Alternative sources of power continue to occupy  Martin Hesp this week as he travels the Westcountry for the Contested Landscape series, considering how the need to lower our carbon footprint could change the look of our countryside

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THERE is a wind turbine hidden away in the wilds of Exmoor that has been quietly and efficiently getting on with its job of creating energy for the past seven years.

The windmill at Pinkery is not exactly doing away with the need for conventionally generated power, but it is helping in the battle to cut down carbon emissions – and we feature it here in the Contested Landscape series because it is symbolic of what could be achieved in the Westcountry in terms of power generation, without the need to go big.

It is the large-scale wind farms which, not surprisingly, really get people's goat – the massive turbines which stand higher than St Paul's Cathedral and have blades longer than jumbo jet wings. But small can be beautiful in energy generation terms – local is good too, because up to 10 per cent of electric power fed into the vast National Grid gets lost.

But before we go any further, let's say straight away that micro generation is NOT the entire answer to the nation's future fuel and power needs. It is, however, part of the answer – and it is particularly applicable here in the Westcountry where we have some very windy areas and countless fast-flowing rivers.

My e-mail has been full to overflowing since last week's Contested Landscape series focused on the subject of wind generation and considered what large-scale adoption of it would mean for our beautiful countryside. By far the vast majority of the missives received were adamantly against vast wind farms. It's hard to see how any country-lover could think otherwise.

What is perhaps more difficult to understand is why die-hard wind farm detractors seem to think all wind turbines are evil manifestations spawned by the Devil.

Would small turbines, like the one to be seen at Exmoor National Park Authority's Pinkery Outdoor Education Centre, really wreck the landscape if they were to be located here and there near the odd lonely farm or hamlet? And are they worth bothering with? Do they work?

David Huxtable, who is the manager at the Pinkery, said: "Essentially, it's fantastic – it works well and supplies the centre with 80 per cent of our energy needs. It's just a six kilowatt system, so it's not a big wind turbine – in fact, there are more modern models of the same size that are more efficient.

"But it helps fulfil the needs of our 46-bed centre – it runs the lights, fridges, pumps, computers, a washing machine. If that's on a lot, the battery packs do get drained quicker, but that's only really a problem when we are using a lot of electricity.

"On a day like today, when it's very calm, the generator has come on," admits David. "But we also have photovoltaic cells [solar panels], so most of the time we don't have to use the diesel generator. Generally if there's a reasonable amount of wind, which there tends to be up here, we don't have to use it.

"If it gets really windy, the excess electricity goes to the hot water system. The turbine itself doesn't need much looking after and it's not intrusive. The job it does – and what it saves us in fossil fuels – is fantastic. We have no mains up here and if we didn't have the wind turbine we'd need to have the generator running all the time."

Wind turbine loathers might argue that Pinkery is a special case – it is too remote to be connected to the National Grid and its wind turbine is so hidden in the empty hills, no-one can see it from any kind of distance.

But the region has many homes, farms and communities in remote windy locations, which green energy enthusiasts argue would make ideal candidates for small single turbines.

Here's a bonus: owners of such turbines, and any other "clean" micro-generating facility, come to that, can enjoy the powered version of having their cake and eating it too.

A Wiltshire-based electricity company called Good Energy pays 15p for every kilowatt hour supplied by what is known as a home-renewable generator, and the owner even gets a payment if they use that electricity themselves!

"Not only are you saving money by buying less electricity," says the blurb, "we pay you for using the electricity you generate. With HomeGen, you can have your cake and eat it."

It sounds too good to be true, but then how many of us know anything whatsoever about one of the most important things that supports our lives? Most of us simply flick a switch and expect the electric power to be there instantly, without knowing the slightest thing about how it has been generated, or what can be done to both safeguard and clean up the supply.

Payback for the kind of clean micro-generation that is created by a wind or water turbine comes about thanks to something called ROCs – or Renewable Obligations Certificates. The Renewable Obligation places an onus on licensed electricity suppliers in the United Kingdom to source an increasing proportion of electricity from renewable sources.

Where suppliers do not have sufficient ROCs to cover their obligation, a payment is made into a buy-out fund and money from this can be paid to those who can prove they are generating clean electricity. The cost of ROCs is effectively paid by all electricity consumers, since electricity suppliers pass this cost on as a small increase in the tariff for the electricity they sell.

