I am fitting in a little bit of history in here and I cant seem to word this bit anonymously. A few years back I had the pleasure of installing the first “Westie” here. I had preached Westwind for some time. This was the opportunity to introduce a then good friend and associate Andrew Graham to a 10k “Westie”

The expressions on his face told me he was impressed. Andrew had been installing turbines and solar for at least 10yrs at that stage. The seed was sown.

Soon thereafter he became a dealer for Westwind Andrew Graham (J. A. Graham Renewables) bought Westwind in Oct 06 and moved the entire stock and equipment to County Antrim (N.I.)

Geoff Hill was nearing retirement with no one to take over from him and wanted someone with enthusiasm to take it over. Geoff had two businesses running side by side. As of 2008 he still owns and runs the other (Venco) And just in case its of interest he makes probably the best potters wheel on the planet.

So to those down under; you ain’t forgotten. From all here at Westwind UK Thanks to the enthusiasm of Geoff Hill who still operates Venco. Staff and former staff of Westwind/Venco including Bernie, Joe, Daniel and last but not least Dennis without their determination, the Westwind turbine would not be where it is. Also theres the staff and former students of Murdock University, who worked on many of the projects. Daniel was here for most of 2007 getting Westwind properly CE rated and laying the ground work for the further approvals. Dennis is still our electronics designer.

(Thanks to Westwind Australia, See Below)

For obvious reasons there wasn’t much happened 2006 and 2007 as it took some time to get production started.

The Westwind distributers list remains much the same as it was before the move. The turbines produced are the same design as before. The 20kw blades are still produced by ATV in France The pulltruded blade material for the three smaller machines is now produced by Fibreline, One of Europe’s leading pulltrusion companies. The material has also been up rated in line with the materials and technology now available.

Heating was one area Geoff and his team had a problem with. He just didn’t seem to understand why someone would do that. Understandable, as he lived in the Western Australian heat with probably the largest coal reserves in the world.

Dennis came to understand our enthusiasm for heating turbines when he first visited us.

We offer a unique multi channel design which sends power to electric elements in preference.

Other systems send all their power to a system of heating with no preference. The result is that if the turbine is only producing 1kw in a breeze for days distributed equally between say 6 or 10kw of heaters the power will more or less disappear because nothing gets warm.

Lets say your first preference is domestic hot water (the hot tap) There can be an element fitted to the hot water storage cylinder. The same 1kw will heat loads of water every day. This can be quite a saving especially in summer. Its very nice to get up in the morning and instead of looking out and thinking it’s a bit breezy today, you’ll be thinking there’s probably a nice tank of hot water built up overnight and the boiler didn’t have to do a thing. The second choice would normally be the living room and so on. Or an element directly into an existing wet central heating system. Even if there is not enough power from the turbine this energy will reduce the fuel the furnace/boiler will use.

There can also be a grid tie inverter/s fitted to the system. This we call the 50/50 system although it can be 70/30 or whatever. This is very useful even if the system is primarily installed for heat. In the summer when there is not much need for space heating the grid tie inverter can be switched on sending the excess to the grid. There can still be hot domestic water first though. You should either get credits or payment according to your location. At present in the UK you will get an extra payment for the carbon kwh units saved by production of green energy whether you use them or export them.

This brings us to another item. In a lot of areas the utility companies are obliged by law to take your excess power and allow you to connect to the grid. However they have a habit of restricting the size of equipment you connect without charging the customer for up rating the line/transformer etc.

For the newcomer to this it may be a bit hard to understand. We can switch on the 9kw shower, turn on the electric cooker top to bottom, switch on the chip pan, have eggs in an incubator, young birds in a brooder, the teenager using a hairdryer forever and Dad messing in his work shop but you can’t put 5 or 10kw back into the grid. The reality is, it’s their grid, and they call the shot’s. There are all kinds of supposed reasons but that’s the way it is.

All equipment used to grid connect has got to be approved for use in the area of installation.

There is no “changing over” with a grid tie system. It does not cause lights or anything else to blink, dull or otherwise.

If you wish to have a good turbine that will give you ample power to off set most of your utility bill then we can supply you a system that will only supply the max rated power the utility company will allow. The rest can be used for heating or if you have no use for it the power will simply be dumped via the controller.

There are other good reasons for this system. If you have a small turbine that falls within the grid tie limit then it will only produce the rated power in high winds. This means you will only be making a percentage of the power you want.

If you have a larger machine you can fit it with a fraction of normal inverter/s restricting the output to the requirements of the utility company. The big benefit is that your turbine will be sending the max allowed power to the grid much more of the time. This means although you have spent more on the turbine you are getting good results from the same size inverter. Inverters are not the type of thing that gets worked hard or get an easy time. They have a rated power with all kinds of built in protection. Whether they are connecting 10% or going full power doesn’t affect the life expectancy. You have spent more on the turbine and a lot less on inverter/s. If you have the full capacity of inverters hooked up they will only be used to their full rated power for a few days per year. We have tested a 10kw machine with a 2kw inverter with great results because even in a breeze there was 2kw going to the grid at all times.

Thanks, Dermot