solar power

Package

id like to know about solar power in house, ive heard they are doing that now,,, anyone any idea on how much it costs? anyone had it done and what do you think of it?

Jambo

Package ,

Try the Gardening / Diy in Rec forum you will a might of experience and answers there.

scojones

Moved from After Hours.

bullrunner

from what i have been told (as im looking into it myself) the solar panels are only really used for heating water (and hence heating the house). If you check out www.sei.ie they have a link to companies that they authorise for installation of these systems+ will pay a grant towards the installation. But I dont think you can use solar panels for electrification of the house

delly

sjones wrote:

Moved from After Hours.

And on to Green Issues

Boggle

Solar PV panels can be used very effectively to power a house. Strangely enough Ireland is quite well suited to these as they become less effective with increased temp and they work quite well off diffuse sunlight.

Be careful when pricing these though and do me the favour of sending me on the details of whatever systems you look at as I am doing alot of market research at the minute as I am talking to suppliers. It looks to me that, just like wind turbines, there are alot of companies with very little idea of what they are doing in the renewables game for the quick (massively inflated) profit...

Solar water tubes on the other hand, from talking to people with them in are actually useless. While they provide good heat in direct sunlight, they become effectively useless in diffuse sunlight. Also with the vacuum tubes I have had people on telling me that they are prone to shattering - while not overly difficult to replace I believe that there are knock on costs...

Capt'n Midnight

Boggle wrote:

Solar PV panels can be used very effectively to power a house. Strangely enough Ireland is quite well suited to these as they become less effective with increased temp and they work quite well off diffuse sunlight.

http://www.met.ie/climate/sunshine.asp

December is the dullest month with an average daily sunshine ranging from about 1 hour in the north to almost 2 hours in the extreme southeast. Over the year as a whole most areas get an average of between 3 1/4 and 3 3/4 hours of sunshine each day.

Check your last ESB bill. See how many units you used per day.
eg: 3 hours of sun means 1 KW of solar panels will give on average 3 units of electricity a day.
A typical "150 Watt" solar panel is about a square meter in size so you would need about 6 square meters to produce those 3 units.

You will also need batteries to store the electricity during the days with very little sun.
My nearest station is - http://www.met.ie/climate/casement.asp
mean no. of days with no sun 10 7 5 2 2 2 1 2 3 5 7 11 - 55
55 days with no sun per year, and in Jan and December 1 day in three.
PV cells work in diffuse light, but it's a linear relation ship, less photons, less electricity. And on bright days you can use mirrors to focus more light on the panels , you can't even on the brightest of overcast days.

The wind figures are much more inspiring though..

quietsailor

A friend of mine is researching different green ideas to heat/power his house and thought of 2 wind turbines, one to charge batteries for the lighting/low power sockets in the house and the other to power a geothermal unit. Is anybody else out there using this sort of a set up. Among our friends are mechanics/marine engineers/electrician/electronics people so I can see the idea mushrooming almost every time we meet, at the moment they're talking about the two systems being interchangeable, ie no need for heating (geothermal) the second wind turbine starts to charge a battery pack.

ircoha

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

http://www.met.ie/climate/sunshine.asp

Check your last ESB bill. See how many units you used per day.
eg: 3 hours of sun means 1 KW of solar panels will give on average 3 units of electricity a day.
A typical "150 Watt" solar panel is about a square meter in size so you would need about 6 square meters to produce those 3 units.

You will also need batteries to store the electricity during the days with very little sun.
My nearest station is - http://www.met.ie/climate/casement.asp
mean no. of days with no sun 10 7 5 2 2 2 1 2 3 5 7 11 - 55
55 days with no sun per year, and in Jan and December 1 day in three.
PV cells work in diffuse light, but it's a linear relation ship, less photons, less electricity. And on bright days you can use mirrors to focus more light on the panels , you can't even on the brightest of overcast days. <One of the other wrinkles here is that while u may have say 3 hrs of sunlight in a day, if these hrs dont happen when the sun is actually striking the PV panels then u will be "dancing in the moonlight".... Anyone got any data on the efficiency of PV panels vesrus the angle of incidence of the sun rays?> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_incidence

The wind figures are much more inspiring though.. while the wind figures may be more inpiring a wrinkle here is that the wind figures for your weather station are going to be very different for your residential estate so dont be conned into using wind figures that cannot be achieved in your location.

