How's yer solar panels now?

NextSteps

I'm wondering how those of you with solar panels for heating water are getting on, what with the overcast days and short evenings. Are they making any noticeable difference to water heating this weather? (I ask because I'm planning to install one next year.)

kvw

UB wrote:

I'm wondering how those of you with solar panels for heating water are getting on, what with the overcast days and short evenings. Are they making any noticeable difference to water heating this weather? (I ask because I'm planning to install one next year.)

I've had to fire the oil burer for hot water only 4 times so far this winter.
The sun that we get on the odd morning is enough to give me 40*C water.
The tank is especially good at keeping the heat in once it gets there, mine's a stainless steel factory insulated jobbie.

During the summer/early autumn the water was getting close to 80*C but now even tho it's half that , it's still warm enough to shower in.

100% satisfied with my solar.

CJhaughey

We moved in in May and we had no immersion hooked up till about a month ago, I asked my spark to hook it up because you really need at least 54deg C to kill the Listeria bacteria and while the tank was hovering around 30 deg or so it wasn't getting hot enough.
Now with about 30 mins in the morning and evening we have plenty of hot water.
I have recently obtained a newlec quartz clock that will allow the tank to be heated by nightrate electricity and if necessary a boost during the day.
but haven't got round to installing it yet.
Tank is 400l and panels are 6.3m2 flat panel.

mjffey

Great to hear possitive things about the solar panels.

We were almost sure about taking a woodpellet boiler and solarpanels, but with the price of pellets already rising, the fact that there is a shortage and that you are restricted to pellets only, we are now thinking of trying to get self sufficient for our hot water.

We have enough wood around the house and we are going to plant fast growing trees for cutting, we have our bog land and we are going to test if we can make brickets out of used catlitter as we use woodpellet catlitter(we have a cattery) With so much options we think it's better to go with multi fuel boiler and solarpanels. We rather invest more money in solarpanels then in a very expensive woodpellet boiler eventhough you get a grant.


Maybe a big multi fuel stove with back boiler will allready do the trick. What do you guys think? Would that be an option: Multi fuel stove with backboiler and solarpanels, and then an immersion heater (I think that's what it's called in english) to boost the temperature of the water in the tank at night (on nightsaver) if needed.

CJhaughey

IMHO Wood pellets will always follow the price of oil.
The other thing with wood pellets is that you need a dry place to keep them otherwise they will absorb moisture and turn to dust.
This along with the fact that you need to buy in bulk means that you almost need to factor in the cost of fitting a silo in the house or shed.
Multifuel stove should do the trick but how much hot water do you need?
Could you not just fit a solar panel and an immersion for nightrate electricity?
Backboilers are not all that efficient, the water sucks an awful lot of the heat out of the combustion chamber and as a result you get a lot of sooting where the temps are too low to allow good combustion.
If you are burning cat faeces and urine I would make sure to get a hot burning fire othewise the smell may be somewhat offputting.

mjffey

We will need hot water for approx. 95M2 UFH, 6 small rads and then the normal usage for warm water for two peope. I don't know if only solar and immersion would be enough. What do you thnk?

Re-using the catlitter is one of those wild ideas we have (regularly):D and never tried it out before. You know the "What if..." and "Would it be possible to...." kind of stuff.
We'll have to make it wet first of course and maybe mix it with some wet newspaper, and then put it in a press. Burning feaces doesn't smell. No idea about the urine, but we'll find that out soon enough;) At the moment we put it on the compost heap and together with all the rest it makes a wonderfull compost.

kvw

mjffey wrote:

We will need hot water for approx. 95M2 UFH, 6 small rads and then the normal usage for warm water for two peope. I don't know if only solar and immersion would be enough. What do you thnk?

.

the solar panels won't do anything for central heating, unless you go for a very expensive installation with special rads etc.

a day that the sun shines enough to warm your water to 70+ degrees is a day you don't need UFH imo.

In my opinion UFH is a luxury and an expensive one, I have yet to speak to anyone that can run it economically either by oil or GSHP

It's lovely, I have in my bathroom (electrical), but nice not to have to depend on it for heating the room.

boomshackala

Some comments on previous posts
There is no evidence of pellets following oil prices, it may happen, but there is an assumption that it will without due consideration of the factors. IMO this is an uneducated prediction.
Pellets are not so far rising in price (obviously bagged pellets are alot more expensive),
There is not a shortage of pellets, one of the current suppliers has an infrastructural problem with the amount (6) of trucks on the road. This will be rectified before long.
They payback on solar panels goes way out when you buy a pellet boiler. There is no economic justification for this. Therefore solar is only practical when used in conjunction with gas or oil.
Most importantly, I would not dream of buying a pellet boiler if I was'nt going to install a 3 ton silo with it.

mjffey

The pay back time is not an issue for me. If I would think about that I probably wouldn't even buy a car;)

If I can be in any way selfsufficient, i'll go for that.


