Domestic wind turbine

MOSSAD

Looking into possibility of a turbine to power a large house. There's a multitude of products out there.
Anyone have experience of a solid,reliable turbine? I'm in Clare at about 200m on a pretty exposed site. Would it be possible to power two houses from one turbine?

easychair

MOSSAD wrote: »

Looking into possibility of a turbine to power a large house. There's a multitude of products out there.
Anyone have experience of a solid,reliable turbine? I'm in Clare at about 200m on a pretty exposed site. Would it be possible to power two houses from one turbine?

Wind power does appear seductive, but there are considerable issues involved.

Firstly, if you are lucky, you might have wind power ¼ of the time or a little more. If you are unlucky, you might not achieve those figures. So you'd have to have some sort of reliable back up for when the wind isn't blowing. If you have the ESB as your back up, you'd then only reduce your bills by a little less than ¼. So if your usual bill is, say, €200, it would likely reduce to €150 on average.

If you then get the bills for both houses, and work out your anticipated annual saving, you can work out how many years it is likely to take to repay your initial investment, remembering to take into account the expected annual maintenance costs for the turbine, insurance costs and so on.

As a financial prospect, it's unlikely to look attractive, before one considers other potential problems, so a scheme like this is likely to be more expensive than doing nothing, and so if you are doing this for green reasons, then be aware that it's likely to end up costing more than it saves.

It may well be that, for example, if the money spent on the turbine was spent instead on extra insulation for your houses, the saving on energy might be greater over time than by investing in a turbine.

Jim Martin

http://www.imecofarm.com/Course_Renewable_Energy_Courses.htm

quentingargan

MOSSAD wrote: »

Looking into possibility of a turbine to power a large house. There's a multitude of products out there.
Anyone have experience of a solid,reliable turbine? I'm in Clare at about 200m on a pretty exposed site. Would it be possible to power two houses from one turbine?

Yes - I've had a turbine up for 9 years (battery based, off grid) which is still running trouble free, and a second one which is grid ties and running trouble free. As long as you avoid the really cheap stuff (mostly Chinese), and go for one designed to withstand Irish storms, you should be OK, and your location would indicate that you probably have the wind to make it viable in your case.

It isn't generally permitted by ESB to power two houses from one turbine - you need one turbine per house. There is one company I know of that gets around that by splitting the windings in the turbine to supply two houses, but you have to have two separate inverters for ESB use.

reilig

Quentin,

What are the return figures like on a turbine connected to the grid (ie. will it pay for itself) ?

We have quite an exposed site on a similar level to a large wind farm neaby. We own the land around our house. Our ESB bill averages about €800 per year. A turbine would probably mean that we would have no ESB charges, but would we make much by selling the extra units to the grid? Also, my parents house is only a few hundred meters from ours and they have a bill of approximately €1600 per year. Would connecting a turbine to both houses offer a better return on investment?

quentingargan wrote: »

Yes - I've had a turbine up for 9 years (battery based, off grid) which is still running trouble free, and a second one which is grid ties and running trouble free. As long as you avoid the really cheap stuff (mostly Chinese), and go for one designed to withstand Irish storms, you should be OK, and your location would indicate that you probably have the wind to make it viable in your case.

It isn't generally permitted by ESB to power two houses from one turbine - you need one turbine per house. There is one company I know of that gets around that by splitting the windings in the turbine to supply two houses, but you have to have two separate inverters for ESB use.

quentingargan

reilig wrote: »

Quentin,

What are the return figures like on a turbine connected to the grid (ie. will it pay for itself) ?

We have quite an exposed site on a similar level to a large wind farm neaby. We own the land around our house. Our ESB bill averages about €800 per year. A turbine would probably mean that we would have no ESB charges, but would we make much by selling the extra units to the grid? Also, my parents house is only a few hundred meters from ours and they have a bill of approximately €1600 per year. Would connecting a turbine to both houses offer a better return on investment?

You sell electricity to the ESB at two prices; 19c for the first 3,000 units per year, and 9c thereafter. So for a smaller turbine, the less electricity you use in the home, the greater your saving. If you put in a large turbine, then the higher your general consumption, the higher your savings.

