South Wiltshire Agenda 21

Salisbury Architect Scoops Regional Green Energy Award.

“I believe that we have to solve the problems of reducing the carbon footprint of our homes in all sorts of innovative ways not only technical, but also personal, organisational and monetory.”

Greg Condliffe

Newbeck Cottage, Flower Lane, Amesbury is no ordinary house! It is jammed full of innovative ideas for reducing its carbon footprint. Architect Greg Condliffe, of Harnham, Salisbury was nominated by South Wiltshire Agenda 21 in this year’s Regen South West Green Energy Awards. Greg was runner-up in the housing category and was the only award winner from Wiltshire.

Regen SW is the sustainable energy agency for South West England, funded by the SW Regional Development Agency. Its mission is to speed up the transition to a low-carbon economy by unlocking sustainable-energy business opportunities, accelerating the uptake of the region’s renewable-energy resources and championing effective energy-demand-reduction initiatives in the region.

Is this the summer for solar?

“What’s the point of solar if we are going to have summers like this?”

Think again! Believe it or not we have had enough sun to turn off our boiler for much of the summer. Read on to find out more about your solar options.

Solar Water Heating – Exploding the myths

Solar water heating seems to be one of those peculiar things that most people seem to have heard about but few know very much about it, except that they think it costs thousands of pounds, and only works in summer. Having said that there are those who know of someone else who has had it for years and will say that it works very well. It is true that solar water heating has been around for years – it is as we say a ‘mature’ technology, just like bricks and cement are for building.

Year one success for wind energy in Wiltshire

Eighteen potential sites have been identified, with volunteer Site Champions undertaking to investigate their potential, establish ownership, and make an initial approach to the landowner, to gauge interest.

The future of wind in Wiltshire / Photo: Rachel Ross

Wiltshire Community Wind Energy group held its first AGM in Salisbury on April 21 2009.

The group has made good progress since it was started last year by Jack Mason of Trowbridge, attracting local supporters of wind energy from backgrounds ranging from flood defence, archaeology, IT, energy efficiency, aviation technology and education.

Saving my money and energy

The scale of the waste finally became obvious to me after cheap domestic energy monitors appeared on the market.

Wasting energy / Photo: Simon Banton

I run a small computing business from my home in rural south Wiltshire. My home computer network has gradually been growing in size from a single computer and a dialup modem over a decade ago into a large collection of various beige boxes, network equipment and trailing extension leads.

For the techies reading this, there’s a Linux DNS and mailserver, a music server, a couple of Windows boxes for checking website designs work in Internet Explorer, the list goes on…

None of these are of a particularly high specification, being largely salvaged, low-end old machines that aren’t called upon for demanding tasks and don’t need to be blisteringly fast. However, although not everything is always switched on and in use, these machines have been quietly consuming between 60-110W – the same as keeping a traditional lightbulb on day in, day out.

Next Wiltshire Wind Energy Meeting

Message from Wiltshire Community Wind Energy about their next meeting:

The next meeting of the Wiltshire Community Wind Energy Group will be on:

Date: Thursday 17 July, 7-9pm
Place: United Reformed Church, Fisherton Street, Salisbury.

Further details at:

http://www.wiltshirewind.org.uk/news.htm

This will be an important meeting as we aim to build on the one held in May. If you would like details of the May meeting please look at the news section of the website where there are some brief notes and the ‘powerpoint’ presentation.

Please come along and bring a friend!