Speaker 2 (00:00.642)
Hello everyone and welcome to the My Local Marketer podcast. I'm Maria and today I'm speaking with Ian Gough about one of Reading's most iconic features, the Green Park wind turbine. Ian, thank you so much for coming on. How are you?

Alright, thank you. It's good to talk.

Yes, yes, I've been really looking forward to this because ever since I came to Reading Lily 20 years ago, I've always known about the Green Park wind turbine. I've never known anything about it. So I'm really glad we've got the opportunity today. So hopefully you shine a light on it and for some of our listeners as well.

It's a proper landmark now, a lot of people recognise. The amount of times I hear people say I'm back in Reading when I see the wind turbine.

Yeah, it used to be the gas tower, didn't it? As you were coming from London and now we see now that's not there. So it's one of our, think our only core landmarks. Could you please give a short introduction to yourself and your company, which is Reduce Energy.

Speaker 1 (00:52.398)
Yeah, so I'm Ian Gough, I own and operate a company called Reduce Energy Limited. We're involved in the corporate space in terms of energy reduction, that's the core area of what we do, a lot of environmental compliance and stuff like that. But we were involved way back when, in 2005, with the Green Park wind turbine. And I've been involved in it ever since, actually. So in 2005, we helped a little bit with the planning application and getting it through.

in terms of we got involved with a lot of grassroots green organisations to put a bit of pressure on. And yeah, it went up in 2005 and we've been involved ever since in terms of the turbine tours and general dissemination of information.

As we said before, the Green Park Wind Turbine is, like I one of the core features of Reading. And when you came to Reading Geek Night, which is organised by Simon Morris, you gave a very interesting talk with some background information on there, which I was actually really surprised about. Could you please just give an overview of the turbine and some of those facts that you shared at the talk?

Yeah, of course. So obviously 2005 to now, effectively the wind turbine, and this will stun a lot of people, catches me out every time. This year the turbine's 20 years old and that makes me feel very old actually. But yeah, so erected in November 2005, been up and operational ever since. In terms of key statistical information, it's 120 meters high, weighs just over 300 tons in weight.

provides in between 1,200 to 1,300 average British homes with energy. But we calculate that as every second minute, hour, day, year. And we do do a bit of a naughty one there, because obviously if the wind's not blowing more than two meters per second, it's not generating. But yeah, it does generate a lot at Green Park. It's good technology. It's done its job well over the last 20 years.

Speaker 2 (02:44.718)
Now you mentioned that obviously the wind has to be two metres per second in order for the wind turbine to work. And that was something I found really interesting because obviously reading isn't inundated with wind turbines. You normally associate them with Wales or Scotland or the coast and these places. And we've just got a singular turbine. So what was the vision behind installing one at Green Park?

Yeah, I think it's something we do need to get our head around a little bit in the UK. mean, obviously the sighting of the turbine in the middle of the Thames Valley is not the best in terms of wind energy performance. Having said that, it's more than worked amply over the years and it has provided more than what we anticipated it would do. Obviously, there's no two ways about it. You cannot compare. It's not apples with apples if you're comparing.

Green Park in the middle of the Thames Valley versus, I don't know, the Outer Hebrides in Scotland or something like that where we get far superior wind speeds. But it does its job. You know, it sits there in the background churning away 24-7. People aren't necessarily aware of it working, but it's putting energy into the grid and it's putting it in a green way. The vision behind it was down to the previous park owners at Green Park wanted to be seen to be green in every respect of the word.

So they gave the land to Ecotricity, an ethical green organisation on a peppercorn rent, and up the turbine went.

talking about the ROI of a wind turbine I would have never guessed when you if you said how many homes does that power I would have never how many is it's 1,200 did you say

Speaker 1 (04:16.942)
Yeah, in between 1200 to 1300 average British homes and importantly that's actually based on an old statistic so in other words we're still using the 12 000 kilowatt hour average for those homes so it's actually more than that I'm being quite conservative with my numbers.

does it take to get an ROI on a wind turbine if it's generating that much electricity and we've had it for 20 years now? I don't know how much it costs. How much does it cost to set up a turbine and then how long before you start to get your money back?

