Proposed changes to Permitted Development rights for small wind turbine

[SteamyTea]

9 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

dilettante

Good word, especially on a forum.

[Ferdinand]

1 minute ago, SteamyTea said:

Good word, especially on a forum.

This morning I quite like "adumbrated", but have yet to find a reason to use it.

[SteamyTea]

There is a lot of 

2 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

adumbrated

Talk about climate change.

 

One word saves a lot of hand waving.

Edited Monday at 11:15 by SteamyTea

[sgt_woulds]

It is about time we raised ourselves above the quotidian calibre of interweb badinage 🙂 

[sgt_woulds]

On 22/03/2026 at 09:32, DamonHD said:

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...

 

I haven't heard of Motorwind for a while!  They always seemed like a noisy gimick to me, although I was intrigued by the idea at the time.

 

The only one I ever came accross was on a PV survey in Brighton, (early to mid 200's?). 

 

The chap had ordered some  to mount them along his garden wall - would that be you DamonHD?  

 

Are they still working?  Being made of (ABS?) plastic they looked prone to high wear and UV exposure.

 

 

 

[sgt_woulds]

what happened to all the ridge line turbines we were promised?

 

 

[JohnMo]

1 hour ago, sgt_woulds said:

what happened to all the ridge line turbines we were promised?

 

 

They may have realised the were sh!te. Bottom of the blade needs to around 2 to 3m above ridge line to be effective, otherwise to much turbulence 

[SteamyTea]

35 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

Bottom of the blade needs to around 2 to 3m above ridge line to be effective, otherwise to much turbulence 

Did they not sell them on the Bounelli effect that a restriction increases airspeed.

Never seen any mention of reduced density because of lower pressure, but then marketing and PR would be horribly dull if a real  or imaginary, number was put in.

I once went to a talk about solar power, the lady delivering it put up Einstein's E=mc² and explained that as the mass, m, was very small, we could ignore it.

Did not take long for the hall to erupt into laughter.

[markc]

5 hours ago, JohnMo said:

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

Not what anyone was getting, what I was paying at the time.

[DamonHD]

4 hours ago, sgt_woulds said:

 

I haven't heard of Motorwind for a while!  They always seemed like a noisy gimick to me, although I was intrigued by the idea at the time.

 

The only one I ever came accross was on a PV survey in Brighton, (early to mid 200's?). 

 

The chap had ordered some  to mount them along his garden wall - would that be you DamonHD?  

 

Are they still working?  Being made of (ABS?) plastic they looked prone to high wear and UV exposure.

 

 

 

I am not in Brighton!  My Motorwind stuff gave up the ghost a while ago, and I put PV along the wall it had been mounted on.

 

But a combination of the two would still be interesting...

[JohnMo]

7 minutes ago, DamonHD said:

I am not in Brighton!  My Motorwind stuff gave up the ghost a while ago, and I put PV along the wall it had been mounted on.

 

But a combination of the two would still be interesting...

Just read on your blog

"As each of those is estimated to generate 1W (typical) to 4W (max) then I might expect the entire MotorWind assembly to generate 8 times that."

 

Not a lot output...

[SteamyTea]

38 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

 

Not a lot output

Enough to run a couple of RPis for data logging and web serving.

 

Any turbine below 5 kW is pretty pointless in my opinion.

Much better to get everyone that wants a turbine to put the money towards a 5 MW one and pocket the revenue cash.

[DamonHD]

And more fun...

 

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-make-plug-in-solar-available-within-months

[JohnMo]

4 hours ago, DamonHD said:

And more fun...

 

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-make-plug-in-solar-available-within-months

Actual sensible stuff from a government! Stranger things have happened, but not often.

[Ferdinand]

4 hours ago, JohnMo said:

Actual sensible stuff from a government! Stranger things have happened, but not often.

Can somebody do me a quick 101 on Plug-in Solar?

In particular, what happens to the excess power generated if the house is not using it all?

Does it export (which I would not expect as that would then need the same "isolation" to prevent potential damage to network engineers that we get with conventional solar PV systems), or is there a sink-load, or does it do something else such as tripping out (which would make it more complicated)?

