it's a very BAD start! - if they had used their enormous buying power to provide really good, cheap renewables, I would be applauding them for popularising technologies dear to my heart! - Instead, they've been caught up in the "deLorean of the noughties" fairy tale!
I think the following explains it all in fairly reasonable detail - it's a copy of one of the emails I exchanged with our local trading standards office - they'd asked me to "elucidate" - they have already responded and "enquiries are underway"
"Dear xxxx,
in words of one syllable - they are telling a pack of lies to sell them. Picking just one at random - they claim on their literature that you WILL get 30% of your electricity from one in an urban area - this is arrant nonsense, which defies the laws of physics!
To expand a little - for a wind turbine to work satisfactorily it must be in clear and non-turbulent air - windspeed over a roof is both slow and turbulent - one of the links below will take you to a somewhat tatty webpage - that of Hugh Piggott - generally recognised as THE leading authority on windpower in the country - and he measured the average windspeed over his own roof in Edinburgh for a year - his house, if you look it up on the "NOABL" database suggests 6-7m/s (looked upon as a very good windspeed!) - at roof level, it is under 1.9m/s! (most turbines don't even start turning until well above that!)
Windsave are suggesting that all people have to do is look up their home on the database, and that tells them if it's suitable - this is a blatant lie!
The same expert has worked out that in a year, one of these contraptions MAY generate about £10 worth of electricity..........which is FAR different from the blatant "30%" claim - I would suggest 2-3% if you're lucky!
In simple terms, over almost every roof in Britain there is not enough wind to have the energy removed from it to give the amounts of power they suggest! (in direct contravention of several rules of physics!)
Next we have more misleading claims - they claim "noise absorbing mountings" - there is no such thing! - any turbine affixed to a wall or roof ~WILL transmit substantial noise into the structure - you would not get any sleep on a windy night, unless profoundly deaf! (all of the roof mounted turbines I've seen are "stopped" or tied off for exactly this reason!). Following discussions with our local planners, I doubt anyone will get consent in this area - they are well aware of the noise problems - not so much from the blades, but the transmission into dwelling structures (it's very like a rat gnawing at a beam!).
They are also extremely concerned (as are we) that the forces involved on tiny insubstantial mountings will mean that some will pull out of the wall, and do major structural damage!
This "chocolate teapot" is a heartless con - you shell out £1500, thinking you're "doing your bit" for the environment - in a year, it may generate £10 - worth of electricity - the "inverter box" burns 53kw/h per annum - about £5.30 - so in a year, you MAY "save" £4.70p!
(ONE 18w energy saving bulb substituted for a 100w bulb will save £15 pa, if run for 5 hours a day) - buy a £1.99 bulb, and save 3 times more energy than £1500 worth of Windsave!
Anyway, don't take my word for it, here's the links - the first is to Hugh Piggotts "windspeed in the city" page -
http://www.scoraigwind.com/citywinds/
the rest of Hugh's site - don't be misled by his lousy webdesign - this chap wrote many of the textbooks, and devised some of the test standards - if you scroll down the page, you'll see that he "names names" - you have to be VERY sure of your facts before you do that!-
http://www.scoraigwind.com/
Next, a recent article in the Observer
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/cash/sto ... 54,00.html
And another from North America's Paul Gipe (he wrote the other text books!)
http://www.wind-works.org/articles/Roof ... itain.html
To be frank, there are times that I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall - EVERY expert in the field knows they're a con, the trade forums are buzzing with angry people in the renewables industry - this will do the renewables business a great deal of harm, and will leave a great many disappointed people in it's wake!
I hope you can do something to stop this in it's tracks - I'm beginning to suspect that the whole thing is a "flotation" exercise - the guy has been accepting "orders" over the net for 2 years, and is now doing the same thing through B&Q - I suggest he'll sell out very shortly on the strength of the "paper value" of the company, and leg it for the horizon with several million pounds in his back pocket before the **** hits the fan! (intentional pun!).
kind regards, Martin
ps, to put this in perspective, our stock reply on receiving an enquiry for an urban wind turbine is "unless you can obtain planning consent for a tower of at least 100' to put it up out of the turbulence, we're sorry, it just won't work!" - and neither we, nor any other reputable company will roof or wall-mount a turbine - we know the problems!"
Read my 