You will always be either importing or exporting power, so you will still be buying and selling, even if you try to time your consumption to windy periods.

So it isn't easy to give a definitive payback time. But if you size your system so that all of your exports are at the higher rate, you can perhaps assume an export price of somewhere between 15c and 19c per Kw Hr.

How many units you export then depends on your site and pattern of electricity use.

Lastly, the output of any turbine is never an exact science. You can get some idea of wind speed at the hub height, but there are other elements not measured by an anemometer that affect output, such as non-horizontal winds (on the side of a hill), turbulence, rain & altitude. In short, if you have a good windy site, and you like the idea of having one, you would get one, and you might be pleasantly surprised by the results, but anyone who absolutly promises you a payback time of X years is on commission:)

easychair

In the UK, a rule of thumb is that it costs £1000 per kw hour of installed capacity.

A reasonable site which might help you with your questions is http://www.bwea.com/small/faq.html

quentingargan

easychair wrote: »

In the UK, a rule of thumb is that it costs £1000 per kw hour of installed capacity.

That would be for MEGA wind turbines. For smaller ones, the BWEA site you link to suggests more like £2,500 to £5,000 per Kw installed. (see here).

But bear in mind that the UK has a 5% VAT rate on wind turbine installations, so that would equate to about €3,000 to €6,000 per Kw here.

easychair

quentingargan wrote: »

That would be for MEGA wind turbines. For smaller ones, the BWEA site you link to suggests more like £2,500 to £5,000 per Kw installed. (see here).

But bear in mind that the UK has a 5% VAT rate on wind turbine installations, so that would equate to about €3,000 to €6,000 per Kw here.

If one looks at the figures, they are interesting;

If one has an installed capacity of 1kw costing €3000, and if one is able to achieve power being generated 25% of the time, then a 1kw turbine might produce 2184 kw per annum.

At €0.19 per kw unit, thats €414.96 per annum. Leaving aside the costs of maintenance, the turbine might pay for itself between 7.2 years and 14.45 years.

quentingargan

easychair wrote: »

If one looks at the figures, they are interesting;

If one has an installed capacity of 1kw costing €3000, and if one is able to achieve power being generated 25% of the time, then a 1kw turbine might produce 2184 kw per annum.

At €0.19 per kw unit, thats €414.96 per annum. Leaving aside the costs of maintenance, the turbine might pay for itself between 7.2 years and 14.45 years.

That sounds about right, execpt that the €3,000 price tag would apply to larger systems, which would do most of their export at the 9c rate rather than the 19c one. You are probably looking at over 12 years for most systems.

The silver lining is that if energy inflation runs at 10%, then that payback time will come down dramatically. ESB and Airtricity have given that one a nice kick-start this month:rolleyes:

reilig

Thanks guys. Great Info.

Another question. How much would it cost to have a site survey done which would measure the wind speed over a period of time? What would the period of time be?

The wind turbines that I mentioned above which are on land at the same heights as our site are spinning 340+ days per year.

Do you have any estimation of price for to install and commission a basic wind turbine in Ireland (Lets say for one of those made in the West)??

quentingargan

reilig wrote: »

Thanks guys. Great Info.

Another question. How much would it cost to have a site survey done which would measure the wind speed over a period of time? What would the period of time be?

Do you have any estimation of price for to install and commission a basic wind turbine in Ireland (Lets say for one of those made in the West)??

There are companies that will put an anemometer on your site and monitor, but it is quite expensive. The big wind farms use 3 years of data which is usually required by their banks. You would really need a year, but some people work a system where you compare your local wind speed and direction with the data from a nearby met station. Over a period of about 3 months, you get enough data that you can then extrapolate from that using historic data for the met station.

BUT. That still doesn't tell you what the local influences are caused by turbulence and non-horizontal winds. That isn't a problem for wind farms on mountain tops, but most domestic turbines have some sort of disturbances upwind of them.

If you PM me, I can also email you instructions on doing a very basic assessment using web based calculators and wind maps. Might be worth doing.

Systems are available at all sorts of sizes and prices. Ones I know of are about €13.5K for 2.5kw and €24K for 6kw for "western" machines. The final price sometimes depends on ground conditions (bog more costly than nice clay) and distance from the turbine to the meter for cables, site access etc.

easychair

quentingargan wrote: »

That sounds about right, execpt that the €3,000 price tag would apply to larger systems, which would do most of their export at the 9c rate rather than the 19c one. You are probably looking at over 12 years for most systems.

