Below are some pictures taken by Liz Taylor, a concerned local resident who after visiting Bears Down, decided to visit the Swaffham (Ecotricity) development of 2 x 100M+ turbines to get a better perspective on the proposed Muston Down and Lower Winterborne Wind Power Stations.

Ecotricity is owned by 1 person, Dale Vince.

Dale Vince wrote on the ICwessex message board, "Every unit of wind ...... prevents the generation of a unit of coal fired." This is at best over optimistic.

22nd February 2006: Eastern Daily Press: A pioneering green energy firm misled consumers about the amount of power generated by its wind turbines, a watchdog has ruled. Ecotricity claimed its twin turbines, which straddle the A47 at Swaffham, produce enough electricity for 3000 homes. But the Advertising Standards Authority has upheld a complaint about a leaflet circulated by the company, stating it breached clauses in its code of conduct concerning "substantiation" and "truthfulness". (Article by Chric Bishop and reproduced by kind permission of the Eastern Daily Press.)

The full ASA Ruling can be found here.

The input from embedded wind turbines cannot be monitored by Grid control because the generation is beyond reach of its instruments. There is no choice of coal-, gas- or nuclear-fuelled electricity. What is displaced is an average of all forms of generation, including 22% from nuclear (no CO2).

Coal generation produces up to 1.0 tonne CO2/MWh but the average for all fuels is about 0.62t and gas as low as 0.3t to 0.4t. Hence the figure he used is exaggerated, more 1.5 times.

Also on the ICwessex message board Mr Vince wrote: - "80% of people support" [wind power]. Currently the ICwessex poll shows 79% against, and The October 2003 BBC Countryfile poll of 36,566 votes gave 55% opposed to a wind turbine near their homes. Where were the 80% then?

- You might have expected them to vote in force.

The Ecotricity visitor center in the foreground and "Swaffham 1" in the background.

An idea of the size of the turbine can be got from the building in the foreground, and also the viewing platform, that looks large enough to accomodate 6-12 people.

Another shot of “Swaffham 2”.

As before look at the figures in the foreground to get an idea of scale.

Swaffham 1 is the one with the viewing platform (reached by climbing a 300-step spiral staircase inside the tower.) It’s 1.5MW capacity so produces on average more like 500kW and its overall height is 110M (360feet).

Swaffham 2 is 1.8MW capacity so produces on average more like 600kW and its overall height is 125M (410feet).

Re: the Swaffham wind turbine from:- Tom L. Kendall, Registered Geophysicist and trained Electrical Engineer:

“The meters at the base of the tower showed that, in the first 26 months of operation, 7.5 million kilowatt hours of energy were sold into the grid system during an operational period of 17,000 hours. The nominal maximum power output is 1.5 megawatts (1500 kilowatts) but, from the figures above, the average output was only 440 kilowatts, just about enough to boil 200 kettles!”

This means that the largest wind turbine in the UK, described as “the world’s most efficient wind turbine” (Kentish Express, July 2002) delivers an average of LESS THAN A HALF OF ONE MEGAWATT of an unreliable supply of electricity to the UK’s requirement for an average of 45,000 MW of a secure, controllable supply of electricity.