Thanks

F

[SteamyTea]

29 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

what happens to the excess power generated if the house is not using it all?

It just goes to the nearest load, wherever that may be.

 

There will be safety features built in to auto disconnect if needed.

We had plug in wind turbines 20 years ago. They literally had a 3 pin plug that you just pushed into the wall socket.

[JohnMo]

Plug in solar is just that, you can plug the inverter into a normal socket, not have to take it back to CU. Will be limited I suspect on array kWp rating etc.

 

Export, no reason why not, but suspect as it's not mcs, you will not be paid. Be pretty much like a normal inverter, no grid no PV.

[Ferdinand]

 

15 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

Plug in solar is just that, you can plug the inverter into a normal socket, not have to take it back to CU. Will be limited I suspect on array kWp rating etc.

 

Export, no reason why not, but suspect as it's not mcs, you will not be paid. Be pretty much like a normal inverter, no grid no PV.

Checking Germany, it seems to be 800W maximum, and they have 1+ million plus systems installed. I'd say it will take off if approved quickly. Potential might be to double out domestic solar capacity if it does well.

The benefit is like the unexpected results that can be obtained from knocking 50-100W of baseload 24x7 sometimes being 10-20% of the lecky bill, but from the other end.

I'd say watch Ikea for this one - they were very early with LED light bulbs and did solar systems for a time. I swapped all my GU10 60+ halogens for LEDs in 2013 at a notable cost, but it paid for itself in 2-3 years, and eg half of them are still running in the kitchen.

[Ferdinand]

On 23/03/2026 at 11:36, sgt_woulds said:

It is about time we raised ourselves above the quotidian calibre of interweb badinage 🙂 

I got it off the internet !

[Ferdinand]

5 hours ago, JohnMo said:

Actual sensible stuff from a government! Stranger things have happened, but not often.

I think it is perhaps Ed Miliband really knowing his subject and pushing the detail.

And prices about to go bonkers for a bit, thanks to Humpty Trumpty.

Every £1 saved by consumers buying one of these reduces the need for demanded subsidies (cf: Liz Truss's £90bn energy help in Covid). And hence help with the national debt.

[Dillsue]

2 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

Can somebody do me a quick 101 on Plug-in Solar?

In particular, what happens to the excess power generated if the house is not using it all?

Does it export (which I would not expect as that would then need the same "isolation" to prevent potential damage to network engineers that we get with conventional solar PV systems), or is there a sink-load, or does it do something else such as tripping out (which would make it more complicated)?

If your house is connected to the grid and you plug a solar inverter into the house then the solar inverter is connected to the grid and will export anything the house doesn't use to the grid.

 

There's a lower wattage limit of <800w where all of G98 requirements dont apply but likely any plug in generator would need to meet most of the G98 requirements. I'm not sure there's anything to stop you using plug in solar right now if it meets the grid standards.

 

If the government are thinking of changing the rules on connecting small scale solar outside the current G98 rules then they'll likely need the buy in of the ENA/DNOs with changes to specs etc. Can't see that happening anytime soon??

[DamonHD]

I think that current G98 microinverters will work for this and be safe.  (As would probably one with EU nominally-slghtly-different specs.)

 

The key current GB grid restriction is that a Part-P sparky has to wire solar generation into a dedicated circuit (and tell the DNO).  And a meter may have to be swapped if it would run backwards, which a DNO or supplier could be awkward or slow about.  In Germany for balcony solar the rules were changed to make it the DNO/supplier problem to deal with, ASAP if there is a fire or other risk, else eat the billing errors until the meter is swapped.

 

We already know balcony solar to be safe in practice - the microinverters cut off quickly if the grid goes away for example.

 

I imagine that the ENA (and DNOs) have already said "go ahead" and are cranking out adjusted docs/specs/regs as fast as they can.  It doesn't hurt them at all if the politician will takes the flack and the tech is already known and the metering issue can be overridden by fiat as in Germany.

 

Edited 5 hours ago by DamonHD

[JohnMo]

22 minutes ago, DamonHD said:

overridden by fiat

What model of fiat would that be, a Panda 4x4?