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It doesn’t have to be so difficult - only four months after making the decision, Stuart Goodale could inaugurate his own household wind turbine. The two-bladed Gaia-Wind turbine stands 18 metres high up to the nameplate, and when the blade points up to the sky its tip stands 25 metres above the ground.

“The turbine stands in our back garden, and produces 30,000kW a year. The family uses 6,000 kW a year, with all our left over electricity being sold on to the electricity board. I myself am very happy to be able to deliver green energy to at least 4 other families in the area. We were a little worried about the noise from the turbine in the beginning. When it’s very windy, the noise from the wind simply deafens the noise from the turbine, and when the wind is very quiet we can of course hear the wind turbine, but it is definitely not a noise that disturbs us. We hear it, then forget it, and only think about the positive effect it’s having on the environment. Our turbine has been up and running since 1999, and we haven’t regretted it one little bit!”

It is only during periods with very little wind that Stuart has to buy electricity. “If both the oven and washing machine are running simultaneously and the wind is “lazy”, we can immediately see from our meter that we have to buy electricity from the electricity board,” he says. Normally, Stuart’s wind turbine produces more electricity than he can use, which means that he sells around 24,000 kWh of green electricity back to the electricity board on a yearly basis.