Engineer Austen Floyd at the foot of Gusty

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A PINK and purple wind turbine surprised De Beauvoir residents on Wednesday when it sprouted from behind a row of terraced houses on Southgate Road.

The 28-metre-high clean energy generator, affectionately known as Gusty, will only be in situ for one week, and it is part of a campaign to show how easy it is to build clean energy in urban areas – if only planning regulations didn’t get in the way.

This is not Gusty’s first pop-up – the same turbine was also at Alexandra Palace and Glastonbury earlier this year – but this latest appearance is a collaboration between campaign group Britain Remade, electricity providers Octopus Energy, and The Benyon Estate.

Benyon is a family-run property company that owns many homes in De Beauvoir, including the land behind 62 and 64 Southgate Road, where Gusty is, a few doors down from the company offices.

The tenant at 64 Southgate Road told the Tribune she was “open minded” when her landlord announced the plans, although the turbine is “not particularly subtle”.

“It’s been entertaining watching it go up,” she said. “Everybody is stopping and taking photos. It’ll be quite strange when it’s gone.”

The wind turbine looming over homes

The plan is for Gusty to generate electricity over the weekend, which will then provide the power for a meeting of green business minds on Monday, including secretary of state for energy security and net zero Ed Miliband and CEO of Octopus Energy, Greg Jackson.

Passer-by Liam Martin said he had noticed the turbine on Wednesday, put a photo online and came back on Thursday to get a closer look.

“I thought it must be something to do with the bar [nearby],” he said. “I thought, ‘surely it can’t be in someone’s garden?’”

Engineer Austen Floyd, who works for Yorkshire-based organisation Windcare, was part of the team erecting Gusty this week, as well as at different events throughout the summer.

He said of the urban installation: “This is all new to us. We’re rural – we normally struggle to find B&Bs.”

Mr Floyd, who has worked as a wind engineer for 12 years, joked that he thought it was a “wind-up” when he first got the address for Gusty’s De Beauvoir home, because satellite imagery still showed buildings on the site, though these have since been demolished.

He explained that when it gets windy, the turbine will start going automatically, but that if it gets too windy there are tips that come out of the rotors to act like air-brakes, and turn the mechanism out of the wind.

“It’s about proving we can put them anywhere,” he added. “The worst problem we had was the traffic when we were bringing the big concrete base in last week.”

Gusty’s dismantling will begin next Tuesday.