The silver lining is that if energy inflation runs at 10%, then that payback time will come down dramatically. ESB and Airtricity have given that one a nice kick-start this month:rolleyes:

Of course it also assumes the turbine will be producing power 25% of the time, and also ignores maintenance and other associated costs.

EI_Flyboy

Just out of curiosity, is there a decent VAWT generator that could installed on a semi-detached house...?

quentingargan

EI_Flyboy wrote: »

Just out of curiosity, is there a decent VAWT generator that could installed on a semi-detached house...?

The Holy Grail of wind turbine design would be a rooftop one that would work well in such turbulent winds, and could be sold in urban areas. There have been many attepmpts, the most recent is this one, but I'm not convinced that any turbine can be mounted on a roof without noise, vibration, turbulence and roof stresses becoming an issue...

Personally if I wanted to generate my own power in an urban area, I would stick to PVs.

easychair

quentingargan wrote: »

The Holy Grail of wind turbine design would be a rooftop one that would work well in such turbulent winds, and could be sold in urban areas. There have been many attepmpts, the most recent is this one, but I'm not convinced that any turbine can be mounted on a roof without noise, vibration, turbulence and roof stresses becoming an issue...

Personally if I wanted to generate my own power in an urban area, I would stick to PVs.

Indeed, or considerable damage and even loss of life when the rotors fly off, which they can do from time to time. I suspect the insurance costs of domestic rooftop wind turbines would render them financially unviable.

pkmwgs

Hi, i have a proven 6kw turbine in southwest donegal, with 4 years data from a sunny display. Reilig if you are not far away you can pop over and look at the whole setup. i also have installed one in leitrim. annually they are producing between 10000kw-12500kw
only problem is there at the higher end of the scale price wise.

pljudge321

pkmwgs wrote: »

Hi, i have a proven 6kw turbine in southwest donegal, with 4 years data from a sunny display. Reilig if you are not far away you can pop over and look at the whole setup. i also have installed one in leitrim. annually they are producing between 10000kw-12500kw
only problem is there at the higher end of the scale price wise.

Is that for each or both of them? Also kWh is the unit of energy (pedantic engineer).

pkmwgs

Hi judge, those figures are for each of them, there on pretty good sites which makes all the difference. location, location, location.

pljudge321

pkmwgs wrote: »

Hi judge, those figures are for each of them, there on pretty good sites which makes all the difference. location, location, location.

Have you worked out your payback time?

quentingargan wrote: »

The Holy Grail of wind turbine design would be a rooftop one that would work well in such turbulent winds, and could be sold in urban areas. There have been many attepmpts, the most recent is this one, but I'm not convinced that any turbine can be mounted on a roof without noise, vibration, turbulence and roof stresses becoming an issue...

Personally if I wanted to generate my own power in an urban area, I would stick to PVs.

The Holy Grail of wind turbine design would be a 10MW off shore turbine that doesn't suffer massive maintenance issues. Domestic wind turbines are more of a hobby then credible solution to our energy problems.

quentingargan

pljudge321 wrote: »

Have you worked out your payback time?

"Why should it necessarily compete against cheap power from polluting engines? …The satisfaction of generating your own power, independently, from a clean endless source, is hard to quantify.” Hugh Piggott

Mind you, I agree that the real Holy Grail is a 10Mw offshore machine. But that doesn't preclude dedicated hobbyists from doing their bit:)

pljudge321

quentingargan wrote: »

"Why should it necessarily compete against cheap power from polluting engines? …The satisfaction of generating your own power, independently, from a clean endless source, is hard to quantify.” Hugh Piggott

Mind you, I agree that the real Holy Grail is a 10Mw offshore machine. But that doesn't preclude dedicated hobbyists from doing their bit:)

But it's not scalable, either economically or in engineering terms.

pkmwgs

I would think roughly 15-18 years as things stand, but if you can use it all yourself and the price of electricity rises as it is, and will keep going up then payback will be at a faster rate. if the electricity suppliers would give us more of an incentive then that would help quite alot. producing your own is selfsatisfying. take today for example its cold and wet up here and our turbine is flat out most of the day. the turbines are expensive but some people dont mind paying the price of it on a new car and watch it immediately depreciate in value as soon as it leaves the garage.

