Harnessing the Wind

Given that we seem to have spent the past fortnight being blown off the face of the earth here in the north east of Scotland, it would seem appropriate to post something wind related for you to think about, whilst we are waiting for site works to commence in earnest on several projects.

As a practice we have to spend time keeping an eye on the weather, as depending on the severity of the weather it can have contractural consequences that we need to make our clients and contractors aware of. Too cold: not good for anything involving concrete or paint, too hot: not good for anything involving concrete or paint, too windy: no good for work at height or erecting steel or timber frames, too wet: not much good for anything really other than working indoors!!

We use a number of useful weather watching sites, my favourites being:

http://www.xcweather.co.uk/

http://www.metcheck.com/V40/UK/HOME/

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/uk_forecast_weather.html

When it it very windy my mind often turns to thinking about what useful things you can do with that wind, like producing electricity from it. There is a lot more complex science to erecting a successful wind turbine than you might think and if you are considering such an installation we would strongly urge you to do a lot of bedtime reading before committing yourself to what could be a lot of expenditure for not as much gain as you hoped. The Centre for alternative technology does a great range of literature aimed at educating people to the pros and indeed cons of domestic renewable energy saving measures, including some great reading on wind turbines. Their excellently informative web site on wind can be found here:

http://info.cat.org.uk/wind