Case study · Residential
The turbine we told them not to buy
The client wanted wind. The site did not. Saying so cost us the sale and kept the relationship.
- Client
- Private homestead, Central Region
- Location
- Central Region
- Year
- 2024
- Power scales with wind speed³
- CubePower scales with wind speed³
- Turbine we were asked to sell
- DeclinedTurbine we were asked to sell
- Proposed instead
- SolarProposed instead
- Assessment as a gate
- HonestAssessment as a gate
Figures are representative of work delivered and are rounded. Full documentation available on request.
01 — The challenge
What they asked for
A homeowner asked us to quote a wind turbine. Our assessment found the resource simply was not there — power scales with the cube of wind speed, and this site was sheltered. We advised against, proposed solar plus storage instead, and explained the arithmetic.
The client had seen a turbine working on a ridgeline elsewhere and wanted one. That is an entirely reasonable thing to want, and on the right site we would have been glad to sell it. The difficulty is that wind is intensely site-specific in a way that is genuinely counter-intuitive: a site that feels breezy on the afternoon of a visit can be economically hopeless, because output scales with the cube of wind speed. Halve the speed and you have one-eighth the power. The plot was surrounded by mature trees and buildings, sitting in exactly the turbulent, decelerated air a turbine cannot use.
02 — The solution
What the data told us
We ran the wind assessment we would run anywhere and treated it as a gate rather than a formality: mean speed, prevailing direction, seasonal variation, and the turbulence thrown off the surrounding obstructions. The numbers were not close. We could have specified a tower tall enough to reach clean air, and we modelled it — the mast cost more than the resource would ever return. So we said no, in writing, with the arithmetic attached, and proposed a solar-plus-storage system sized to the same loads instead. It was a smaller invoice than the turbine would have been.
03 — The outcome
What changed
The client took the solar system, which is performing to model. More usefully, they have since referred two other households — which is the actual return on declining a sale. We publish this case deliberately, because a case study library composed entirely of triumphs tells a prospective client nothing about how a supplier behaves when the honest answer is inconvenient. Wind is superb where the resource is real; on a sheltered plot it is an expensive ornament, and any supplier who will not tell you that before taking your deposit is not assessing your site, they are closing you.
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