Kvw, I agree that UFH is not the cheapest option, but having a lot of cats and three dogs of which two are irish Wolfhounds and thus long legged (so wooden flooring is a big NONO) rough, non slippery tiles are the only option for us and tiles without UFH are very cold, hence why we go for UFH.

CJhaughey

boomshackala wrote:

Some comments on previous posts
There is no evidence of pellets following oil prices, it may happen, but there is an assumption that it will without due consideration of the factors. IMO this is an uneducated prediction.

Perhaps you are right I did say in my humble opinion IMHO:)

boomshackala wrote:

P
There is not a shortage of pellets, one of the current suppliers has an infrastructural problem with the amount (6) of trucks on the road. This will be rectified before long.

I didn't see this mentioned above so why are you bringing this up? Do you have any commercial interest in wood pellets?

boomshackala wrote:

They payback on solar panels goes way out when you buy a pellet boiler. There is no economic justification for this. Therefore solar is only practical when used in conjunction with gas or oil.

I have to disagree with this, obviously in a retrofit payback may never be achieved but at least the occupant is trying to reduce his/her environmental impact.
I have DHW from solar and it is true that in winter you will not achieve the same heat as in summer however the first 30 deg of heating in the tank allows the tank to be topped up to temperature quite easily with just an immersion heater.
If used on nightrate it becomes even cheaper.
I have UFH under my house but it is a dry system with 2x2.5kw cables and at present we find the house to be very comfortable with just 1 cable running for 8 hrs on nightrate.
The living room sits between 21 and 23 degs all the time.

boomshackala

Shortage was brought up...

mjffey wrote:

Great to hear possitive things about the solar panels.

We were almost sure about taking a woodpellet boiler and solarpanels, but with the price of pellets already rising, the fact that there is a shortage and that you are restricted to pellets only, we are now thinking of trying to get self sufficient for our hot water.

I've no vested interests in pellets you will be glad to know.

BTW I'm not trying to knock solar power, I just don't see any justification for it when you already have a green heat source, i.e. pellets
A) you're not getting any greener
Your payback goes way out because you're now competing with a fuel thats half the price of oil!

Boggle

Your payback goes way out because you're now competing with a fuel thats half the price of oil!

How long before the price of woodpellets reaches market value of a heating fuel? Ii has already started to increase and boilers are still extremely rare. What happens when they are more common?

Hate to break it to you but woodpellet boilers are just this years new rip-off.

Remember when people received grants to put in gas?? Is anyone honestly naive enough to believe that woodpellets won't go the same way as the price of gas?

kvw

home heating oil is cheaper at the moment than it has been for a while.

53 to 55 cent per litre depending on the individual deal you do with your supplier.

I paid 72 cent per litre last year...

Boggle

In my opinion UFH is a luxury and an expensive one, I have yet to speak to anyone that can run it economically either by oil or GSHP

Not anymore - but forget oil, gshp, or any other existing methods as they are completely off the mark. An Irish company (well, my father actually) has developed and tested a completely new system which is not only cheaper to run than either of these systems but is cheaper while operating 24 hours a day.
Whats more, the entire heating bill can be removed with a good micro wind generator.

Just wanted to let people know that there are options out there...

GG66

Nice hook! & this product and company is??

kvw

me too, very interested in this Boggle...

Oldtree

spill the beans boggle.

wood pellet boilers : while watching a tv programme some 3 years ago on wood boilers, the supplier said that prices would be held to that days rate to stimulate interest, for five years. what then?

a stanley erin, multi fuel, proports to heat 9 radiators and give dhw. the main problem with this method of dhw is that there is a limit to how far the erin can be from the hot tank. i would suggest that your hot tank be very close to the erin to reduce the above mentioned cool fire/sooting problem.

most of irelands wood production goes to mdf, surely it would be better used to make energy.

if you burn wood clean your chimney on a regular basis as there will be a build up of soot/etc that can cause a chimney fire.

Do-more

GG66 wrote:

Nice hook! & this product and company is??

I guess that this is what he's talking about CoreTech Heating (Airoption)

I had a look at the website but unfortunately, there is virtually no info on it about the UFH system and Boggle didn't reply to my request for more info on that thread.

Hopefully he's more forthcoming this time.

boomshackala

Completely new heating concept my arse, electrical resistance heating (I presume) powered with indian (not known for reliability) made wind turbines. What happens when theres no wind and batteries discarge....you're back onto the grid for heating. This switching needs to be automatic. How much do the controls cost?

BTW the newer helix wind turbines are more efficient

boomshackala

Oldtree wrote:

wood pellet boilers : while watching a tv programme some 3 years ago on wood boilers, the supplier said that prices would be held to that days rate to stimulate interest, for five years. what then?

