OVER 2 YOU 202 (19/10/04)

WIND ENERGY

Following on from the recent enquiry in Over 2 You about water wheels, I have often thought it would be a good idea to have my own, small, wind turbine attached to the roof of my house in order to create electricity for powering my home. Does anyone know if these exist, and if so where I could buy one? Also, would I need to obtain planning permission, or consult the Environment Agency before proceeding with this project?

Peter Cook, via email

There are small wind turbines on the market, which can be used for this purpose. I have a Marlec 503 (www.marlec.co.uk ) wind turbine with a solar panel that I use for charging caravan batteries. However, a word of warning, electricity production from very small wind turbines (like mine) is relatively modest in "normal", i.e. not very windy domestic locations.  Energy production is very much dependent on the free flow of air to the turbine, which generally means raising the turbine on a mast several metres above building obstructions.  On the positive side, very small wind turbines shouldn't be a planning problem. I am currently developing a small wind turbine better suited to low wind speed environments (multi bladed with very low speed generator) - which I eventually hope to manufacture locally for the general market.

William Lloyd, Hereford

My whole house runs on "alternative" energy in the form of a wind turbine and solar panels. These provide 24 volts, which is then stepped up to 220v. Surplus energy is stored in 900Ah batteries for use at night or cloudy days. The overall effect is like running the house on PC type uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), but there are limits as to what appliances you can use. Contact www.e-si.biz and www.windsun.com for technical info. 

Angus Gilmore, via email

www.bwea.com should put Mr Cook on the right lines.

Dick Pool, via email

David Gordon of Glasgow has now patented such a device and is about to commence selling his Windsave System in the British market. The complete system is available for about £995 (plus 5%VAT and installation). The system incorporates a unique route to deliver electricity - the 'Plug-and-Save' box that has a 3 pin plug as the output and is simply plugged into the ring main, supplying 240vAC/50Hz as a supplementary feed into the base-load consumption of most electricity users.  This revolutionary device will help deliver about 20-30% of the 3.5MWHrs of electricity used in the average UK home. Owner can also claim a Government backed ROC (Renewable Obligation Certificate) credit (see the Ofgem website at: www.ofgem.gov.uk/ofgem/index.jsp) that is worth about £50 per annum to the owner.  The free electricity plus the ROC credit and expected Clear Skies grant (see DTI website) all helps give an anticipated pay-back period of less than four years, and that does not included the expected rising costs of electricity. Further details can be obtained from: www.windsave.com

Graham Reed, via email

Peter Cook needs to contact the "home generation" department Good Energy Ltd at www.good-energy.co.uk or phone 01249 766090. Not only will they give you all the advice you need, but they may actually offer to buy any electricity output from your system which you don't use, - for example while you are on holiday.

John Sellers, via email

Peter Cook may like to take a look at one or more of the following sites.

www.otherpower.com and www.windstuffnow.com

Harold Taylor, Nottingham

Small wind turbines (conventional) are available from www.provenenergy.com. Mounting larger units on buildings is being investigated by www.bdsp.com, there are also believed to be prototype "roof ridge" units about somewhere, using the full length of the ridge for a firm support, and the roof pitch as a "wind concentrator". A version of this was under study by (email) aureid@btclick.com. Probably the best approach would be to convert the house lighting circuits to 12/24 volts DC, and use the wind turbine to charge batteries for this. There are plenty of low voltage lighting units about.

Andrew Stobart, via email

PLAN SOFTWARE

I am looking for a simple (free or cheap) program to draw some outline plans of the house, garden and street as required for a Planning Permission application. I've tried a professional program on a friend's computer, but apart from the cost, the learning curve would take me longer than using the old fashioned drawing board method.

Brian J. Edwards, via email

I have just bought 3D Home Designer by GSP (see: www.gsp.cc). It cost just under £10 from PC World. I have just started using it and it took about 2 hours to draw up a plan of the two floors of my house including windows and doors from a cold start, so it must be easy if I can make that sort of progress. You get 3D view automatically. The on screen help/manual is a bit of a chore. It has quite a good FAQ section and there are some examples already prepared. It seems suitable for planning purposes, that's why I bought it, and it is certainly worth a tenner.

Jon Fleming, via email

Brian Edwards should try out the OCAD mapping programs available from www.ocad.com.

OCAD6, which is free, is actually an orienteering-mapping package, but I have used it for quite complicated technical drawings, as well as drawing up house plans and for the production of orienteering maps.  It comes with a symbol tool-box for drawing solid, dotted or dashed lines, and the ability to fill areas with coloured patterns, plus many others - and the ability to generate customised symbols if there isn't one precisely to your taste. If Brian has access to a scanner, the program accepts bitmap images from existing paper copies of plans, maps etc which can then be traced over to produce a first class product.

Tony Pennick, via e-mail

I used KeyCAD for my planning application drawings - it is easy to use, has all the necessary features and costs only about £10 on a SoftKey CD-ROM. It may be available for loan from the library. Anyone who has used the drawing tools in Excel will have a head start

because there are a number of similarities between the two.

Tim Bourne, via email

CAN YOU HELP?

My wife loves doing embroidery but has difficulty finding suitable designs in retail outlets, which appeal to her and are not cross-stitch.  Can anyone suggest any websites where designs can be downloaded, either for free or to buy and a method of transferring these to linen from paper ready for stitching, once having downloaded and printed these to paper.

Michael Dewhurst

I have always planned to catalogue my library of some 500 books when I retired. So I am retired and it doesn't seem such a good idea! I wondered if anybody had worked up a solution by inputting the scanned front page(s), where most of the information can be found, into some software that could sort titles from authors and from publishers, etc?

Gerry Tickner