Rather than looking at building large scale farms, Guernsey could harness wind power through residential turbines instead.
Little Green Energy has been promoting the use of the AirTurb Model One which is a ‘compact vertical wind turbine’.
A public demonstration this week garnered some interest from passersby, as well as politicians.
“It’s a 500 watt turbine,” explained Technical Director, Jamie Clark.
“It’s designed to fit into people’s homes, so it could go on a flat roof area or an open ground space somewhere where it can generate electricity.
“It’s very similar to the way the solar panels work. You put solar panels on the building, you feed some cables into the building, and you generate electricity from it and use it to power your appliances, your kettle, your cooking appliances, your batteries that you might have at home, and this is designed to sit alongside that. It’s designed to be another weapon in the arsenal for generating electricity for your home.”
Mr Clark said one customer who is already using one of these turbines is pleased with it so far.
Little Green Energy MD Ben Le Huray thinks more people will follow.
“People who have started their renewable energy journey once they get going and they see the value of it when it adds to them, terms of the pocket, terms of savings, but also as a way for them to make their own contribution towards reducing the carbon footprint of the islands and the community, they’re hungry for the next thing they can do.
“We’re fortunate to have a very big client base, and we’re actively speaking with a lot of those clients about what their next investment might look like. And wind seems to be a natural next step.”
Guernsey’s annual average wind speed of 11.3 knots is higher than the UK’s average of 8.7 knots, with Little Green Energy saying that makes it an ideal spot to capitalise on wind energy generation.
Rather than looking to install wind farms on the horizon, Mr Le Huray said these small scale installations could be the answer for many people wanting to reduce their own reliance on fossil fuels.
“We’re in the sort of early adopter stage as far as wind is concerned,” he acknowledged.
“The business has been trading for 12 years. We’ve installed well over three megawatts of solar PV capacity. We started installing battery systems in 2017 and we’ve seen a huge increase in demand for on site storage. Because why wouldn’t you? You generated during the day, primarily your needs for power are higher in the evening time, and that’s where batteries complements solar PV really nicely. But equally, it’s windy for parts of the day, but not for others, but you don’t want to just give away what you generated. You want to store it and use it for for your benefit.”
The AirTurb Model One currently sells for £6,200, and Mr Clark said the technology starts working straight away.
“As soon as the system is installed it starts generating electricity, and that ultimately is electricity you’re not buying from the grid, so they start saving you money straight away.”
The original idea for the small scale turbine came about when the Dutch inventor noticed traffic sensors.
“We had the inventor over here four months ago, and he was explaining to us his journey of how he actually invented the product, and that the product was born from those little traffic sensors in the middle of the motorway in Holland. And he used to see them all the time on his way home from work. That’s where he got the idea for the helical shape wind turbine. So from that, that’s where it was born from,” said Mr Clark.