Pellets have been on the market on the continent for years and are cheaper than here. I would'nt be surprised if prices come down with economics of scale and more competition. Because you can always get more, and locally, its not going to continue to rocket in price like oil.

Having said that, pellet boilers are not for everyone (cleaning required) and theres alot of crap on the market

Oldtree

its all about economies of scale and the irish marketplace is a tiny one compared with the continent,
i would hope that the price would drop as there are more takers but i have no doubt that the government will apply emission taxes to this product in the near future
i believe the way to go multi fuel burners or wood chip, all stimulating local markets or co-ops, ie a group buys a coillte lorry of wood, drys it, then divides it, that way you do as much as you can in the production of your own product.

Boggle

I had a look at the website but unfortunately, there is virtually no info on it about the UFH system and Boggle didn't reply to my request for more info on that thread.

Hopefully he's more forthcoming this time.

Sorry about that - didn't even realise you had asked (don't get much time to look around boards these days)

Completely new heating concept my arse, electrical resistance heating (I presume) powered with indian (not known for reliability) made wind turbines.

It's not resistance heating.
Firstly, to be honest we are a small family company at present and need to manage this properly so that a larger company doesn't copy it and consequently overshadow us - so I hope you can forgive some lack of detail.

How it works is basically simple. It runs 24 hours a day and due to this it consumes a low (relatively) constant load. Due to the even distribution of this load it is ideally suited towards a grid tied wind turbine (no batteries as we dont like them from a reliability point of view). This basically allows the user to maximise the output from the wind turbine - particularly at night.
During the winter, the user will always have some degree of a heating bill as you can never claim an unpredictable source of energy will offset a constant energy requirement however this bill will be very low.
What does happen though is that an already proven efficient (and cost-effective) means of heating gets will be further subsidised by the output from your renewable source.
This has the additional advantage of offsetting your summer-time electricity bill by whatever power is generated during summer months.

We are slowly rolling out the product as we speak but (for this year at least) we are trying to hand-pick a few nice projects to allow us to establish a strong footing.

Tough times but ultimately a hell of alot more interesting than when I worked for other companies so... wish us luck!

Actually, looking back over this, I probably haven't answered any questions at all but at least you should know the logic behind how it works.

And regarding Unitron: We are an engineering company who have been manufacturing a range of power products and undertaking special engineering projects for multi-nationals for the past 6 years so, unlike other jokers who deal in renewable energy, we are qualified to fully analyse a product from an engineering point of view and will not sell rubbish. (See Exmok!)



(PS. this is why I have done so much research on alternatives like GSHP and woodpellet and as such have a strong opinion of how those technologies will fare out over time...)

boomshackala

Boggle wrote:

(PS. this is why I have done so much research on alternatives like GSHP and woodpellet and as such have a strong opinion of how those technologies will fare out over time...)

I still think you're being a bit flippant about these types of heating, both have aplications where they can't be beaten...e.g. gshp with a clean cheap source of electricity? a quality wood chip boiler where the user burns waste wood which otherwise would be dumped..

I will agree that there are pitfalls associated with both, and there are alot of people who have bought crap pellet boilers with no intention of doing the required cleaning...

However, you have just admitted your 'invention' does not provide all the required heat, so we're back to the original argument, why not just reduce capital expense and go for one that will produce all heat all year...

PS Why not reveal your technology, you might get some good ideas here..

Do-more

Sorry to the OP for taking this even further off topic...

Hi Boggle - Your definitely not giving too much away I'll wish you and your Dad luck but also give you my two cents worth...

Having been involved with two small companies (one here and one in Taiwan) that have "built a better mousetrap" so to speak. My advice would be to take your product and do a deal with a major Global company to market it. You probably don't want to hear this and are tuning out already but I have a few reasons for saying this.

Firstly as a small company you probably don't even have the where with all to protect your patents globally (assuming you have strong patent protection in the first place) Would you know if a company in Argentina or Japan or wherever was infringing your patents on their domestic markets? Even if you did do you have the resources to fight them?

The Taiwanese company I am involved with has major problems with infringing products coming from Mainland China and is virtually powerless to stop them due to the copyright and legal system in China.

Secondly, no matter how good your product is, it is very difficult to overcome the "snake oil salesman" tag you will probably be labelled with, if you can't demonstrate exactly how the product works. You cannot underestimate to power a known Global company has in adding credibility to a product such as yours.

Even if the percentages you are offered by a global company may seem derisory you are still likely to make far more money from such a deal than if you try to go it alone.

It is your decision at the end of the day, I am just trying to share the knowledge I have acquired in the area and hope that you don't take offence as that is certainly not my intention.

kvw

UB wrote:

I'm wondering how those of you with solar panels for heating water are getting on, what with the overcast days and short evenings. Are they making any noticeable difference to water heating this weather? (I ask because I'm planning to install one next year.)

