One of Rain Bird’s key company beliefs is that employees should act as entrepreneurs. A great illustration of this is Rain Bird’s new move to enter the wind-power generation market. Rain Bird is always looking for ways to expand the business that fits well with its irrigation roots and its company philosophy.
With that in mind, Matt Prucinsky, Engineering and Business Development Manager based in Tucson, has been leading an effort to enter the wind-power generation market. Iain Macpherson has now taken up the mantle for Rain Bird in Europe; firstly concentrating on the UK, where Feed in Tariffs backed by Government make the Return on Investment (ROI) a very good proposition indeed. It is part of Government strategy to reduce carbon emissions.
“Clubs in the UK need to be looking at utilising their assets in different ways with this recession and declining memberships. Just supposing you were offered in the region of £40k a year for 20 years index linked,” says Iain “The numbers for the right venue are truly a proposition that should be considered.
“What is wind-power generation? Put simply, it is a method to harness the power of the wind and turn it into electrical energy. Perhaps you have seen power-generating turbines before. Soon, you will be seeing the Rain Bird logo flying high on one of these smaller ‘tree sized’ smart-energy devices. Rain Bird’s turbines feature high quality electric, energy-producing capability; generating between 100,000 and 300,000 kilowatt hours of electricity per year. That is enough electricity to supply power to up to 28 single-family homes for a year.”
“Rain Bird is targeting commercial users, such as golf courses; as our first customers. Frankly our turbine perfectly tailors the need of European member golf clubs and their electrical consumption,” Iain concludes.
“Electricity is often one of the top three expenses that a typical golf course incurs every year,” Matt adds. “A fair amount of that power is used to run a Rain Bird irrigation pump station, thereby providing critical irrigation water to the course.”
“The beauty is, however,” says Iain with true enthusiasm, “that we can plug in regardless of flavor – this is a straight business proposition!”
Rain Bird’s wind power generation business will be part of Rain Bird Services Corporation. RBSC will be targeting customers in areas where electricity costs are high and wind is a common occurrence. Locations in the UK, Denmark, Greece, Italy and Germany are natural places to start.
“The UK has 60% of Euro wind go across us – why not harness an energy that a course gets FOC?” Iain asks. “Another reason for our customers to be interested in these new turbines is that any surplus electricity that they produce can usually be sold to the local electric utility company. This helps speed up the payback of the device, often resulting in a customer covering all the costs of an installation conservatively within 7 years. Electricity prices went up 16% last year and herewith clients are being presented with opportunity to fix costs for 20 years – further increases will add gravy to the ROI
“This is just one of the ways Rain Bird is looking to expand business and it complements our ‘Intelligent Use of Water’ philosophy as well.”
Iain MacPherson, Renewable Energy Product Manager – Europe, Rain Bird UK Ltd can be contacted via imacpherson@rainbird.eu
Rain Bird www.rainbird.eu
Images
Iain MacPherson portrait.jpg
Rainbird wind turbine