Forget that rooftop windmill: David Cameron and New Yorkers should
I THINK we all remember that David Cameron put a nice little windmill on his roof just to show that he really was green? And that there was a little bit of controversy about whether it would ever in fact generate any electricity at all? After you’d subtracted the energy needed to make it in the first place?
We’ve now got some real numbers from an experiment in the US.
In the 15 months since the turbine was installed, though, it has delivered less than 4 kWh—enough only to power a 12,000 btu window air conditioner for one afternoon.
Yes, you really do want air conditioning in New York City in the summer, you really, really, do this isn’t some unnecessary luxury.
At the rate the WT6500 is delivering power at our test site, it would take several millennia for the product to pay for itself in savings—not the 56 years it would take even with the 1,155 kWh quote we received.
And it’s not just that. Pretend they’ve had it up for a year. Over that 20 year lifetime they’d get therefore 80 KWh of ‘leccie from it. I seriously doubt that covers the energy cost of installing it let alone of manufacturing it.
It’s possible (although I don’t believe it is) that large scale wind power is a good idea. This small scale stuff it an entire waste of time and energy.
Posted: 9th, August 2012 | In: Money Comments (2) | TrackBack | Permalink