1

piraka

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

The wind figures are much more inspiring though..

Interesting exchange on this forum regarding rooftop wind generation of electricity.

http://www.yes2wind.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=388

greensteve

Solar Panels can be used to heat your water, air conditioning system, and supply electricity.
The government grant is roughly €300 per square meter of panel you install.
A properly installed solar panel will repay the cost of installation within three years.
Solar panels, properly installed, are the most efficient of the popular forms of renewable energy sources at home.

www.solarenergy.ie is a good place to start for information about solar panel installation in the North East of Ireland

ircoha

greensteve wrote:

Solar Panels can be used to heat your water, air conditioning system, and supply electricity.
The government grant is roughly €300 per square meter of panel you install.
A properly installed solar panel will repay the cost of installation within three years.Ok, so the fitting costs take 3 years to recover, what about the capital costs?
Solar panels, properly installed, are the most efficient of the popular forms of renewable energy sources at home.you need to back this up, it just can hang there

www.solarenergy.ie is a good place to start for information about solar panel installation in the North East of Ireland

Greensteve, have u any interest in solarenergy.ie?

In relation to the grants, the 300 euro goes straight to the seller with no benefit to the consumer, due to the pricing being increased to absorb the grant, In 1979 when the original first time buyers grant came in the builders added the 1000 quid on overnight so it was very apparent that they were screwwing the customer. With the SEI grants, it is a bit less transparent, as the package is a supply and fit only.:(

However what is transparent is that the customer gets no benefit from the grant in terms of pricing, what he does get is a raft of people falling over themselves to supply and fit this stuff because of the grants.

greensteve

Yes I do have an interest in solarenergy.ie. I am part of a company who supply and install solar panels. One of the reasons we got into this area is because our own home water heating system is run by solar panels. Between April and September of every year since we had the panels installed (I think four years ago now) the panels have been the sole heating source of our water. During the Winter months the panels have heated our water significantly and our old oil boiler supplies the remaining energy need. From our experience the system has been a great sucess. In the time we had our panels installed we recieved no grant. The cost of supply and installion has already been recovered, so now as oil prices rise we have a constant supply of free energy.
Your assertion that the grant is paid to the installer is false, the grant is paid directly to the end costumers bank account, if you are worried that installers bump up the prices to fit this, then I'd suggest you look around for more quotes.

Boggle

Hi Greensteve,

I am also involved in the business. However, we have as yet shied away from solar thermal systems as i am not convinced of the payback to the end-user yet.
While I am not knocking the system yet (we are going to set up a test bed in the next few weeks to give actual figures), I was a little concerned by the following article: http://www.sei.ie/index.asp?locID=724&docID=-1 (atricle GIR88).

I do however reserve judgement on the matter though as the article is dated 01 and is quite poorly done.

Could you give some real life experience? For example what temp would your panels raise the water to during both the summer and the winter months? Do you have datalogged temp's month by month for any of your examples?

Both the end-user and myself would be interested in your answers...

ircoha

greensteve wrote:

Your assertion that the grant is paid to the installer is false, the grant is paid directly to the end costumers bank account, if you are worried that installers bump up the prices to fit this, then I'd suggest you look around for more quotes.

To whom the grant is paid was not the issue but if I wronged anyone by what I wrote I apologise.

However my assertion about the prices being bumped up is not false, the evidence is there because to test the efficiency of the grant system, quotes were got for a wide variety of set-ups PRIOR to the grants being announced and the same quotes were got after the grants were announced.
Quess what? No, the sun did not rise in the west.

I will give another example of a similar exercise.

Back in the early 80's bank managers were offered additional security for their houses. Amongst the more common one was electric gates in the drive way.

I enquired as to the cost of a gate only, as I wanted to source the electrics in Germany.
The price was 600 quid for the gate

A month later I asked for the price of the electrics: 500 quid.

a month later my wife calls the same quy and asks for a price for a gate and the electrics. 3000 quid.Installation was 1 day.

When I called him back about it, the answer was, well as the bank is paying for it, thats my price.


I

ardara1

UK Guides for SAP 2005 on which the new DEAP in Ireland is based gave comprehensive information on renewable performance - check out the Stategic Guide for Low & Zero Carbon Energy - In calculating whole house performance it is recommend that a MAX of 50% of DHW is generated form solar - it might well be a lot less than this in practice