Yeah, so like most technologies, technologies develop quite quickly and wind turbines are no different. To give you a sort of average understanding of how much a wind turbine costs is quite difficult to do actually. I'm not being awkward, but I know in terms of the Green Park wind turbine, what it costs to begin with, and I know the ROI on that. The ROI on average for, pretty much actually, for renewable energy generation equipment, and that includes sort of solar, wind, et cetera, et cetera, give or take based on modern

today's energy prices is around about the sort of 6-7 year mark and it's not uncommon. I'm sort of having a good look at some of the big wind turbines that are going in now. So just to give you an understanding of how big the wind turbines are obviously Green Park 120 meters at its highest height and that compares to 286 meters at its highest height for the largest installed at the moment which is in Norway. That's a behemoth by comparison so Green Park's a 2.5 megawatt peak output

and Odeling in Norway is 15 megawatts so it's a huge energy generator you know can't really compare like for like in that example but like I say you know it does its job and it does its job amply it's been doing it happily set in the background for 20 years the ROI is definitely around about the six seven year mark which is standard pretty much for a wind turbine so yeah it's a good bit of kit

Speaker 2 (06:08.942)
That isn't very long at all, it's a lot less than what I would have thought. So if you had say, like, you know, Green Park, some spare land, if you put one of these things up and invest in it, you know, as well as being renewable and sustainable energy and all that, you're going to get your return on investment and then start making a profit after only six or seven years. Wow. And it's still going after 20.

Yeah, I mean, again, a lot of ROI assessments in particular look over the longevity of a piece of equipment. with solar industry, the norm is 20 to 25 years, depending on what you're installing. With wind turbines, it's a little longer actually. Normally they look over 30, 35 years on an ROI. But again, the profitability associated with this equipment is good. So a lot of people are only too happy to invest in that and including actually across Europe.

It's the norm actually for certain countries, Germany in particular, for cooperative, for people to invest part of their own money in these things because they know damn well they're going to get their money back.

is the impact of having the Green Park turbine on the surrounding area?

It's been a contentious thing at certain points in time, there's no two ways about it. And a lot of people did say, oh my gosh, it's going to devalue my house. The normal sort of concerns that people put up. Like I say, the turbine was given a plan application, it was approved, it went in and those concerns do dissipate quite quickly. A lot of people now, they really do accept it as part and parcel of the Reading skyline. And again, the commentary I get about I'm back home when we drive up the M4 motorway or whatever.

Speaker 1 (07:43.642)
they see the turbine and that's it, they're there. I think in terms of Green Park it's become the real totem effect of Green Park. We get an awful lot of visitors as a result of the Green Park wind turbine. Community groups, interested parties, schools, universities, you name it. And all of them really want to understand what it is, what it does, how it works. And more importantly, I think the key thing that everybody do overlook is that

how it helps with fighting against climate change.

So how environmentally friendly are winter vines? You hear obviously bird strikes and that they're not recyclable. How environmentally friendly are they?

Yeah, so sadly there are a few things like that that do get reported. I don't mind admitting on the bird strike front, that's generally dispelled now. Again, don't take my word for it. If you do an internet search for RSPB and wind turbines, you'll find that so long as they're not sighted within an area that's going to obliterate birds, nesting birds or something like that, then they're actually pro wind turbines. And the rationale there is that climate change is going to kill far more bird species than wind turbines.

Sadly birds do get impacted by wind turbines, either the blades go around or they fly into the thing. But they do with buildings and cars and everything else as well, unfortunately. And how often do you see that in the press? Sadly, I was sat at home a couple of weeks back and a pigeon flew into the back window. Maybe thinking that the space was open. Luckily I went out and he wasn't too badly injured on the floor. I managed to recover him, but you know, it happens.

Speaker 1 (09:19.278)
It's one of those things. mean, like I say, from a bird strike perspective, generally that's been dispelled. Birds are pretty sensible. They do try to avoid it. Recyclability, that's something that the industry has got to brush up on. There's no two ways about it, but massive moves are being made now in terms of the carbon fiber blades. There are a couple of companies now that are dotted around Europe in particular, claim 100 % recyclability of their wind turbines. Blades going on top of

bus shelters, skate parks, there's part and parcel of park furniture and all sorts of stuff. With the steel conical tower generally being recycled, you know, it's quite a cost to steal. So generally they recycle that sort of side of things. So they are getting much better. And again, I do want to put this in terms of sort of sensibility around this as well. You know, don't think for one minute if we were to decommission a coal, gas, oil or even nuclear fired power station,

There are problems with recyclability there too, but nobody's ever keen to report on that. And again, the big one with traditional forms of energy generation is the land. The land that's required as a result of that and something we call leachate. So with traditional fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas, sadly they do leach into the ground substrate. And then if you do a reclamation project, you get rid of your power station, that can take hundreds of years for that land to be okay again before you can use it.

take a wind turbine down and quite comfortably you can use it within a matter of weeks. So there's no real sort of problem associated with the environment in that respect. But no two ways about it. Wind turbine manufacturers, the ethical ones out there, categorically are onto this and they're sort of big inroads to become more and more environmentally friendly and recyclable.

