Best value for money renewable?

Jayzesake

Hello all,

Am thinking about investing in either a small wind turbine, photovoltaic panels, or both, as a way of cutting down on our electricity bills.

We've built a new garage which has a south facing roof and which still has to be wired, plastered internally etc, and the electricity connection is the same one as for our house. I'd rather put whatever we go for there rather than go disturbing the house, so solar panels for hot water is not really an option. We live in a pretty windy rural coastal area, so when the wind blows, we get it (sometimes too much).

I've heard that wind turbines can have a lot of maintenance problems with storms etc, and that the payback time for photovoltaics is very long. While I do think it's also the right thing to do r.e. the environment etc, at the same time I'm not really interested in spending money without a good chance that it'll be worthwhile financially, or of having continual headaches due to maintenance issues.

Does anyone have any useful advice on this? Thanks.

Rabbo

There are some plug and play off-grid photovoltaic panels available on the market:
-snip-

They can be DIY installed and from my understanding will provide background electricity to off-set electricity coming in from the grid.

I havent seem them used so not sure how well they work in real world or their sutability for this country. They do look interesting though. Its important that it is set up in such a way as it cant feed into the ESB grid.

If you are willing to invest significant money and dont want to interfere with the interior of your house, it may be worth looking at external insulation instead as the payback period should be better and there are grants available.

Outkast_IRE

If you have a good wind resource on your site, then it can be a pretty good viable option.

There are annual maintenance costs associated with wind turbines, and other considerations such as noise nearby to it etc.

But honestly if you have a site with a good wind resource then it can be a great choice, once you do your homework and get an established brand of turbine where maintenance and spare parts should be available.

It will ultimately boil down to doing the math at your site and seeing if the investment is worth it.

What I will say is I personally feel like connecting to the grid is always the right option as there will be many times you simply cant use the electricity yourself and you can sell it to the ESB and earn some money from it.

Jayzesake

Thanks to both of you for your replies.

Rabbo, first off the house is fairly well insulated, so there are no major gains to be made in that direction, though I totally agree that should be the first priority. Those 2 links are v. interesting. Does anyone out there have any personal experience with either of these 2 companies?

Outkast IRE, do you have any idea what the payback time is with wind, taking into account maintenance etc? I was thinking of a small turbine that could be mounted to the gable of the garage, rather than a large standalone setup.

Outkast_IRE

Jayzesake wrote: »

Outkast IRE, do you have any idea what the payback time is with wind, taking into account maintenance etc? I was thinking of a small turbine that could be mounted to the gable of the garage, rather than a large standalone setup.

The payback time with wind is not as easy to establish at solar. With solar you have all the information you need regarding knowing the average hours of sunshine and strength of the sun throughout the year. But with wind the individual site conditions have a massive effect , things like trees and buildings nearby can have a large effect.

In short the only way to get realistic payback times are to get someone to do a site survey and they should be able to work up an estimate based on that. But as you said its a windy site you could be in with a good chance of it being viable.

Jayzesake

Neither of the 2 plugin systems you mentioned Rabbo seem to be suitable for mounting on a pitched roof, which is ideally what I'd like to do.

Does anyone know how roof-mounted panels are attached? I mean, does it involve drilling holes all over the roof?

boatbuilder

Turbines mounted to the gable of a house are generally not a good idea.
There would be too much turbulence off the house and anything that is small enough to be attached to a wall is not going to give you much electricity.
Personally the only way I would consider a turbine would be to build one of the larger hugh puggott turbines and stick it on top of a hill and tie it to grid. Maybe save a third off your bill?

Outkast_IRE

boatbuilder wrote: »

Turbines mounted to the gable of a house are generally not a good idea.
There would be too much turbulence off the house and anything that is small enough to be attached to a wall is not going to give you much electricity.
Personally the only way I would consider a turbine would be to build one of the larger hugh puggott turbines and stick it on top of a hill and tie it to grid. Maybe save a third off your bill?

Quite right about the gable end and turbulence/vibration, just as well you spotted he said that as I missed it and concentrated on the other part of the question.

At this size turbine a monopole is the main ones that will be in contention, and personally I wouldn't be doing it DIY. You either see it as an investment and do the math and do a professional job and tie it to the grid or else its a DIY project and I wouldn't be looking to tie it to the grid.

Jayzesake

Many thanks again for all the replies.

Having looked into it further, it would appear that a larger wind turbine (as in 6m) is not an option for me as there are large trees nearby in the direction of the prevailing wind (sw). There may also be issues with the neighbours. And it's bloody expensive.

Photovoltaics seems to have a very long payback time, and if I put panels on the (new, quarry slated) garage roof I'm concerned about drilling holes all over the place for the mounting brackets.

This may well all go back on the 'may do at some point in the future' list, the way I'm feeling about it now: there doesn't seem to be any straightforward, no-brainer, value-for-money option so far as I can see. (A wood burning stove is definitely one, as is maxing out on insulation etc., as Rabbo pointed out, but I've done both of those.)

Anyway I'll keep my eyes open for any other options that may be more appealing...