Transformers aid in green energy strategy

Clarke Energy has a reputation for green energy solutions, and has been buying Winder equipment for seven years.

There is an old saying that says "nothing succeeds like success" and the business achievements of Winder Electrical, one of the leading suppliers of power engineering for industry, have been successful for the environment too.

Leeds-based Winder, which was founded over a century ago, numbers another of the UK's leading companies among its clients.

Clarke Energy, the Merseyside gas engine and energy systems company, which has a reputation for green energy solutions, has been buying Winder equipment for seven years and the latest transformers on its shopping list have taken the number purchased to over 120 units.

Winder's Transformer Sales Engineer Dave Bowker said: "Our long-standing relationship with Clarke obviously benefits both companies.

They are our biggest customer, and the fact that they keep coming back to us for more and more equipment must mean we are doing the job right".

"But it is not just the two companies that reap the benefits.

It is not stretching it too far to say that virtually every person in Britain will get some benefit because of the work which Clarke's do with our transformers".

That work is all concerned with 'rubbish' - or at least the after-effects of the mountains of refuse disposed of by homes, industry and commerce.

Even in these recycling conscious times, millions of tonnes of our waste finds its way into a landfill site, and the main product of this system is highly volatile methane gas.

There are two accepted ways of disposing of methane.

It can be vented into the air and flared off, or it can be treated the Winder-Clarke way.

Clarke Energy has had huge success in supplying engines to generators of landfill gas who use methane gas from refuse tips to generate power.

Dave Bowker explained: "The gas is converted into usable energy and exported to the national grid.

It is big business and getting bigger.

So in effect a waste gas which is environmentally damaging becomes electricity and helps to meet the growing demand for environmentally friendly power across the country".

Step-up transformers are among the equipment transported to Clarke Energy for use at landfill sites.

The latest big one, an oil natural, air natural transformer rated at 18MVA, is capable of stepping up 11kV to 33kV for export to the grid from a former tip in Berkshire.

Smaller 2.5MVA transformers have also just left the Leeds manufacturing base for other landfill sites nationwide.

And the latest order to arrive at Winder, with Clarke Energy managing director Ian Davis' seal of approval on it, is for two 1250kVA transformers together with one 1600kVA unit.

"We like to think of ourselves as a green company and with these contracts we are certainly doing our bit", said Bowker.

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