All things green

blowin

I don't know if this is the right place, but I'll see where it takes us! I have a house on a small piece of land and have been looking at the various options for electricity generation, heating and all the other expensive and diminishing resources. I've done the courses, attended the conferences and am still none the wiser really. My point is, (and this is where the problems are), I want to generate my own electric to run the house etc. As I see it, I can speak with the suits and purchase the all singing, all dancing system for the knock down price of 50,000 Euro. And, if I'm really lucky I might recover my investment in about 60 years or get the system to last five!

As a result, I've done some thinking and quite a bit of research and come up with a cost effective and possibly fun alternative. This is not just a buy the bits and build the thing yourself idea. I think that we as peasants who don't matter are really being conned! Or, the appathy is palpable and no one really gives a damb.

It has to be feasible to build a wind turbine and generate electricity. I'm not talking national grid stuff here! I'm talking small scale on a smallholding. I know that there are build your own wind turbine sites on the net, (I've visited most of them and come to the conclusion that the people who are currently building them are not really pushing the envelope far enough).

I personally think that if I get a few bits of old scrap. And I have enough people to bounce off, and meet with, a cheap, user friendly and popular system could be built. Then if enough normal peasants begin to put these things in their back gardens the suits would have to take notice.

Having said all this, the saying, "I'm not very clever but can't half lift things" comes to mind and so as and when I start it will be from the very very bottom. Anyone interested?

matthiemurphy

Hi,

Like yourself I've decided to build a wind turbine from scratch, I bought Hugh Piggots book which makes the task much easier (He has been making turbines for years and has wriiten an easy to follow book).

The actual building of a turbine isn't that difficult a task, I suspect sourcing cheap batteries would be quiet difficult a task.

According to the book (and taking average irish wind speeds of 11 mph) it is possible to generate 100 watts as on a turbine with a diameter of 8 ft. This would work out at about 2.8Kw a day, where the average house uses 4600Kw a year (so don't disconnect the mains just yet!!!)

Excluding battering you should be able to built a 8ft turbine (incl alternator) for well below 1000 euro.

Matthie....

Boggle

Excluding battering you should be able to built a 8ft turbine (incl alternator) for well below 1000 euro.

Or you can buy a proper turbine for less than that... (E900 for a 600W (750W @12m/s) from www.airoption.com/PRoducts.html )

As I see it, I can speak with the suits and purchase the all singing, all dancing system for the knock down price of 50,000 Euro.

Or you can shop around and get the all singing, all dancing... well just generally better system for about half than that.

Seriously, you want to go off grid completely then you look at it from the ground up...

Heating:
1/ Insulate your home. This minimises the amount of heat you need to generate. Might appear straightforward but if you are looking for the best way to reduce heating bills then this is it!
2/ Look at a renewable form of heating, be it wood-chip or (better yet) for a new house you can look at CoreTech underfloor heating which consumes less power than any other form of heating available (even the infamous geo-thermal!).

Power:
1/ Look at your appliances and select the most economic appliances available.
2/ Look at your lighting etc and install low wattage lighting where possible.
3/ Determine your energy requirements and get someone experienced in sizing electrical systems to design your generation system (someone with electrical experience/qualifications, not someone who thinks they can 'cos they sell turbines!). It would probably be a combination of wind/solar/backup genny and I would be shocked if any home broke the 30K mark...

Is it worth going off grid? Well, you should determine your bills, look at what your bills will amount to in the next ten years (with or without inflation) and then size that against your running costs.
If you are building to sell, then I suppose you should look at what implications the energy cert will have on your property price and the added value of being grid-independent.
At the end of the day, its your choice.

kerrymaninld

I only know one person who is off-grid in (Southern) Ireland today, and they have a 1.5KW wind turbine and 2.2 Kw worth of Solar PV installed. He is living in a good gusty location (North West). He tells me neither solution as a standalone would allow him to live completely off-grid - when one is producing a lot of output, the other isnt, etc.

I'd agree with Boogles comments above, that is focus on energy efficiency first, do everything you can to REDUCE your consumption. Then, eventually, smaller wind-based solutions may help you reach your ultimate end goal. Otherwise you need to up your budget for renewables.

