Funding the Wind Turbine Project
As you are probably aware, there are enormous costs involved in installing a wind turbine, especially if you are looking at a Westwind 20kw or a Gaia 11kw, which are both classed as Micro Wind Generator Systems. The expected cost for a fully installed Westwind is between £50,000 and £60,000, with the Gaia being a little less at around £45000. These figures are taken from Segan’s website who a leading supplier and installer.
My first port of call whilst seeking out which grants were available for a farm in the Peak District National Park in Cheshire, was the Energy Saving Trust, who informed me about their Low Carbon Buildings Programme grant. I must point out now that the grants available to you will be dependent on your property type and location and my research was for the Peak Park only.
Low Carbon Buildings Programme
The Low Carbon Buildings Programme grant is available to domestic properties only and provides 30% of the installed cost of your micro generation technologies plus £1000 per k/w, up to a maximum of £2500 per property. To qualify for the grant, you must show that you have tried to make more your property more energy efficient by fitting energy saving light bulbs, loft and cavity wall insulation (where possible) and installed a thermostat control to your heating system. You must also use a Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) approved installer and equipment to qualify for the grant.
My first thoughts about this grant were whether a farm with two holiday cottages and five bed & breakfast rooms would qualify, and I was soon told that it wouldn’t. To be honest, I wasn’t surprised and not too bothered, because I felt that £2500 towards a £50,000 project wouldn’t have helped much really, but it would have at least been a little help. I spoke to a chap called James at the Low Carbon Buildings Programme (0800 915 0990) who told me that there used to be a funding available for businesses, but this funding finished 2 years ago and there is no new proposed grant scheme. He also mentioned that when feed in tariffs are introduced in April 2010, funding for domestic wind turbine projects might become unavailable too.
Cheshire East Council
After browsing the internet for another half hour, I decided to ring our local council; Cheshire East to see if they provided any grants. After being transferred about 3 times between departments, I finally managed to speak to Keith Barry from the Climate Change department, who guess what, passed me onto to someone else! Anyway, I finally spoke to their housing Officer, Karen (01270 529699) after Keith transferred me through. Karen advised that Cheshire East Council were able to provide a £300 renewable energy grant.
Northwest Regional Development Agency
So my first two enquiries weren’t that successful really in helping to fund our wind turbine project. I carried on searching and came across the Northwest Regional Development Agency, who in my opinion, were very helpful indeed. I spoke with a lady called Gill (01768 861306) and after explaining the proposed project at Common Barn Farm, she advised of a grant from the Rural Development Programme of England (RDPE)
This is a grant funded jointly by the government and the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development. The maximum grant available here is £100,000 or 50% of the total cost of the micro generation technologies, whichever is lower. There is also another grant available called the Northwest Livestock Programme which is only available if you are not planning on selling excess power back to the grid. If you’ve read my first blog post (Why I bought the Power Predictor), you will know that we are in fact planning on selling our excess energy (if there is any) back to the grid. The Northwest Livestock programme grant provides 40% of the cost with a maximum of £8000 available. There is also cost of £150+ vat for an initial audit with this grant.
Gill agreed with me that the (RDPE) grant seemed the right one for Common Barn Farm, so she kindly emailed me an ‘Expression of Interest’ form to fill in, which is what they will use to check our eligibility for a grant. Gill also informed me that we must have planning permission in place first before making an official grant application.
Peak District Sustainable Development Fund
I felt quite chuffed after speaking with Gill, but I wasn’t ready to stop looking for additional grants, just in case we wouldn’t qualify for the RDPE. My next internet trail brought me to the Peak District Sustainable Development Fund and a chap called Richard Godley (01629 816312), under recommendation by Nick Parsons from the South Yorkshire Energy Centre. Richard advised me that funding was only available for community based projects such as schools, cubs and scout huts and village halls etc. Richard had plenty of advice about planning applications which I I’ll summarise below:
- “You should try and prove the environmental impact is as low as possible”
- “Show that you are reducing your carbon foot print, and try to demonstrate how much you can save in electricity consumption from the grid” (this is where the Power Predictor will come in handy)
- “Explain that the wind turbine will act as an education tool to the B&B, holiday cottage and tea room customers”
Richard did stress though that we should arrange for a wildlife officer to assess the impact on bats and birds in the area, and also look at the impact it might have on the general public with regards to noise pollution, because there is a public footpath running through the fields adjacent to the farm.
