Hugh Piggott's blog

The Scottish Government have published a consultation document
Permitted development rights are extended to certain types of development through the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (Scotland) Order 1992 (GPDO). They will now be examining the option for new permitted development rights for micro-renewable systems in the context of the review of the GPDO. Responses are due by the 1st February.

Existing planning policy can be found in the 2006 PAN 45 document. It’s a bit loopy in places, and obviously fully sold on the rooftop hype.

“Turbines should be sited in a way that creates a balanced composition that does not undermine the architectural integrity of the building or structure. They are generally positioned on the highest point of the roof, however, to reduce their visual impact it may be possible to locate them at a lower position provided they have a 0.5m clearance from the base of roof. Consideration should be given to positioning the micro-wind turbine at the rear of the property, where visual impact will typically be lessened.”

“Towers should be sited in a way that minimises the landscape impact. Whilst tall towers and hilltop locations will be best for capturing maximum wind energy, smaller towers and low lying locations should still be able to generate sufficient energy to meet the requirements of an average home.”

“Careful consideration should be made to the desired height of the turbine. While it will be important to avoid undue turbulence and areas of low wind speed, the choice of height needs to be carefully balanced with the visual prominence of the turbine in relation to existing buildings and surrounding landscape features. Where possible the height of towers should relate to the height of existing vertical elements in the landscape such as light columns, telegraph poles, trees, buildings and other structures. A turbine sited on a prominent ridge is generally not desirable. Where possible towers should be coloured to minimise the visual impact.”

In other words they didn’t really have a clue (in 2006) how important height actually is. Nor the importance of being well above surrounding obstacles. They actually believed that a rooftop wind turbine can have a 7 year payback.

Interestingly, noise issues did seem to be a big hurdle:

“Noise stemming from micro-wind turbines will generally be of an acceptable level. However, to protect nearby residents from any potential noise, a condition can be attached to any consent controlling the level of noise. A detailed noise assessment should not be required. Where turbines are fixed to a building, there may be a risk of noise disturbance from vibration to the building itself or neighbouring buildings and a condition might be attached that appropriate measures should be taken to mitigate any such vibration.”

The brand new Permitted Development Rights for Domestic Micro-Wind Turbines and Air-Source Heat Pumps Consultation takes noise more seriously

Their research “considered that where a free-standing MWT is in excess of 100 m from the nearest neighbour’s curtilage and the maximum height does not exceed 11.1 m; with a maximum blade diameter of 3.5 m (or swept area of 9.6 m2) PD rights could apply. Permitted developments of this scale are likely to be achievable in

mainly rural situations. The PD rights conferred by the amendments proposed here do not go as far as setting height or swept area thresholds.”

So it appears that permitted development status (no need to obtain permission, just a duty to notify) might apply to turbines that are more than 100 metres from a property boundary, and it is not clear to me whether any height or size restrictions will be applied (within reason).

They are not about to require compliance the the MCS process:

“Our proposals for PD rights meantime do not rely upon the application of MCS to provide further safeguards and assurances in circumstances where planning permission is not required.”

They also wisely note that:

“Wind trials continue to indicate that the performance of MWT is highly sensitive to a range of factors and in some locations, particularly parts of urban areas, they perform poorly.”

So it seems as if a bit of reality is seeping into the plan.

It may be worth responding with views on this consultation, although they seem to be in a rush and are unlikely to give any such input much weight. Personally, I think it’s a good idea to site turbines at a comfortable distance from neighbours houses. I do hope they allow decent tower heights. And of course these are not planning requirements as such… they are requirements for exemption from planning permission.

Here is another scam. Magnet4energy are selling plans for ‘free energy’. What you get is an 80 page pdf document. More than half of this consists of my own description of how to build and alternator. You can also download this ‘PMG’ construction manual free of charge from my web site here. But don’t expect to get any free energy other than wind generated energy that way.

Criminal? It’s happening all the time. Most of the time you can buy these same plans on eBay. For some people it makes more sense to buy them instead of getting them for free off my site.

Is it my problem? Yes I do have a problem with it, but I have exhausted my limited will to fight it. But I can at least make it public, so there you go.

