A damming report by the engineer Prof Dough King has been published in th UK. Professor King is speaking out against rooftop turbines. In his report he states that rooftop wind turbines in the UK are little more then “Eco Bling” and those big enough likely to produce enough energy would damage the structure of a house through extensive vibration.
It is fair to say that badly installed rooftop turbines don’t produce energy and judging by what we have seen popping up in UK urban areas we agree with the report. Take for instants the turbines below. They are installed in an urban area, but surrounded by higher buildings, despite the fact they are installed on tall chimneys, they cannot reach the air. These turbines are part of a government programme and undeniably if they would have been part of the report released by Prof Doug King then we have no doubt, rooftop turbines are doomed to fail and are no more then “Eco Bling”. The writer of this blog is passing by the afformentioned turbines daily and they fail to spin completely. Anybody thinking about installing a Turbine, be it on a roof, in the garden or on a farm should run a wind assessment using something like a power predictor.
Rooftop turbines do work if they are installed in the best place and the required average wind speed is right. It is questionable, whether or not Professor King has assessed any vertical axis turbines or other modern turbines specifically build to be montaged on rooftops with minimum vibration. A similar report last year lead to B&Q to withdraw it’s wind turbines, although those were likely to be the turbines you mostly find on camping vans and boats.
These types of ill researched and biased reports we find unhelpful and as a consequence are likely to scare the puplic into opting for nuclear solutions.