Defra Diversification Grant
After speaking with Richard I discovered the Defra Diversification grant, but after speaking with them, they told me to speak with Business Innovation & Skills who subsequently advised me to speak to the Energy Saving Trust, who operate the Low Carbon Buildings Programme.
High Peak Border Leader Programme
The final grant I found out about was the High Peak Border Leader Programme for businesses, but unfortunately the village of Rainow lies outside of their boundary. The lady I spoke with there was called Amanda Brown (01629 816223)
So after a lot of investigating, I had managed to find one grant which could potentially provide 50% of the cost of the micro wind generation project, which I was very happy about, but this still left us with approximately £30000 to find of our own money, if we to get planning permission for the Westwind 20kw.
Obviously, we always anticipated that we would have to fund part of the project, but £30000 is a lot of money and Rona & Geoff are currently renovating a derelict barn for conversion to another holiday cottage, which is swamping all of their funds. I had already been advised by a few people that it wouldn’t be possible to have two grants funding 50% each so I began looking into loans, preferably interest free ones for further funding, which lead me to the Carbon Trust.
The Carbon Trust
The Carbon Trust has interest free loans available for businesses only. You need to have a SME enterprise which has been trading for at least 12 months with 1 years worth of accounts. The amount of money you can borrow is dependent on what your projected annual CO2 tonne savings are. You can receive £1000 per 1.5 tonnes of carbon saved, limited at 5 times your annual financial saving, because the loan must be paid back within 5 years. Any excess energy which is generated and sold back to the grid does not factor into the equation when working out your maximum loan. I was strongly advised by the Carbon Trust that we should have planning permission in place first, because the first instalment of the loan must be drawn no more than 3 months after they have approved your application.
The calculation is worked out by looking at your present annual consumption in kw/h and deducting your predicted saving in kw/h. The Carbon Trust Carbon Calculator uses the following formula to convert kw/h into CO2 tonnes:
0.537020 kg of CO2 = 1 kw/h
For example, Common Barn Farm currently uses 45,000 kw/h annually from the grid. At 11p per unit, this equates to an electric bill of £4950.00. If after installing a wind turbine, we are able to generate 30,000 kw/h from renewable energy, then assuming our usage is the same, our energy savings from the grid will be 15,000 kw/h. Using the online Carbon Trust calculator, this works out at annual saving of 16.11 tonnes of CO2 and £3300.00, with a maximum loan amount of £10,740.00 (16.11/1.5 x 1000) available.
As this loan is based on projected energy savings from the grid, the information required to make the calculation won’t be available until we have carried out a full in-depth survey of the site. Rona & Geoff would like to get the maximum loan available and to insure this happens; we need to know fairly accurately how much renewable energy we can generate. If you’ve read my previous post on why I decided to purchase the Power Predictor, you will know that it was because we didn’t want to purchase a wind turbine based on the windspeed data from the Department for Business Innovation & Skills (BIS) website, due to it not factoring in turbulence creating by buildings and trees. Likewise, we don’t want to apply for a loan using the BIS data, as the calculation from the Carbon Trust will be based on the output data of a proposed wind turbine by a surveyor using estimate wind data. The turbine selected might not actually be suitable for our farm, and could have output levels far lower than what another turbine could produce, if we were to use accurate data gathered from an anemometer to select the best wind turbine, if you see what I mean.
This leads me onto another reason for purchasing the Power Predictor; especially considering the online software can compare payback times and average bill savings for the leading wind turbines on the market. The information retrieved from their reports should really help us get the maximum loan possible from the Carbon Trust, based on more accurate results.
You can find out more information about the Power Predictor by visiting the Better Generation website.
