Eton Manor wind turbine scrapped - high time for electricity production facts on the east marsh wind turbine?

The Olympics Delivery Authority's (ODA's) decision to scrap its Eton Manor wind turbine has been widely reported. The ODA is now looking for alternative sources of renewable energy at the Olympic Park.

But let's rewind for a minute. I set this blog up because of an information vacuum: my Freedom of Information Act request to Hackney Council had proved that it just didn't have its head round the power production potential for a second turbine, proposed for Hackney's east marsh. Putting it bluntly, it guessed the thing could spin, but had no idea how many light bulbs it could power.

And it deflected its lack of knowledge about the turbine on east marsh by pointing me to design proposals for the wind turbine on Eton Manor. Yet these were vague, too. There was no readily discernible output figure here, either.

With the Eton Manor turbine now out of the picture, there's nowhere to hide. Just what is the Hackney east marsh wind turbine supposed to be capable of doing?

This reaction, from Gareth Roberts, was published recently in the Architect's Journal online. According to Roberts, the decision to drop the Eton Manor wind turbine '...should be welcomed by the environmental community, as it may at long last reflect the change in the industry from symbolic tokenism to more deep rooted analytical approach to deliver carbon reductions.'

Roberts goes on to compare the effectiveness of alternative sources of renewable energy, and says '...you can save six times as much carbon per pound spent, by the use of biomass boilers in comparison to small scale urban wind turbines.'

As the Hackney Gazette reports, however, Hackney council continues to push ahead with its plan for the remaining wind turbine on Hackney's east marsh.

It'll be interesting to see what Hackney council has done, since January, and in light of the Eton Manor failure, to fill the gaps in its own knowledge on the energy production capacity of this remaining wind turbine.