Proposed changes to Permitted Development rights for small wind turbine

[FarmerN]

Proposed changes to Permitted Development rights for small wind turbine from Department for
Energy Security& Net Zero

I have no idea if this is strictly limited to commercial sites or not

“New government proposals today (Wednesday 18 March) would allow businesses and public sector organisations to install one turbine up to 30 metres – no bigger than an oak tree – without submitting planning proposals, making it faster and cheaper to generate clean power on site.”

 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/lower-bills-for-farmers-schools-and-factories

 Also

 

Open consultation

Permitted development rights for onshore wind turbines in England: consultation document (accessible webpage)

Published 18 March 2026

 https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/permitted-development-rights-for-onshore-wind-turbines-in-england/permitted-development-rights-for-onshore-wind-turbines-in-england-consultation-document-accessible-webpage

Edited Sunday at 07:41 by FarmerN

[JohnMo]

House already have it, under the same section as heat pumps.

[FarmerN]

Thought House was limited to 11.5 M 

[saveasteading]

1 hour ago, JohnMo said:

House already have it,

It's a very long time since I looked into them. At that time they were quite noisy and the power produced was very poor. They were a gimmick to tick a planning box.

 

I haven't seen them at a construction exhibition, or been targeted by publicity for 15 years.. so my hunch is they are only worthwhile  for remote locations and need a big battery.

 

There is an interesting article about them on the Isle of Eigg.

 

[Ferdinand]

22 minutes ago, FarmerN said:

Thought House was limited to 11.5 M 

When I looked into that iirc it had to have space to fall flat in any direction and land within the boundary.

That is, there had to be a 11.6m (say) radius round the mast all within the garden.

How many UK gardens have that? That is a circle of 4500 sqm area ie One Acre.

[Ferdinand]

The problem I see here is that we will just get bigger white elephants installed where there is no change of them working.

And if it is one of those limited areas where such do work, we want 2 or 10, not one.

So this feels to me to be a gimmick.

[DamonHD]

29 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

It's a very long time since I looked into them. At that time they were quite noisy and the power produced was very poor. They were a gimmick to tick a planning box.

 

I haven't seen them at a construction exhibition, or been targeted by publicity for 15 years.. so my hunch is they are only worthwhile  for remote locations and need a big battery.

 

There is an interesting article about them on the Isle of Eigg.

 

Most urban wind is very poor, and mounting a turbine on a home makes for a lot of vibration noise.

 

If you are in rural area with a bit of space, especially coastal, small wind can make sense.

Edited Sunday at 09:48 by DamonHD

[DamonHD]

I have responsed to the consultation request.

 

Generally in dense urban areas wind generation isn't going to work well because of messed-up turbulent air and noise and flicker and ice-throw issues.

 

But there's plenty of England for which this might work.

 

I also pointed out that single-axis HAWTs should not be assumed to be the only game in town.  My tiny MotorWind setup worked reasonably in my very poor location, and other novel (probably not VAWT) designs might work.  I have suggested a limit on total swept area or output power or to ~10% of expected output power for a full wind farm in the same location, ie this should not be permitting a wind-farm on the sly, but should allow low intensity microgen energy extraction to support farmers or factories or community projects...

[JohnMo]

If you read proper install manuals for good wind turbines, the distance required from say a roof to the bottom of the turbine blade is huge.  In a domestic situation, they can almost never be installed correctly, so output generally is the best part of zero.  Big turbines well away from stuff are great, small one near stuff, utter rubbish.

[saveasteading]

1 hour ago, JohnMo said:

small one near stuff, utter rubbish

Nicely summarised.

[Crofter]

3 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

When I looked into that iirc it had to have space to fall flat in any direction and land within the boundary.

That is, there had to be a 11.6m (say) radius round the mast all within the garden.

How many UK gardens have that? That is a circle of 4500 sqm area ie One Acre.

Anywhere that it's actually going to work well, that shouldn't be a big problem.

[BotusBuild]

3 hours ago, saveasteading said:

There is an interesting article about them on the Isle of Eigg

I'm not going all the way there to read it

[JohnMo]

19 minutes ago, BotusBuild said:

I'm not going all the way there to read it

It will only take you a couple of days!

