Visiting the Isle of Eigg (part 3)

OK, so here's the detail on why I was visiting Eigg. At the time, they were an applicant for an Ashden Award, which they went on to win this summer. The award was given for their work in cutting their carbon emissions by almost 50%! This has been done through a combination of renewable energy generation, energy efficiency and behavioural change. The renewable energy generation is the most visually impressive, so that's what most of the pictures are of - I'll talk about the other stuff at the end of this post.

The heart of the system is a small building which has two main rooms, one housing this huge bank of Rolls lead-acid batteries, sufficient to run the entire island for 24 hours without discharging too deeply:


The batteries work to smooth out the changes in supply and demand for electricity over time, thereby reducing the need for backup generation. The connections for these battery banks pass through the wall into the next room, which houses twelve 5kW inverters, four in parallel for each of the three phases used by the grid:

Also in this room is all the control hardware for the system:

including all kinds of live data from the weir and water turbine:


Just outside the control room is a pair of diesel backup generators, which operate alternately to provide redundancy. A generator will come on to top up the battery bank whenever the charge level drops too low. In practice they don't get use much - over 90% of Eigg's electricity comes from the renewable energy sources, and this will increase when they add more solar PV.

Not far from the generators is 10 kWp of solar PV, which is due to be increased to 30 kWp in the near future. It's in a great location, with no shading and a view of the Sgurr in one direction and the sea in the other:


To the south of the Sgurr is the wind farm, which uses four 6kW Proven wind turbines:
Inside the control room for them are inverters and equipment to divert power to dump load heaters in the event of there being excess power. Dump load electric heaters are also used in community buildings, and as the grid frequency rises with excess generation, they automatically come on in stages to make use of the spare power. The dump loads at the wind turbines only come on when all of the heaters in community buildings are already on.

As you can see, some of the roads are pretty rugged, hence the need for a 4x4. At least they don't get driven very far, and there's a lot of lift-sharing as well.

Near the centre of the island is a weir:



From here the penstock takes water out of the stream for the water turbine, with a valve controlled remotely to ensure some water remains in the stream:

There's a drop of over 100m from here to the turbine, and we walked down it, following the buried penstock across fields and streams:

You can still just about see where it was buried on its way to the power house where the turbine is located (strip running up from the bottom of the picture, just left of centre):

Inside the power house is the water turbine - these are never very interesting to look at, they just sit there and do their job. This one was painted in the traditional "hydro blue" that seems to be compulsory for turbine equipment!

It's a pelton turbine, here's the technical details:

Well, that's where Eigg's electricity comes from, but as as I said, that's just one aspect of how they've cut their carbon emissions. Another is switching from from fossil fuels to wood for heating - I saw forestry work in progress, and the production of logs for heating is ramping up rapdily now:


The wood is burned in stoves that either heat a room or have a boiler in them to run central heating:

Every home has an OWL energy monitor - this is crucial, as one of the constraints adopted to make the renewable energy supply practical and affordable was to limit every house to 5 kW, and businesses to 10 kW - if you go over, your electricity cuts out, and a technician must visit to turn it on again. The meters sound an alarm if consumption gets close to the limit, and very few people ever get cut off, as energy-saving habits are second nature to the residents of Eigg.

Every house on Eigg has to have it's own water supply, and it was nice to see a few ram pumps running - supplying water without using fossil fuels. We had an international Ashden Award winner using these a few years ago, in the Philippines.

Over at the school sustainability was high on the agenda too, with a geodesic greenhouse and raised beds in the garden (I was there in February, which is why there's not much growing):


The school is proud of its achievements and has won a Green Flag from Eco-Schools for its work.

There are numerous other initiatives in progress, such as home insulation, poly-tunnels to grow food (reducing food miles), increased cycling and the use of solar water heating:

Eigg's done an amazing job, massively cutting it's carbon emissions, and showing the rest of the UK the way it should be going with renewable generation. To finish, I'll leave you with the video that the Ashden Awards made about Eigg's achievements (you can download a copy from the Ashden Awards website):

Mike

Read part 1 of Visiting the Isle of Eigg
Read part 2 of Visiting the Isle of Eigg

Click here to read the rest of this post.