Amateurish

pljudge321 wrote: »

But it's not scalable, either economically or in engineering terms.

Have a gander at this, not everyone thinks so.
http://www.engineersireland.ie/sector_papers/Offshore_Renewable_Energy_Systems-Game%20Changing.pdf

pljudge321

Amateurish wrote: »

Have a gander at this, not everyone thinks so.
http://www.engineersireland.ie/sector_papers/Offshore_Renewable_Energy_Systems-Game%20Changing.pdf

Sorry if I wasn't clear, I was referring to domestic wind turbines.

iansprojects

Hello everyone, my first post here! Id love some advice on this. Im 95% through a domestic micro turbine project. Iv kept the costs down bigtime by doing all the work myself and using salvaged parts. The idea was to build a low cost turbine just to see if it will work, then upgrade to a better turbine if it proved a success (neighbors, noise, esthetics, turbulence etc) Iv spent about €600 for everything including;

turbine- 230
mast- 80
controller- 50
batteries - 170

Its telescopic, down under roof height and behind trees at daytime, winched up above trees and the house at sundown. The winch is 12v electric which is controlled by me at the moment but i hope to have it automatically winched in the future. It will be used to heat stored water in the tank (sink, shower) using a 24v 6 inch element. Not installed yet. Will heat upper part of tank for sinks and shower use.

ISSUES:
The turbine is auto furling, turning away from high wind speeds for protection/ safety. The issue is, the turbine can spin up to decent speeds but it can not hold its position. It turns out of the wind way to often and looses its energy. The result is that it barely charges the batteries.

Question: Is this a result of a cheap Chinese turbine or poor location etc?

Youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh00dohVkIY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh00dohVkIY

SPECS:
TURBINE: angel300 300w @8ms 400w @10ms - €230 posted from germany
-auto furling (turn out of high wind)

MAST: 3" outer pipe, 2.25 inner pipe (telescopic)
- connected to roof edge using metal brackets isolated by 4 BMW gearbox mounts. No noise inside house. The mast does sway but i will add another brace 6 feet from the bottom of the mast, metal pipe to house.

Controller: Ebay multi purpose controller, solar, wind, dump load, brake control
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/320730045794?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p...

Telescopic, down under house roof and behind trees in daylight, auto control of electric winch inside roof using ,... (not actually auto timed yet)

Batteries:
1x 75AH wetline leisure 12v,
1x 110AH wetline leisure 12v

185AH total, deep cycle battery bank.

pkmwgs

Hi Ian, i think turbulance is your biggest problem bouncing of other houses and rooftops. if you tie a ribbon type streamer up there there youll get the same affect, no clean air. good on you for trying though. e your neighbours must be very understanding.

iansprojects

thanks! I think il try to limit the amount of travel on the turbine so it cant turn more than 90 degrees out of the wind. The prevailing wind in my location is about 90% south west so I could limit it to south and west only. Its a cheap project so i dont mind messing around with it.

I know there are turbines that are designed for turbulent air flow, the zepher for example. Its tail is not ridged so it doesnt instantly react to rapid and severe changes in direction. I might try a couple of my own designs for this, longer length tails etc.

Im looking out for a solar panel to make this a hybrid system. Id have a far greater chance of collecting energy with some PVs. I see a guy in Slovenia selling 480w panels for around €600

quentingargan

I'd agree about the turbulence. The problem is that wind doesn't really push blades as such - they rely on aerodynamic lift, in much the same way that wings on aircraft get lift. In turbulent winds, there is no clean laminar air flow giving that sort of lift. That is why roof-top turbines sold some years ago were largely discontinued.

You may have better luck with a small vertical axis machine rather than horizontal axis. They can put up with variations in wind direction, and are also less fussy about whether the wind is horizontal (a lot of wind around roofspace is non-horizontal).