Thank you so much for putting that into context because I think you're absolutely right. It's easy to hear things out of context and think, yes, that's bad. But you need to hear it in context, like you said, with the bird strike and climate change overall and the recyclability, how they are considering that and they are improving. So as with any technology, it improves over time. You can't compare the latest versions to ones like for our turbines, say, 20 years ago. So yeah, really interesting. Thank you. You mentioned as well about the steel and all the components for it.

Speaker 2 (11:37.214)
What is maintenance of a turbine like?

Yes, a great question. So typically with a wind turbine and that's sort of like legislative as well actually there's a lot of health and safety legislation appropriate to wind turbines in particular. Every six months is the norm and again I know for a fact on Green Park is 116 point check on that individual turbine. Each of them differ of course they're all slightly different but they'll come along and actually visibly check you know with drones and all sorts of stuff. I'm used to

Seeing this 20 years ago before drones were a thing, this was a physical thing, you where they actually literally had to dangle on a basket out of the back end of the turbine and inspect the blades. That was a three day process. Nowadays, a drone will spin around the blades within a matter of half an hour. It will go off and do some analysis and it will tell everybody exactly what's wrong or right with the turbine. So even that's changed massively. Again, from a maintenance perspective, Green Park doesn't come into a massive cost. It's all born in mind. It's all part

parts of the ROI. Generally as things do get older they do become a little more prone to wear and tear and problems but wind turbines have also over the time period ironed a lot of those initial problems out. So we used to have something called ceramic bearings on the yaw motors and ceramic bearings with heat in the summer and cold in the winter would crumble and fail and that would mean then we have to take a blade off, we have to replace the ceramic bearings and put it all back.

we now no longer have ceramic bearings for blades. So all of those sorts of things have just been ironed out. So anything that was historically a problem 20 years ago certainly is not a problem now. It's more software driven now, more software orientated.

Speaker 2 (13:18.232)
was actually going to ask you about the benefits and challenges of having the turbine at Green Park. So obviously, as you said, for 20 years ago, there's been a lot of learning since then as with the ceramic bearings. So apart from that, have there been any other benefits or challenges that you can recall?

Yeah, I think, again, I will go back to right from the word go, people, and rightly so, I get it, you people were very hesitant to have a wind turbine. Again, we did some studies with an organization called Thames Valley Energy back in the day, sadly don't exist anymore. But Thames Valley Energy did a pilot study of about, I think it was 1,600 sample homes in the three areas that surrounded the turbine. And generally the feedback came back, and if I remember rightly, it was about 76 % anti.

and the turbine went up and it got built and I think there was a six month delay before that survey effectively going out again. There was a few differences to it but it came back as sort of 67 % pro and it's just that mindset. People are nervous, scared, you know, they're going to devalue the house, you're going to hear them at four o'clock in the morning, know, etc, etc. But again, don't take my word for it, come down to the turbine, you know, you'll never hear it more than you're hearing at the bottom of the turbine and actually what you can hear is the M4 motorway.

So it's just dispelling a lot of what I do, actually a lot of the tours is dispelling those myths. Sadly, there are lot of myths and some of those myths have actually come from typically the old historical sort of energy generation technologies, the fuel lobby, know, coal, oil and gas and dare I say it, nuclear. Those of us of an age will remember an individual character called David Bellamy. David Bellamy had some research that was paid for by BNFL, so British Nuclear Fuels Limited.

So there's going to be an aspect to that. So I think as things go on, as time passes, people are becoming more more familiar with them. That's why we set up what we set up 20 years ago to get that messaging out there, to make sure that people looked at it from a neutral perspective. We portray the pros and the cons and just sort of try and give everybody the opportunity to sort of weigh things up for themselves.