To answer the original question again, since the start of december virtually no solar heating, water in the tank hasn't really gone below 15degrees, the immersion brings it up to 50degrees in about half an hour tho, so can't complain about that.

Boggle

Do-more wrote:

Having been involved with two small companies (one here and one in Taiwan) that have "built a better mousetrap" so to speak. My advice would be to take your product and do a deal with a major Global company to market it. You probably don't want to hear this and are tuning out already but I have a few reasons for saying this.

Advice is always welcome Do-More!! We have engaged a business advisor to help us move the company forward as quite frankly our areas of expertise are predonimantly technical and we acknowledge that.
Like I said any suggestions are always welcome - even if they are not eventually used they always provide very valuable food for though...

Secondly, no matter how good your product is, it is very difficult to overcome the "snake oil salesman" tag you will probably be labelled with, if you can't demonstrate exactly how the product works. You cannot underestimate to power a known Global company has in adding credibility to a product such as yours.

Demonstrating how it works is actually quite easy and when we run through the system in person we have had no-one who didn't see the logic in it.
Going with a global company has a benefit but it also has drawbacks as they would most likely prefer to increase the price. At the minute, we compete well with oil and gas and appear to be lower than the equivalent underfloor heating systems. This is how we wish it to stay as we expect the system to completely replace oil and gas in most areas if we don't take the piss on price...

I still think you're being a bit flippant about these types of heating, both have aplications where they can't be beaten...e.g. gshp with a clean cheap source of electricity?

As a standalone system GSHP can't compete on power consumption and all feedback we have had indicates that GSHP systems eat power. They also cannot be substituted by renewable means due too the high loads required.

TRUE GEOTHERMAL is a different matter and that is something we may stuggle to compete with. Please let no-one confuse the two - as I am often quite guilty of doing this myself!!

quality wood chip boiler where the user burns waste wood which otherwise would be dumped..

Indeed. But what happens when we get to the point whereby we have to manufacture woodchip in order to supply these boilers? This is where my worries come from.
You already see companies (Munster Joinery for Example) installing large CHP systems to utilise their waste and this is likely to continue.

The Taiwanese company I am involved with has major problems with infringing products coming from Mainland China and is virtually powerless to stop them due to the copyright and legal system in China.

I know - my old company used to have the same problem with the chinese copying their products and were powerless to stop them... (We even had an issue with a Chinese company copying our website!!!:D )

However, you have just admitted your 'invention' does not provide all the required heat, so we're back to the original argument,

Where did I say this? The system is a standalone system that provides heat 24 hours a day.
What I said (if you read it) was that we can offset almost all the cost of heating by means of a wind turbine. I only say almost as I would never claim that a turbine will generate sufficient power 24 hours a day, every day as wind is unpredictable.

why not just reduce capital expense and go for one that will produce all heat all year...

Let me know which system you are talking about...

Oldtree

I looked at something similar using a wind turbine to heat an element in a tank directly to provide hot water, year round. the problem that came up was the variable load, particularly in high winds (even with a break for above certain speeds) could blow the element, therefore batteries would be necessary to prevent this overload and supply a constant load,
I did not like the idea of batteries either so look forward to seeing what you have come up with. What happens if there is no wind or too much wind with your product or your overproduction of energy?

air

Typically a charge controller is used between the wind turbine and the battery bank. When the batteries reach their full charge voltage, the energy from the turbine is diverted to a dump load - normally heating elements or similar.
More advanced models use PWM to progressively divert part of the available energy from the turbine as the bank reaches full charge.
If anyone has any links to commercial wind turbine charge controllers I'd appreciate if they posted them.

kvw

kvw wrote:

To answer the original question again, since the start of december virtually no solar heating, water in the tank hasn't really gone below 15degrees, the immersion brings it up to 50degrees in about half an hour tho, so can't complain about that.

full tank of hot (40+) water again for he last two days:cool:

slave1

I read this thread with great interest and the focus folk put on their heat generation, but come from a different angle myself.
When I bought my semi-d a number of years ago you could have the oil on all day trying to keep the place warm, now with floors taken up and insulated, modern windows put in, cavity and attic insulation fitted, new external doors/porch, re-plumbed house with lagged piping and modern boiler/rads, new hot cylinder with factory fitted insulation and selected internal walls studded I can heat the 1900sqft house and have a 5ft hot water tank heated on 2 buckets of coal a day, thats with someone in the house all day and 5 occupants, numerous gravity showers and baths.
We NEVER have the heat on in the morning because the house retains so well.
Whilst I have OFCH I have not had a fill in 2 years and its there merely as a back-up, think we used it 3 times last winter and not so far this year.
I KNOW I'm burning fossil fuels, I get that.
What I'm getting to is that if you concentrate on your insulation and maximise your efforts on keeping the heat in, then that IMHO is the key to low running costs and efficiencies.