If you don’t believe me, then buy a copy yourself. When you are done (assuming you are not satisfied with the product) you can reclaim your money from Clickbank – I have tried it, and that works well too. I only hope that all of their customers do that.

answering another email today…

Hi Ruth,

I have just come across your website (whilst looking for a feeder for bees, of all things!) and have not yet had time to check out all the links, so I apologise if my question is already answered somewhere.
What I would like to know is if it is possible to store the energy produced by a wind turbine somehow, other than in a battery?

Yes, but the battery is still probably the best option for small stand-alone (off-grid) systems. Nowadays the biggest market is for grid connected systems that ‘use the mains grid as a battery’, but I live off-grid and I like being independent. So I do use batteries and I also use a generator for back up if the wind is not sufficient (like recently).

The biggest argument against wind turbines that I keep hearing is that they only work when the wind blows,

Yes I would say that this is their biggest weakness. They only work about 80% of the time, and for part of that time they do not produce very much output. The wind is very fickle. So a lot of the energy comes when you do not need it, and there are also times when you do not get what you need. But it’s a natural commodity and a bit wild, and I love it.

and when it doesn’t blow you have no electricity.

Well in a properly designed system you will have solar photovoltaics, and batteries, and a generator for backup, so that is not at all true, no.

What I would like to see is the energy produced by the turbine being stored in some other way than a battery.

Me too, but I have not seen any good options yet. Except for the grid of course. But that’s more like trading than storage. The grid is a good option for mixing up different energy sources to produce a blend that offers the best of them all. But I like being independent personally.

My understanding (admittedly extremely dodgy) is that the electricity a turbine generates is AC, which is then converted to DC to store it, and then usually converted back to AC to use it, all of which is extremely inefficient.

Not that bad. Overall in my system, it’s about 85 % efficient.

(Also batteries aren’t exactly ‘green’).

No, they are not, I do agree with you there. Lead is a very toxic chemical. But it’s there to be used and there are worse things in the world. For a long time people actually got their drinking water out of lead pipes and survived. It can be recycled. Sulphuric acid is biodegradable and no real problem.

Would it not be possible and more efficient to store the power in some other form,

I doubt that. All of the other forms of energy storage I have looked into are really inefficient on the small scale. Pumped storage of water in reservoirs is good on the large (grid) scale but not so efficient in small systems unfortunately.

for example like a clockwork radio that stores power in a spring, gradually releasing it on demand.

The motor and the generator to do this in small systems are not very efficient compared to a lead-acid battery.

I don’t suppose that a giant spring would be a suitable store,

It would have to be big. Pumping water up to a high reservoir is better. It works really well actually.

but I was wondering about using a turbine to compress air, storing that, and then using the compressed air to drive a turbine to produce electricity on demand. Is anyone doing anything similar to this at the moment?

It’s a nice idea but unfortunately the air gets hot and then as it cools it loses much of the pressure and thus the energy. Again it’s more feasible on a (very) large scale where you can keep the heat in. I believe that something similar is done to augment the power from steam turbines with stored energy. Using old oil and gas wells and the like to store compressed air.

Not being at all technically minded, I am sure that there are a lot of problems that I haven’t thought of, such as storing the compressed air itself, but I am sure that there must be a more efficient way of using a wind turbine, so that instead of there being lots of NIMBYs, everyone will want one!

I have come to the conclusion that NYMBYs will be negative whatever you do. Using natural renewable energy is beautiful for me regardless of the problems, but some people will not be happy until it is totally cheap and reliable and convenient, and free of any possible downside. Until then they will go on burning up the resources of the planet and leaving nothing for future generations. And they will laugh at the idea of using ‘ugly, inefficient’ wind turbines. I don’t understand their logic.

Until 100 years ago we used the wind to power a lot of things, but since then we have burned a lot of stuff because it is easier to get energy fast that way. However this is not sustainable. A lot of people don’t seem to get this obvious fact.

My own little dream is to have a wind turbine to compress the air, then to have a car that runs on compressed air. Just pipe dreams or not?

It’s feasible. But I would recommend batteries if you want something practical. Lithium batteries for that actually. It’s not just a dream. But it does need people to believe in it or it may continue to appear to be one.

Also you need a proper wind turbine on a tall tower or pole to catch a proper wind and not just a toy on the roof. There is no real wind at the rooftop level.

have fun