It's all a bit complicated, but basically ROCs are banded. If you generate electricity from a wave farm you can get more ROCs for a megawatt hour than you would get from a wind farm, and so on. Needless to say, a coal-fired power station would not get any, so its owners will need to buy in ROCs from those with a surplus.

Good Energy also charges its electricity customers a slight premium because it sources power from clean generators. This means it can pay those who generate slightly more as an incentive to make the green investment.

"Our home generation scheme pays customers for the ROCs they produce – and a bit of extra," says Hugo House, the company's micro-generation specialist. "The additional 5p we pay is ultimately our commitment to microgeneration. We believe very passionately in the potential for small-scale renewables, so we want to provide the best incentive we can."

At the moment the company has some 500 microgenerators on its books, including a 15 kilowatt wind turbine owned by the South Wheatley Environmental Trust, a community group situated in the heart of North Cornwall's windswept hills.

Trust chairman Bill Andrew said: "We all felt that there was too much talking about climate change and not enough action, so we decided to do something about it and set our sights on installing a wind turbine.

"Putting all the funding together and applying for planning permission was a labour of love, but now the turbine is in and we've started generating green electricity that we are getting paid for, it feels well worth the effort."

Like the turbine at Pinkery, the one at South Wheately hardly dominates the landscape – a fact that is perhaps aided by the rather ironic fact that it is situated close to a giant line of electricity pylons. However, any wind turbine is bound to be conspicuous and those who hate them would claim they are a lot worse than pylons as their moving blades detract the eye.

Even the most dogged climate change disbeliever, renewable energy critic and detester of all things green and environmentally friendly could have much to complain about when it comes to water turbines.

Some people – and I include myself in their number – think the Westcountry should be full of them. In a region rich in fast-flowing rivers and streams, it somehow seems crazy not to allow the landscape itself to dictate the kind of energy sources it can provide for free.

Here's an amazing fact: you can purchase a Chinese-made water turbine for as little as £300. It will be so small you will be able to hide it in a wooden box smaller in size than a family fridge. At just £450, a British company called Navitron will sell you a really useful 500 watt version that needs just a two-metre "head", or drop in your stream's flow.

There are slight installation considerations to be taken into account when purchasing a "low-head" turbine – but if you are lucky enough to have even a small stream that drops just 10 metres or more, you can buy a model that will kick out more than a kilowatt 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

"Even the 500 watt is very useful," says Navitron's Mike Walsh. "The average load in an average house in daytime would be less than 500 watts – so this would power the fridge, the freezer, phone-chargers, and so on.

"But once you start going into the higher head models, the installation gets more easy and they are much more forgiving machines. And 1.1 KW is a lot of power. Every time you produce one megawatt hour – this would be 1,000 hours in this turbine's case – you would get £42 [in ROC payments] – that's every 40 days or so. If I understand the Government's intentions, that will soon be doubled to £84."

Which means you could pay off the main investment of buying the turbine in under two years and have free electricity at home. There are, of course, some other costs to be taken into account, including the possibility of having to purchase a "grid tie-in" device that you may need to pump electricity into the National Grid. But there must be literally thousands of properties in and around the Westcountry hills that have the required stream with the necessary vertical descent.

"Water turbines, in renewable terms, are by far the most efficient," says Mr Walsh. "You are looking at a payback in a couple of years."

One person who has taken water power to heart is Sonia Newton, who generates enough electricity from the River Teign to power as many as 25 homes.

Sowton Mill has been using hydro power for more than 400 years, initially to grind corn and from the 1950s to generate electricity. In the 1980s she decommissioned the old Francis turbine which had performed 30 years' faithful service and replaced it with new equipment. The purpose-built turbine was installed a few yards further downriver, enabling an improved head of four meters that increased output fivefold – typical winter output now peaks at around 25kW.

Sonia was one of the first home generators to sign up to Good Energy's SmartGen scheme. "SmartGen presents a straightforward off-take arrangement that makes the most of the electricity we generate and gives us a good price for our power," she said. "We have a pretty variable generation profile but one of SmartGen's strengths is it can readily accommodate this.

"We send our meter reading by e-mail which helps to keep our administration to a minimum. This simplifies the system and keeps the overheads down at their end and we see the benefits of this in the price we receive for our power."

No-one is quite sure who coined the saying "the Stone Age didn't end because it ran out of stones, and the Oil Age won't end because it runs out of oil", but when you think about free, clean, renewable local energy, you can somehow see what it means.