Stiff sea breeze blows away school's electricity bill

One of Britain’s most windswept schools has taken advantage of its position on an exposed Cornish headland to reduce its electricity bills by up to 90 per cent.

Gorran School, near St Austell, has attracted £55,000 in grants to install a 50ft (15m) wind turbine in a corner of its playing field. When the wind blows the turbine produces 3.5kW of power, enough to meet nearly all the 100-pupil primary school’s energy needs and to help to heat its outdoor swimming pool to a bath-like temperature.
When the school is closed at night, at weekends and during holidays, or if the turbine produces more power than it needs, the surplus electricity is sold to the national grid for 10p per unit. Thirty other schools in Cornwall are hoping to install their own turbines.
Matthew Oakley, the school’s head teacher, said: “Last month we reduced our electricity bill by 86 per cent.

“Just as important is the message that this is giving to our pupils about how important it is to be able to generate green energy, as this is the world they are going to be living in.”
The project was co-ordinated by Community Energy Plus, a charity set up to promote sustainable energy, which is planning to extend the scheme to enable local communities to buy their own turbines and generate their own electricity.
Sue Hawken, a school governor, said: “It was a bureaucratic nightmare even with their help. Without it I don’t think we’d have been able to do it at all. Because it hadn’t been done before we were asking lots of questions that no one knew the answers to.”
The school received grants of £30,000 from the power company EDF, £17,000 from the Low Carbon Buildings Programme, £7,500 from Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Unit and £500 from Eco-Schools. Rosie Cox, 7, said: “It is making our school greener than we were.” Adam Phipps, 8, who has built his own miniature turbine and been able to measure the electricity it generates, said: “We think the turbine is good because it means we are not burning oil that creates carbon dioxide.”
Gorran School, the subject of a book by a former teacher called The School House in the Wind, sits on a headland. It has an inexhaustible supply of wind, which conveniently blows hardest in the winter when the most energy is needed. Mr Oakley said: “Some people say they can hear [the turbine] from quite a distance away when the wind’s in the right direction but it is not an intrusive noise. I’d compare it to the sound of the sea.”