Bro Dyfi Community Renewables’ first installed wind turbine is a Vestas 75kW machine, bought second-hand and installed in 2003 on the hill above the Centre for Alternative Technology, near Machynlleth, Wales.
The turbine originally supplied CAT with power, and the surplus was exported to the local electricity distribution network. Currently all the output is exported to the local grid.
The turbine was originally set up and owned by the pioneering 55 shareholders of BDCR.
A proportion of the shares were paid for by a grant from the Energy Savings Trust. The dividend from these shares go into a community energy fund administered by ecodyfi for the funding of energy efficiency measures in the Dyfi Valley.
Other grant funding came from the Scottish Power Green Energy Trust and the European Commission.
Metering is installed in the substations that support the wind turbines. Every kilowatt hour that the turbines generate is exported to the local distribution grid via the substations in which the transformers are housed. The meters record the output and this is then sent by phone line on a half hourly basis to Ofgem. The recorded output is then used to calculate the payment that we receive for the generation on a monthly basis.
We have calculated the figure for the equivalent number of domestic households annually on the basis of an annual average domestic electricity consumption of approximately 3,500kWhr, a figure taken from the published consumption figures in the Digest of United Kingdom Energy Statistics for the Powys area.
We divide the annual generation by the average household consumption to calculate the equivalent number of households whose annual electricity requirements are met by the output of the turbines.
Every kWhr of clean electricity generated by renewables reduces our reliance on fossil fuel derived power. Therefore every kWhr of renewables generated leads to a reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases caused by fossil fuel generated power. The carbon dioxide savings equivalent figure we use is the energy industry accepted figure of 275 g of carbon dioxide offsetting per kWhr of clean power generated.