While I don't know what the setup is on the house where the turbine is attached, I would be a bit worried though about relying on any attachment to the house, particularly if this is amplified by a telescopic arrangement. When raised, there are no guy wires supporting the load from the turbine, and the leverage exerted on the brackets attached to the house is very high. In high winds, you may have 100kg or more of horizontal load at the top of the tower, and that converts to a bending torque on the wall braket of 220lbs X the number of feet that the mast extends from that point.

Some of that force is taken up along the telescopic section that is still inside the tube, but when the turbine is swaying back and forth in the breeze, and vibration is trying to undo the masonary, I would expect this might work loose. I hope I am wrong, but masonary has very poor tensile strength, and conventional wisdom is that any turbine of this type should only be fitted in a situation where steelwork has been designed into the fabric of the building to take the stresses.

Clearly you've been very creative in what you are trying to do, and I like that spirit of adventure, but I would be careful.

quentingargan

iansprojects wrote: »

thanks! I think il try to limit the amount of travel on the turbine so it cant turn more than 90 degrees out of the wind. The prevailing wind in my location is about 90% south west so I could limit it to south and west only. Its a cheap project so i dont mind messing around with it.

I know there are turbines that are designed for turbulent air flow, the zepher for example. Its tail is not ridged so it doesnt instantly react to rapid and severe changes in direction. I might try a couple of my own designs for this, longer length tails etc.

Im looking out for a solar panel to make this a hybrid system. Id have a far greater chance of collecting energy with some PVs. I see a guy in Slovenia selling 480w panels for around €600

Restricting the extent to which it can turn out of the wind might, during an SE gale, prevent it from turing out of the wind, unless you have something in mind for that. A longer tail might work better, but the problem is that you are affecting the dynamic of the mechanism that enables it to furl. (I assume that the furling happens because the tail lifts slightly?)

Yes - solar PVs are a good idea, and will complement the system in summer when there is less wind. You should be able to get PVs in Ireland for around that price, but plus VAT... Will PM you on that. Q

djpbarry

Threads on domestic wind turbines merged.

theTinker

I think its great that you do most of the work yourself iansprojects

I'd love to see some pictures if thats possible?

Have you or anyone else here considered building thier own? I built one when i was a teen, mostly using instructions from otherpower.com and parts from cars+wood.

Its ALOT cheaper to build a decent turbine yourself, plus the low tech parts make changing or fixing it reletively easy. I made a 400watt one, however there are plenty of easy instructions and examples for much better ones. I lacked lots of skills like metal working and any kind of budget for copper wire so i was severely limited.

If anyone would like to share any skills or work on a project together, perhaps we can all help each other out!

edit: I see someone said they had two turbines installed, Is this against planning permissions or is it against planning permission exemptions and thus required just planning permission to get a second one installed?
I'd love to build some home brew turbines and try sell the power back to the company. Might make a little bit of income over the years

quentingargan

theTinker wrote: »

I see someone said they had two turbines installed, Is this against planning permissions or is it against planning permission exemptions and thus required just planning permission to get a second one installed?

In general, yes - the planning exemption only applies to the first one. You need to get planning permission if you want a second one.

In some cases, the planning office may consider a second unit as an exempt development. That applied in my case because there are two dwellings, and the technical term is "within the curtilage of a dwelling". I don't know what a curtilage is, but it seemed broad enough to meet my needs

iansprojects

Thanks, I love messing around with these projects. I got a knock on my door a couple of months back, county council! Someone complained so i had to take the turbine down . I was expecting it to be honest. The project had a small chance of success between houses and trees blocking the wind and the close proximity to neighbors.

Iv gone solar since. 2x 240w panels =480w @24v. €620 new on ebay total cost. They are way more reliable in terms of making electricity everyday. Im making enough power to run a 500w water heating element for an average of about 40min everyday. Id say once the days get longer I should be able to bypass everything and just run the solar element.


The panels are on hinges on the front and have 1m long threaded bars at the back. These can be adjusted to a low winter (75 degree) sun or a high summer sun (33 degree).


Here they are at about 45 degrees.

quentingargan

Nice one.

I'd be careful in some areas with the planning for the hinged panel. The planning exemption doesn't allow panels to be more than 15cm off the roof.

