New eco-friendly defibrillator installed in village

There are three other defibrillators in other parts of East Markham

A new defibrillator powered by wind and solar energy has been installed in a Nottinghamshire village.

East Markham Parish Council said it had been looking to install a fourth defibrillator in Mark Lane in the village to provide better coverage, but there was no easy electricity supply available to allow it to be charged.

To solve the problem, it has installed a defibrillator with a cabinet which allows the equipment to be charged by wind and solar energy.

Dan Littlewood, parish council chairman, said: "In cases of cardiac arrests every second counts and being close to one can boost your survival chance."

Mike Dowson, director at Turtle Engineering, which made the defibrillator cabinet purchased by the council, said the design has been developed over the last three years to work in areas without access to mains electricity.

It has a battery which allows it to work "for up to a week with no power output in an average UK winter".

Turtle Engineering has placed 30 cabinets currently at sites across England and Scotland.

"[With] defibrillators it's so critical to keep them warm - they can't get cold in winter, so you need a heating source," Mr Dowson said.

"When the sun is around, which obviously isn't always the case in winter, that is used to charge a battery system.

"And then when that's not available there's quite often a bit of a breeze in the UK, so we're fortunate enough that we can harvest some wind energy and use that to charge up the battery.

"We've developed a remote monitoring system which goes with it, so when they really are in the middle of nowhere we can check that they're working okay... that's the next plan for it all."