Speaker 2 (15:25.378)
This is something that I find really interesting that people generally, they don't like change. They're to something, they don't want it to change. Obviously anything sustainable or renewable energy, even for businesses, if they try to introduce something new, people don't like it. So I was fascinated by how you got people accepting of it and familiar and used to it. So do you think it is just the educational side that got people on board eventually?

Yeah, certainly helps, I think, just in terms of what we do, you know, just giving people that initial information. And again, we try and be really open with that. You we have conversations around how little in overall terms this produces, this wind turbine produces negligible amounts in the grand scheme of things because you're dealing with power stations. Power stations, by default, produce a massive amount of energy, but they do it in a different way. Coal, oil and gas, again, coal, we've generally gotten rid of that in the UK, good.

because of the carbon effect as a result of that carbon emissions. Nuclear, again, don't think that nuclear is not prone to, there are issues in relation to nuclear. won't go there because it's probably not the right audience. And there have been nuclear disasters in the past, and I will say that, disasters. Wind turbines have fallen over, they have been on fire. But I think generally as time goes on, things are getting evened out. It's that new thing, the fear of the unknown, the fear of the new.

they get it, get that, you know, but through using renewable energy technologies, we're going to hopefully fight back against climate change and hopefully win the battle.

That was something, like you said, about how people are now more accepting of renewable energy sources. And in your talk, you gave a very interesting angle on why you think it's important for people to start using renewable energy to do with how much the grid can cope. Do you want to elaborate on that?

Speaker 1 (17:16.682)
Yeah, grid security. There's a few things within that. And we find ourselves in a really tricky time where ultimately everything is electrifying. We're electrifying transport, electric vehicles. We're moving away from diesel and we're petrol vehicles. And that's going to happen very quickly. It'll happen within the next 20 years. So that's a real thing to get our heads around. No longer will we go into the fuel pump and filling up. We're going to a plug and a socket and we're taking off of grid. As we are with heating, with that,

Unfortunately, electricity usage is going to go up massively. So where we're getting to a real pinch point with this is we've got to produce energy to deal with that. And think the UK, we've sort of bitten the bullet a little bit. But if we went full fold with all of this, we're talking effectively 12 to 16 times more electrical usage then as opposed to now. So we've really got to ramp up and we've got to ramp up quickly. Now, if we get that from solar PV, we're going to get the typical

bell curve that goes with that so we get it particular times of the days. We can flatten that out a little bit by use of battery but where wind does come into play here and this is where wind will produce so long as the wind is blowing. A lot of people sort of say in terms of reliability you you've got to look at nuclear and stuff like that and I don't mind admitting you know we need all sorts of forms of energy generation to be able to get us through this period. I think energy security is starting to come back onto the agenda as well.

Sadly, it's looking like an increasingly vulnerable world. And I do think within that, are Russia going to turn off the taps? And if that's the case, will gas just point blank not be coming over here? And partly, I think that's why we started to look in a big way at renewable energy technologies to move away from that. I don't want to go down that route, but there's a lot within it.

fascinating but the point is that if we have more renewable energy sources then people individually can take off less from the grid, it could be more sustainable and everyone there's enough to go around basically and obviously like I said if we have our own renewable energy then we don't have to worry about external sources.

Speaker 1 (19:23.864)
Definitely, definitely. mean that is a really valid point. That's sort of self-sufficiency almost. I've got my solar panels, I've got my electric vehicle, I've got my battery fizzing away as is the electric vehicle and fingers crossed. If I'm as energy efficient as I possibly can be in my home, that will take care of it. You don't really need the grid there other than a backup. A lot of commercial companies are changing their approach to energy. They're not siphoning off of the grid as much, particularly tech.

organizations, they're worried about the risk of not having energy. So I think to avoid blackouts and stuff like that, we've got to start looking at energy in a slightly different way.

So what are some tips then that you have for individuals or even small businesses who have not really thought about or considered renewable energy, but they think, okay, you've convinced me, I want to put my toe in the water.

Yeah, well, great. mean, what a question. And we get this approach all the time. get a lot of companies coming to us and sort of saying, hey, look, I want to install solar panels. And we always sort of say, well, have you sorted your energy efficiency out first and foremost? You've got some really old lighting powering your building. And actually, if you made that more efficient or your heat's going out your front door, and if you insulate your dad or whatever. So the way I look at all the company in particular, companies like me look at energy is we always think,

The best form of reduction is not to use the stuff in the first place. To make that property as tight as you possibly can, do as stamina efficient as you possibly can do. Now lot of people have tuned into this, particularly in the last sort of three years with the energy crisis. Energy efficiency, insulation first and foremost, make sure things are all standby, use them as least as you possibly can do. So that's your bottom up approach and that'll get you to a point.