Just one other thing - electricity is more expensive and valuable than heating oil, so if you are running your system off a battery, you may be better off diverting some of your lighting circuits / fridges etc to run off the battery, and leaving the central heating to heat the water.

dardhal

quentingargan wrote: »

"Why should it necessarily compete against cheap power from polluting engines? …The satisfaction of generating your own power, independently, from a clean endless source, is hard to quantify.” Hugh Piggott

Mind you, I agree that the real Holy Grail is a 10Mw offshore machine. But that doesn't preclude dedicated hobbyists from doing their bit:)

I don't see the point of going to the hassle, cost and complexity of off-shore wind turbines in places like Ireland, where winds all over the place are more than high enough throughout the year to make placing the turbines anywhere but inland. With average wind speeds exceeding 6 and even 7 m/s (http://www.met.ie/climate-ireland/wind.asp) I don't see the need, for example, most wind turbines in Spain are at locations with average wind speed at or below 5 m/s (http://www.globalwindmap.com/VisorCENER/), mainly because only a few spots are more windy (strait of Gibraltar, 8 m/s), and wind generated power have peaked at 40% several times over the past year.

Yes, I am perfectly aware that power increases with the third power of the wind speed, and slight increases in average wind speed can yield important increases in production. Anyways, I understand those installing off-shore wind turbines had done the numbers, and they add up.

Regarding small scale quality wind turbines, here is one worth having a look at:
http://www.merkasol.com/Wind-turbine-and-inverter-donQi-network-175Kw

Not cheap, but at least is well "documented", and one can see first hand from the manufacturer specifications what a difficult time one can have making the whole system pay for itself, as it seems to be offered for around 6000€, installation may not be included (it depends on a lot of factors).

Let's say a turn key project is 8000€, and you can sell all the electricity back to the utility at market prices (20¢). The break even (not considering further maintenance costs) would be after generating 40.000 KWh. At a fantastic average wind of 7 m/s, 4200 KWh/year, it will take nearly 10 years to pay. At lower winds, 5.5 m/s, more than 15 years. If you can't sell to the utility at peak end user prices, break even may not happen at all.

MW sized turbines are a different business, as some have pointed out, their cost/KWh is several times lower than small size ones, and that makes for a big profitability difference. And they bigger size makes them more efficient in slower winds, which also add to their advantage related to smaller models.

That said, if I lived in the countryside, far from the town, and were given the option of either paying the utility big money to plug my home to the network, or be self sufficient using wind turbines plus battery storage, I would choose the second option even if not cheaper in the medium term. Spending lots of hard earned money in such a system to partially offload grid electricity usage, and lower bills, would have little, if any, economic sense. I am with the one that said that better spend the money insulating your house and moving to more efficient lighting and domestic habits. They make a lot of difference, with little to no investment.

dardhal

iansprojects wrote: »

Iv gone solar since. 2x 240w panels =480w @24v. €620 new on ebay total cost. They are way more reliable in terms of making electricity everyday. Im making enough power to run a 500w water heating element for an average of about 40min everyday. Id say once the days get longer I should be able to bypass everything and just run the solar element.

Fantastic price for the watt you got, 1.30€/W and in a minimum quantity. Just out of curiosity, mind to share the brand and model of the panels?

However, if the final purpose of the electricity is heating water, you could have done much better by installing a single thermal solar panel, even a flat collector would have been way more effective at heating than the PV panels. PV panels are only about 15% efficient at transforming light into electricity, but even lower end collectors are far more efficient, and thanks to Ireland mild climate, thermal losses wouldn't be that high (they use flat collectors in central Europe more than happily, and temperatures are far lower). Wikipedia articles on the subject are very complete, have a look at the following one, for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_water_heating

Hope it helps.

eth0

Nice project but its a shame to see perfectly good solar generated electricity being thrown at a heating element when the much simpler and cheaper heating panels would do a better job.

iansprojects

eth0 wrote: »

Nice project but its a shame to see perfectly good solar generated electricity being thrown at a heating element when the much simpler and cheaper heating panels would do a better job.

Thanks for the advice guys. I am finding it hard to actually use the power I'm creating efficiently. Iv looked into motion sensitive lighting so I could iliminate hall and bathroom lighting. I know electric heating in general is not very efficient so I should avoid that. I don't want to rely on this power for things like fridges as the sun doesn't shine everyday. Any other ideas on what I might power from these panels?

