing at least two at the early stage. The link below explains the process.

How is the money invested from community energy

So, our experts have said that a 500kW Enercon E48 wind turbine would be the best for our site on Cocklaw Hill.

It would make electricity that we would sell and make over £200,000 each year for our community.

These are some pictures of what it might look like. It’s to the left of the TV mast, The TV mast was built in the 1960’s to give us “High Definition” television. It stopped working around 1984!

Community wind turbine from Asda

Community wind turbine from A1 Torness

Community wind turbine from Oldhamstocks

Our community needs to decide–

Do we want it ?  What do we want to spend the money on?

Vote on-line or at the BeGreen shop. Without community support it will not happen.

Vote Now! 

More information about your opinion on “your opinion day” Dunbar Library 2pm to 730pm    Thursday 26th January 2012.