Case Study
Orkney residents reduce energy costs by almost 90% - around 11 tCO2 saved last year
Peter & Jackie Brown live on Westray – one of the larger islands north of Orkney’s mainland
and known as ‘the Queen of the Isles’. Westray with a population of nearly 600, is known for
farming and fishing, as well as important archaeological sites.
The winter can be bleak on the Scottish Islands. Over the years the Brown’s have powered
and heated their home using mains electricity and solid fuel. However costs continued to
increase resulting in a large bill of £6,000 a year!
“Our energy costs kept rising and sometimes it was hard to arrange a delivery of solid fuel,”
explained Jackie Brown. “So at the beginning of 2011 we decided to look into how we could
address this. Due to where we live reviewing wind power was an obvious starting point.”
“After researching small wind turbines we selected the R9000 – a UK manufactured turbine
from Evance – as we were impressed by its reputation for reliability and energy generation
performance,” commented Jackie.
“Our turbine was installed in September 2011 [by Alternative Energy Contracting]. Since then
it has performed consistently, even through the strong wind gusts we get on the island.
Without a doubt the turbine has proven its efficiency and reliability.”
This R9000 had a capacity factor of 48% last year – compared to the national capacity factor
of 26.4% for onshore wind(i) – equivalent to running at full power for virtually half the year.
“The R9000 has been our best investment and one I would highly recommend for other
remote residents like us. From having an energy bill of £6,000 for 2010 we are now paying
just £58 per month – almost a 90% reduction! As we now use the R9000 turbine as our main
source of electricity the cost is fixed for 20 years.”
“Also to help our environment we saved around 11 tonnes of CO 2 emissions(ii) last year. We
are more than satisfied customers,” concluded Jackie.
© Evance Wind Turbines Ltd
(i) http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/11/stats/publications/dukes/5956-dukes-2012-chapter6-renewable.pdf
(ii)based on 0.5246kgCO2 per unit (Defra/DECC)