Romney Marsh wind farm and a woodland update

The Little Cheyne Court wind farm, on Romney Marsh, is now being commissioned. Apparently it'll be finished by February, and until then the turbines will be operating intermittently as they are tested. Here's a video taken from an upstairs window in our house:

I'm pleased to see them working. Not everyone likes the view, but if we're going to tackle climate change and also get back to the UK being self-sufficient in energy, then this is the kind of thing we need.

We drove up to the wood today, as we were bringing back a load of logs for a customer, so it was nice to find the track frozen solid:After processing some chestnut logs and loading the trailer, we got back to coppicing near the junction of the footpath and our main ride. We're trying to focus on a particular section at the moment, for no reason other than it would be nice to have it done! So, we've been working together rather than in different areas. The normal pattern is that I'll fell a tree, then Tracy will sned it while I'm measuring it into 2m lengths. Then she'll move the brash while I move the logs. Works well, and it's quick. Here's the area we're working on, it's just around the curve from the long straight stretch we did first:We had one frustrating moment today. We'd been carefully avoiding felling trees onto any of the small oaks, but the last birch I felled had a branch sticking out sideways that caught one of them as it came down, snapping it off about 2m up. This was a shame, but it's the kind of thing that happens sometimes. We made the best of it by pollarding the tree a few feet up. It'll be interesting to see if it regrows, and if the shoots are eaten by deer (they'll be too high for rabbits, which is why we cut it at this height).Here's a before and after shot at the junction. You can see the area we were working today down the right hand side of the fork.

Last week:
Today:
We're up again tomorrow, and there's no firewood deliveries to make so we can focus on the coppicing. We're hoping to cut all the way up to the junction on the right hand side...

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

A beach, a wind farm, a nuclear power station and some birds: cycling from Rye to Dungeness

Yesterday we cycled from Rye to Dungeness and back on our electric bikes, a 30 mile round trip (the batteries could probably have lasted another 10 miles I think). First stop was Camber, where we paused at the shingle banks to the east of the village:It was about lunchtime so we stayed a short while there. You can see the Romney Marsh wind farm behind Tracy in this picture:
Here's a better view of it:
It includes 26 turbines, which are now all up. Apparently they have to build some meteorological equipment and then they can start commissioning them, with the whole lot scheduled to be running by January 2009.

While we had lunch a guy zoomed around on a jetski for our amusement...
and the local wildlife hung around to see if they could clean up any crumbs we left:
A bit further down the road towards Lydd we stopped by a large lake, which I think may have been formed by gravel excavation, which was still going on nearby.
The far shore was carpeted with gulls:
while the shore near us was covered with Lapwings and some slightly smaller brown birds we haven't been able to identify. None of them liked the high-vis yellow vests we were wearing, so seeing as we were scaring them anyway I took the opportunity to get some photos:
Before long we passed Lydd, and headed out into the wilderness. You can see why the MOD trains soldiers for Iraq and Afghanistan here:
In the distance was Dungeness nuclear power station:
and we rode past what looked like a facilty for transferring nuclear fuel containers from trains to trucks to go down to the power station:
The road's quite long and desolate:
though there was actually quite a bit of traffic on it.

As we approached Dungeness we saw that the RNLI lifeboat station was open, so we went in to have a look round, and bought a few odds and ends in their shop. Apparently they didn't get called out much this year, as the lack of warm weather reduced the number of people out on the sea. Impressive kit waiting there until it's needed though:
From there we moved on into the village of Dungeness, which has the strangest collection of houses I've ever seen, many with the power station overlooking them:
and once you move away form the road it's back to wilderness The furtherst point of our ride was marked by the Britannia Inn, which serves a good pint of beer.
and you can sit out the front in good weather, with the usual view:Mike

UPDATE, here's the photo I mentioned in the comments below, taken last year:

Click here to read the rest of this post.