I got the panels on eBay from a guy in Slovenia. Search "480w solar" and you will find him. Amp-solar is the brand. They seem very solid. The recent storms have had no effect on them. Iv seen about 480w so they work well.

eth0

iansprojects wrote: »

Thanks for the advice guys. I am finding it hard to actually use the power I'm creating efficiently. Iv looked into motion sensitive lighting so I could iliminate hall and bathroom lighting. I know electric heating in general is not very efficient so I should avoid that. I don't want to rely on this power for things like fridges as the sun doesn't shine everyday. Any other ideas on what I might power from these panels?

I got the panels on eBay from a guy in Slovenia. Search "480w solar" and you will find him. Amp-solar is the brand. They seem very solid. The recent storms have had no effect on them. Iv seen about 480w so they work well.

Do you have a charge controller with regulated 12v output and a battery? If you're stuck for a battery try the local dump, they might not start a car but are still useful for running small appliances off.

Do you have any 12v lighting (preferably LED or CFL)? A broadband router that takes a 12v DC power supply? Look around if you have any gadgets or appliances that run off 12v

If you're really hard core you can buy a 12V power supply for a PC but you're stuck to about 160 watts, still enough for a decent PC if you chose your components carefully (ie. SSD and no fancy graphics card). To run other appliences you will need an inverter, preferably true sine wave because AC motors don't run good or efficiently off modified sine wave inverters

iansprojects

I think Iv sorted it, Il convert most of the lighting in the house to run on motion sensitive 24v. I can get 7 different sets of LED lights and motion sensors so that should cover most of the house. €100 should cover it. The best thing about the LEDs is that they will produce about 20 watts of light (old type of bulb) but only use 2.5 watts. So 10 LED bulbs (€50) will light up all of the halls, bathrooms and kitchen with a total draw of 25 watts from my 175ah batteries. I should be able to run these almost permanently or maybe connect them all to a timer set to sunset. That would save me having to buy all the motion sensors, Im just thinking out loud now :rolleyes:

BlondieR

quentingargan wrote: »

You sell electricity to the ESB at two prices; 19c for the first 3,000 units per year, and 9c thereafter. So for a smaller turbine, the less electricity you use in the home, the greater your saving. If you put in a large turbine, then the higher your general consumption, the higher your savings.

You will always be either importing or exporting power, so you will still be buying and selling, even if you try to time your consumption to windy periods.

So it isn't easy to give a definitive payback time. But if you size your system so that all of your exports are at the higher rate, you can perhaps assume an export price of somewhere between 15c and 19c per Kw Hr.

How many units you export then depends on your site and pattern of electricity use.

Lastly, the output of any turbine is never an exact science. You can get some idea of wind speed at the hub height, but there are other elements not measured by an anemometer that affect output, such as non-horizontal winds (on the side of a hill), turbulence, rain & altitude. In short, if you have a good windy site, and you like the idea of having one, you would get one, and you might be pleasantly surprised by the results, but anyone who absolutly promises you a payback time of X years is on commission:)

Hi Guys,

a word of warning to anyone considering investing in a bigger turbine and banking on selling power back to ESB to pay for it. This is a form of income & will probably become taxable when it occurs to the "bright sparks":D (sorry I had to!) in Leinster House. You would effectively become a sole trader, as such, any power you generate and use yourself might be deemed to be self supply.

This is only my own theory not based on anything only the desperation of our government. If I am right, you may need to rethink your payback period. (And don't forget interest if the money is borrowed!!)

quentingargan

BlondieR wrote: »

Hi Guys,

a word of warning to anyone considering investing in a bigger turbine and banking on selling power back to ESB to pay for it. This is a form of income & will probably become taxable when it occurs to the "bright sparks":D (sorry I had to!) in Leinster House. You would effectively become a sole trader, as such, any power you generate and use yourself might be deemed to be self supply.

This is only my own theory not based on anything only the desperation of our government. If I am right, you may need to rethink your payback period. (And don't forget interest if the money is borrowed!!)

This thread is out of date a bit. The folks have already found a new way of taxing your income from selling power. Anyone connecting now only gets 9c, not 19c.