[SteamyTea]

4 hours ago, DamonHD said:

Generally in dense urban areas wind generation isn't going to work well because of messed-up turbulent air and noise and flicker and ice-throw issues

Can model all that with a 3 Parameter Weibull Function.

[saveasteading]

3 hours ago, JohnMo said:

It will only take you a couple of days!

Depends where you start.

The ferry from Mallaig is quick, or included in a very pleasant day out and round trip.

I've been there by motor boat too, and landed, long before this story though. We didn't see any people.

 

 

I perhaps  should have been clearer.  There are interesting articles on the BBC news pages. 2 x videos and an article.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0b3dmdl

https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20170329-the-extraordinary-electricity-of-the-scottish-island-of-eigg

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04ch10y

 

I particularly like that the community has to, and does, collaborate.

 

 

[Ferdinand]

16 hours ago, Crofter said:

Anywhere that it's actually going to work well, that shouldn't be a big problem.

You have a greater faith in human nature than I do.

Remember Cameron's wind turbine on his Notting Hill house.

[SteamyTea]

1 hour ago, Ferdinand said:

Remember Cameron's wind turbine on his Notting Hill house.

"Greenest Government ever"

Followed by

"Get rid of all this green bollox"

 

As we are into the third week of this oil crisis (I have been though a few), we cannot be far off what it would have cost us to have tripled our wind and solar capacity and kept the subsidies on BEVs.

https://www.theccc.org.uk/2026/03/11/cost-of-net-zero-by-2050-less-than-a-single-fossil-fuel-price-shock-ccc/

Edited Monday at 06:27 by SteamyTea

[Crofter]

We live in one of the windier parts of the country. When we moved here in 2013 the FiT for wind was still running, but being reduced for new schemes every April. We hurriedly investigated getting a turbine installed before the next reduction came in to force. 

 

We were quoted £32k to have a 5kw unit installed. It would have generated about £2k a year, and we would have saved on our own electricity use on top of that. Obviously back then there were no batteries or EVs so you either used it as it was generated, or you just exported it without extra payment. You were paid for generating it anyway. 

 

The numbers didn't really stack up for us. We had other things to spend that sort of money on. We also felt that as newcomers to the village, it might not go down that well too immediately stick up a turbine. 

 

I can laugh about that last point now. A couple of years later, our neighbour put up a 50kw unit.

[markc]

We now have an almost constant steady wind so I thought wind turbine, with me doing the ground works, cable and install we were looking at almost £50k with an expect generation of £2800-£3200 per year based on 25p per unit. 

 

[JohnMo]

17 minutes ago, markc said:

25p per unit

How are you getting that much, Octopus have just reduced to 12p

[SteamyTea]

I worked for a small turbine manufacture almost 20 years ago, even then a 4 or 5 kW turbine would have been close to £20k.

They have never been cheap.

PV was a similar price back then.

[Crofter]

2 hours ago, markc said:

We now have an almost constant steady wind so I thought wind turbine, with me doing the ground works, cable and install we were looking at almost £50k with an expect generation of £2800-£3200 per year based on 25p per unit. 

 

Same ballpark as my figures, in fact a bit worse, as your turbine costs more and you're having to put in some of the labour. From memory, I would have been getting 32p on FiT.

 

It seems that small scale wind hasn't come down much in price, making the difference with PV even more pronounced than it was.

[Ferdinand]

4 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

"Greenest Government ever"

Followed by

"Get rid of all this green bollox"

 

As we are into the third week of this oil crisis (I have been though a few), we cannot be far off what it would have cost us to have tripled our wind and solar capacity and kept the subsidies on BEVs.

https://www.theccc.org.uk/2026/03/11/cost-of-net-zero-by-2050-less-than-a-single-fossil-fuel-price-shock-ccc/

We know what happened.

Mr Cameron turned out to be something of a dilettante "what is detail?" man.

[saveasteading]

3 minutes ago, Crofter said:

small scale wind

Is always going to be inefficient because of ground drag even without obstructions.

[Ferdinand]

2 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

Is always going to be inefficient because of ground drag even without obstructions.

We could put them at the top of Sky Scrapers.

Oooops.