Consultation Paper on planning exemptions for Micro-Renewables published

pauln

The minister for the environment has published a consultation paper on Micro-Renewable aimed at bringing in planning exemptions for domestic micro wind turbines, solar panels, heat pumps and biomass link.

In summary it proposes that the following may be installed without planning permission:

EDIT 07/11/06: Having obtained the actual consultation paper more details have been included.

Solar:
1. The total area of any such panel, taken together with any other such panel previously placed on or within the said curtilage, shall not exceed 12 square metres or 50% of the total roof area, whichever is the lesser.
2. The distance between the plane of the roof or wall and the panel shall not exceed 15 centimetres.
3. The solar panel shall not extend beyond the edge of the wall or roof on which it is mounted.
4. The height of a free-standing solar panel array shall not exceed 1 metre, at its highest point, above ground level.
5. A free-standing solar panel array shall not be placed on or forward of the front wall of a house.
6. The erection of any free standing solar panel array shall not reduce the area of private open space, reserved exclusively for the use of the occupants of the house, to the rear of the house to less than 25 square metres.

Micro wind turbines:
1. The turbine shall not be erected on the house or any building or other structure within its curtilage.
2. The height of the support tower shall not be less than 6 metres and not exceed 10 metres.
3. The length of a rotor blade shall not exceed 2 metres.
4. The supporting tower should be a distance of not less than one and half times the total structure height (including the blade of the turbine in its vertical position) from any party boundary.
5. No more than one turbine shall be erected within the curtilage of a house.
6. All turbine components shall have a matt, non-reflective finish and the blade shall be made of material that does not deflect telecommunication signals.
7. No sign, advertisement or object, not required for the functioning or safety of the turbine shall be attached to or exhibited on the wind turbine.

Heat pumps:
Ground source or vertical bore hole:
1. The level of the ground shall not be altered by more than 1 metre above or below the level of the adjoining ground.
Air Source:
1. The total area of such a heat pump, source heat pump on, or within the curtilage of a house. taken together with any other such pump previously erected, shall not exceed 2.5 square metres,
2. No such pump shall extend beyond the edge of the roof or wall on which it is mounted.
3. No such structure shall be erected on, or forward of, the front wall or roof of the house,
4. Noise levels must not exceed 45db(A) during normal operation, or in excess of 5db (A) above the background noise, whichever is greater, as measured from the nearest neighbouring inhabited dwelling.

Biomass:
1. The capacity of an oil storage tank shall not exceed 3,500 litres.

Micro Hydro generation:

• Due to possible environmental impact these will still require planning permission.

Closing date for submission of comments is 24th November 2006.

What do people think?

pauln

My own toughts on it.

EDIT 07/11/06: The summary on the governments site isn't very accurate about what the paper actually says.

Solar:
What kind of wattage can you get from a 12m2 photovoltaic array? / Heating from 12m2 of solar water heating panels?

Micro Wind:
One and one half time the tower height from any dwelling or boundry.
I would think this really limits use in urban environments and if it is really necessary then I would prefer it read: One and half times the tower height from another owners dwelling/boundry. Your not going to complain about your own turbine being to close and the worse that could happen would be it would fall over onto the house.
EDIT: Turns out the paper actually only says from any boundry, no mention of dwelling
Free standing turbine up to 12m in height, 10m plus 2m single blade length.
Does that mean you can have a 12m diameter turbine if you wanted or is the max 4m?
EDIT: It actually says a min height of 6m, max total 12m and max of 4m diameter.
Other minor conditions and limitations will apply.
And they would be?
Edit: As above
Must be painted to blend with surroundings.
The European norm on these is white, even the fully scale ones are white.
Edit: Paper actually says it must only have a matt finish.

SeanW

I think any and all wind turbines not qualifying for planning permission exemption should instead be put through an "express" planning permission setup.

Capt'n Midnight

Hmmm a 12m diameter turbine would only could fit on a 6m tower if you have an 18m back garden. Still 4m is plenty big, and you could add more blades

or horizontal turbine, with no tower

12m2 on any wall, does this mean each wall or is it the total for any combination of walls - maybe 100W per m2 and 3 hours sunshine - very very rough guess 300WattHours per m2 per day or roughly a unit of electricity per day averaged over the year. Be enough to run a laptop easily.

Cuauhtemoc

My reading of the tower height and blade size is a 10m tower with a max single blade length of 2m.
I think i saw a 3.3Kw turbine with a blade length of 2.3 meters(4.6m diameter), so slightly less power than that.

air

Interesting stuff and definitely a step in the right direction, here's my take on it.

On Turbine Diameter:
A 4m diameter turbine is plenty big enough for any home if it is even remotely energy efficient.
On distance from buildings
IMO they should be increased by at least a factor of ten in the hope of leading to the erection of turbines that actually produce useful energy.
Urban installation of wind turbines is simply not a success - see http://www.scoraigwind.com/citywinds/index.htm

I would have serious safety concerns around a horizontal axis wind turbine mounted on any building, especially by amateurs. Having held a set of 2.4m blades in a light breeze, I certainly wouldnt like to be hit by one that has come off a building in a storm.

On Turbine Height
I'd prefer to see a higher limit to allow installation of useful towers.

On the Solar Panels They're pretty much black in colour, I dont see why they should require planning at all when mounted flush with an existing roof.

pauln

I've obtained the actual consultation paper from the department and turns out the summary on the website is pretty inaccurate in it's description of it's contents.

First post has been edited to contain actual details of paper and I've attached a copy of it.

Capt'n Midnight

The purpose of the paper is to seek views from parties who would have a
significant interest in the issues involved so that a balanced approach can be
taken to the scale and extent of the proposed exemptions. Accordingly, you
are invited to make submissions on the draft paper by Friday 24 November
2006.
Submissions should be returned in electronic format to the Department at:
planning Á environ.ie. In the meantime, any queries may be raised

phone numbers and email addresses in the document

The supporting tower should be a
distance of not less than one and
half times the total structure height
(including the blade of the turbine in
its vertical position) from any party
boundary.

so for 1m blades on the smallest tower of 6m you would need 7m x 1.5 x 2 = 21m wide/long garden ( a double decker bus is 10m long and very roughly 5m high, so if you can imagine two of them parked behind your house - not for suburbs )

2 stroke

Midnight think there is a problem with your maths, get one of those busses out of my garden.

so for 1m blades on the smallest tower of 6m you would need 7m x 1.5 x 2 = 21m wide/long garden

should read 7m x 1.5 = 10.5m wide/long garden.

2 stroke

Lets not leave it to suppliers to lobby on this, lets all make submissions. I would like to make sure home builds are included also I,d prefer to have 2 smaller turbines, than 1 4meter diameter one doing up to 200mph in my back garden. I see no sense in limiting solar panels to half of the roof area. We are not far away from roofing our houses with solar slates or tiles and we should be free to generate enough electricty to run storage heaters.

pauln

2 stroke wrote:

Midnight think there is a problem with your maths, get one of those busses out of my garden. should read 7m x 1.5 = 10.5m wide/long garden.

Nope he's right, 7m high (6m tower + 1m blade radius) x 1.5 = 10.5m from all boundries so if you are to place it in the middle of your garden then it has to be 10.5m from the boundry to the left and 10.5m from the boundry to the right = 21m long garden min and still have to be 10.5m from any other boundries also.

2 stroke

O.k. the bus is back. I didnt have a problem anyway I was considering putting one in a corner of my garden picked out a spot today, trying to keep guy wires off footy pitch. didnt have to worry about other side.