Growing Your Own
Living next to a power station has never been a particularly enticing prospect, unless you have a penchant for bleak, industrial architecture. However, within a few decades one in five people could actually be living in a power station, according to a new report from BERR. Microgeneration has its critics, but also potential to generate significant levels of power for individuals and businesses. It all sounds idyllic, says Richard Scott, but do we have the framework in place?
There seems to be an ever-increasing list of things the Brits aren’t particularly good at; bartering, winning at sports we’ve invented, Eurovision. A new one to add to the list is microgeneration. Apparently, once again, we’re straggling behind the rest of Europe, dragging our feet, as our continental friends erect small-scale wind turbines in their gardens with irritating efficiency. Countries such as Germany and Sweden have invested billions in making home power generation an attractive option for its citizens. Not us! Instead, the idea is looked upon with, at best, curiosity, but mostly a sense of slight ridicule. “That turbine will barely power a low energy lightbulb!”
As we’ve seen with many areas of technology over the past few years, public perception is not always a stubborn thing to move. Thanks to the pervasive nature of the media these days, it only takes a few newspapers, magazines and the odd celebrity to get a national bandwagon moving. Infrastructure, on the other hand, takes a lot more effort to change, and that’s where the problems lie for microgeneration.
As yet, there is no fixed framework for a feed-in tariff scheme, whereby individuals are paid for the electricity they feed back into the grid. Ultimately, this is the area most likely to kickstart the whole concept in this country. After all, people like to be told they can save, or even make money. A fixed scheme that was properly marketed to the public would almost certainly awaken interest in microgeneration and set us on the road to competing with the rest of Europe.
As an indication of how important the feed-in tariff is, I attended the unveiling of a BEAMA research project in November 2007, which noted the average export of energy produced by a variety of microgenerating systems back to the grid ranged from 47% for wind and PV to 31% for microCHP.
The report also gave fairly uninspiring statistics relating to the effectiveness of small-scale generating systems. Having monitored microCHP, wind, photovoltaic and hydro generator sites, their readings suggested that such systems produce only 10% of their potential output. Obviously, no one would expect a wind turbine to be spinning furiously every minute of the day, but one might hope for a slightly more lucrative return on one’s investment. The highest output reached 15%, which was attributed to a generating unit being positioned in an area well-suited to its requirements. Basically, you’re not going to produce much energy from a wind turbine if your house is in a built up area situated in a valley. It sounds obvious, but people do need to be told they have options, and not all of them are suited to their particular environment.
The other part of the framework that needs to be put in place is the planning permission. Even David Cameron and Gordon Brown have had requests to build wind turbines on their properties turned down on these grounds. Currently planning permission is required for microgeneration installations where the Local Authority has not issued a Permitted Development Order. This can add an extra £265 on a £1,500 installation, and with it a whole host of bureaucratic hoops to jump through.
So is the willingness there on the part of the public? Possibly. Microgeneration is clearly going to be marketed with a strong emphasis on its environmental benefits, and rightly so. But equally important are its potential financial rewards to an individual who is given the correct information about the technology and helped by well-structured legislation. It will also make people more conscious of the energy they use and perhaps even promote interest in electrical engineering on a broad level not to mention additional work for suppliers, installers and maintenance engineers. As the technology improves and becomes more widely available it will be interesting to see how the take-up builds, if indeed it does at all, and also whether predictions that microgeneration could one day rival nuclear power production prove correct.
Enjoy the newsletter,
Richard Scott
Editor