Benster

I'm trying to get started on my own mini-project to make my own solar water heating panels. It's still at the drawing board stage at the minute, there's too many other pressing jobs to be done before I get stuck in properly, but I hope to at least prove a point that it will supply a decent amount of hot water without having to shell out thousands of euro.

The way I see it, I would try to reduce the amount of gas and electric we need in the house first, by doing the whole "insulate / use CFLs / use solar" thing. After that, were we are, options are a bit limited as regards wind energy. Our house is at the edge of an estate, backing right onto a huge field, and facing a couple of large trees at the back too. Problem is though, our garden is pretty small, so putting up a wind turbine would be difficult as it would be too close to the house and pretty much right in the middle of the garden as we wouldn't be able to put guy ropes into the field (which is not our land) if it was along the back garden wall. Also, the trees would create a good bit of turbulence, as would the proximity of the houses.

So I'd go solar first anyway. I also think that unless you're serious about generating enough electricity to cover your needs, it is a hell of a lot of effort to go to for such a small return, and you'd still have to rely on grid supply for much of the shortfall. Reduce your usage first, then try to work out if you could meet your day-to-day energy needs using alternative methods.

BTW, my solar powered desk fan is still keeping me cool on this sunny day

B.

Do-more

Saw some cheap home made solar panels in Wales a few years back, they been made from old truck radiators mounted with HD PUR insulation behind them and some recycled double glazing panes on top. Cheap but effective! You would need a pretty strong roof to hold a decent area of them though!

CJhaughey

Homemade panels can be made from old rads painted black or better yet copper pipes bent and painted black with high temp paint.
Lay them on a bed of Fibreglass/rockwool as foam tends to melt at high temps.
As do-more says cover with glass- single glazed is fine and actually more efficient.

Benster

CJhaughey wrote:

single glazed is fine and actually more efficient.

Are you sure? I would have thought having an air gap or whatever is in a double-glazed pane would ensure no (or less) heat transfer to the outside happened through the glass itself.

You're dead on with the bent pipes method, I have a large roll of copper pipe, 8mm I think, I'll solder/weld/"join somehow" this to a large sheet of metal I have. This will then be blackened with Hammerite thermal paint and placed in a wooden tray (marine plywood), insulated with foil and fibreglass. I also have a decent bit of insulating foam for the copper pipes entering and exiting the whole assembly.

After that, I'm not sure what to do with it. It's more a proof-of-concept project at the moment, so I'm not going to tear into replumbing our nice new house just yet, but I'll have to do some more work on how to get water pumped around the panel.

Nice weather, innit? :rolleyes:

B.

CJhaughey

Single glazing will allow more light into the box, double glazing will actually allow less light in, my german panels have single frosted finish glass, I think the frosted finish is to avoid hotspots.
Try VHT high temp exhaust paint in matt black it is good and easy to apply.
make sure that the foam you have for the pipework is armaflex not just PE foam , it melts quickly when exposed to heat.
A central heating pump will work for moving hotwater around, and if you get a 12v one you could always power it from a PV panel and battery.

Benster

Good tips, CJ, cheers for that. I assume the exhaust paint is available in motor stores. I'll give the single pane glass a go as it will obviously be easier to source a single one of a certain size over a double one.

When you say double glazing allows less light in, are you referring to proper standard double glazed panes as found in your normal house, or would that also be true of two single panes used together? I know there are coatings applied to some windows used in housing that alters the light slightly.

B.

2 stroke

Hello everyone I've made one of these panels as an experiment. aprox 1 sq meter heats 2 gallons water from 5 to 40 degrees on a sunny november day in tipperary. I used 10mm copper pipe on steel panel. Tried thermal circulation first but results poor. Problem was airlocking, due to heat driving oxygen from water inside coil. I set up a pump controlled by a pipe stat to overcome this.
For my permanent version I am looking for copper sheeting for better efficiency and am doubling the amount of copper pipe/metersq . at present my steel sheet can reach 80 celcius at midday in november with pipes at 6 inches apart. I plan to build solar garden fence over christmas. My ultimate plan is free hot water during the summer months. Solar power is under rated in this country. We have a longer day in summer than much of europe. I see free hot showers for everybody by 8 am during summer months.