Speaker 1 (21:17.634)
Then, sadly, you do have to start investing, but the investing, again, as we've proven with ROI, there's an ROI associated to this. And with energy being the price it is at the moment, that return on investment normally is quite rapid as a result of doing that. So for lighting, for instance, changing from typical lights down to LED, far more energy efficient, you're 20 to 30 % less usage typically across the same type of hours and days and all that sort of stuff.

Generally then you're starting to look at a return on investment five, six, seven years as a case in point. And then really you're looking at that mid range measures, controls, installation, dare I say it, Windows fabric. And then top end of course, that's when you enter the terrain of renewable energy generation and developing it for yourself or generating it for yourself. If you can do all of that, you're in a very, very good position to be able to sort of effectively weigh

bye-bye to grid and not be at the mercy then of the price that we have been over the last four or five years. And like I say, to the perils and pitfalls that come with a market that at the drop of a hat suddenly go north or actually could go south. So there's no two ways about it. We've got to be careful here. But generally, organizations are starting to think, hey, look, I should do more for myself now. I should be a little bit more resilient as well, if I'm honest.

What I really like about that approach is you're not saying, yes, go out and spend your money and invest initially. By making people aware of how they can make their own homes or businesses sufficient, they educate themselves before they can get to the point where they need to invest. So by the time they get to the investment point, they've already got all this information and they can understand a bit more with how they want to invest.

Yeah, it is a good energy company and always start off with behaviors. Do something slightly differently and you'll save that energy, you'll save that money and by default what you can then do is reinvest that money, saving into your mid-scale stuff and then by default the mid-scale stuff over a period of time, we're talking time relevant of course, will pay for the top-end glossy stuff. So there's a real structured approach to this. We adopt an approach where whenever we see a property to begin with, we'll sort of say, look, the first

Speaker 1 (23:35.66)
thing you can do here is the real no-brainer stuff. Change your attitudes towards it, change your behaviours a little bit. I'm not saying walk around with the lights off, but certainly there are things that can be done. And like I say, that then begins to sort of hopefully point us in a good step to move on to the further and wider things.

Wonderful. Now, is there anything that you would like to leave our listeners with today?

I think from my perspective, it's the age old adage, if everybody does their bit, we'll be in a much better position. And I think that A, in terms of ourselves from a cost, a lot of people are honing in on the cost reduction perspective now. B, I think in terms of grid vulnerability and having that energy there, that's key. Every winter people hear about gas grid potentially going down and all that sort of stuff. do generally get some periods where we're very, very tight.

I think grid are pretty good on that front, but as things move forward, we've got to look at this in earnest. And I do think the opportunity to do something for the betterment of the environment, know, it's the key thing. A lot of people are turning away from that, oddly enough. think, you know, the Trump effect is causing problems. think ramifications worldwide where the likes of drill baby drill and all that sort of stuff counterproductive because I'm sat here, what's the date today?

and it's 22 degrees outside even now. Again, a lot of evidence. You don't need to talk to people like me, look at academia. A lot of evidence of global climate change is happening. We need to contend with it and we need to do what we can to prevent it.

Speaker 2 (25:10.648)
totally agree with you. Now, if anyone's interested in learning more about the Green Park wind turbine, you give tours, don't you? So how can people book on to what talk or find out more about it?

Yeah, so we give talks. They're all free of charge for community groups or interested parties. And we do insist on more than 10 attendees. But normally, like I said, we're inundated with schools and Girl Guides, Brownies, Cub Scouts, colleges, universities. We have the usual customers who turn up every year. But if you're interested, mean, in short, you can find out more information on the Green Park website or you can go to my company website. So reduce energy. So that's www.

reduce-energy.co.uk and on there you can clearly see a little link that you would click on to book a turbine tour and invariably what that entails is an email to me, we sort out a date that's convenient for both parties and then I'll meet you on site or one of our assistants will meet you on site and we'll talk about the turbine.

Ian, thank you so much for time. As always everyone, all the links will be on the landing page and please don't hesitate to connect with Ian and let him know how much you enjoyed listening to him here today. So Ian, thank you again and yeah, I look forward to seeing you again soon, hopefully on site at Green Park Wind Turbine.

Thank you very much.