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Ayrshire building contractors William Skinner announce commitment to renewable energy
Added: (Thu Feb 09 2006)
Ayrshire-based building contractors William Skinner & Son have announced that they will shortly be offering both locally and nationally a range of renewable energy products and services.
William Skinner & Son's chairman John Quinton explained the reasons behind the move.
“Apart from our very rapid company growth, which has led us to want to diversify, it does seem a good idea to save on energy bills and do our bit to slow down climate change.
“Most renewable energy devices – equipment that generates electricity from the wind, waves or sun, or which heats water directly using energy from the sun – have been around for decades, in some cases for centuries. But they have not caught on till now, and they are still seen as mostly peripheral ways of contributing energy to the total required.”
Skinners argue that three facts will very soon result in everybody clamouring for whatever renewable energy they can get, peripheral or not, the alternative being that they either won’t be able to get enough of it, or to afford it, as conventional fuels, (gas and oil), run out and prices soar.
After all, whatever the cost of renewable energy sources, after what is already an acceptable payback period they produce free energy for the life of the system used – normally at least 25 years. We don’t have to think about climate change to justify them – they do that on energy cost savings alone.
The three facts are:
Oil and gas are running out, whilst the world demand for them is increasing. And we are at the end of the pipeline.
The amount of energy from the sun falling on each square metre of the earth’s surface is equivalent to 3,000kWH annually – so that alone is enough to meet the entire global demand for energy many times over. Even without wind, water and nuclear power we can manage easily without oil and gas. If we get our act together in time.
In real terms fuel prices have at least doubled in the last year, and they are likely to double again every couple of years or even faster than that. What has a payback period of 10 years now will, in practice, pay for itself in less than half that time.
And Skinners are setting the rest of us a good example. The company has obtained planning permission to install a 6kW wind turbine at its St Quivox headquarters near Prestwick Airport, and they have also ordered a photovoltaic system as well as two solar panel heating systems.
The wind turbine will be supplied by Stewarton, Ayrshire company Proven Energy.
Both the wind turbine, generating electricity from the wind, and the photovoltaic cells, which generate electricity directly from the sun, will feed into the National Grid any energy that Skinners generate but don’t need at the time, and the solar panels will produce much of the hot water they need.
John Quinton concluded: “Most people won’t want a wind turbine in the back garden, at least not until the new range of small domestic models becomes available, but everybody, surely, would like some free hot water.
“Around Easter time we shall be offering locally, and installing in one day, a solar hot water system which will generate half the hot water a typical household needs.
“It costs nothing to run it, what it produces is free, and there is a 30% grant available towards the very modest cost.”
Editor's note
If and when, as is now predicted, the Greenland ice sheet melts, the sea level will rise 7 metres or 25 feet, and Ayr, Prestwick, Troon and every other coastal town in Ayrshire will drown. It won’t happen for a while, though, so there is no need to panic. And if everybody installed a solar heating system, it might not happen at all.