Micro wind turbines
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...12? Mostly big double radiators.
I keep a majority of the house at 18c, weekdays, just the kitchen and hall is boosted to 20c in the morning for an hour or so but a boost to 21 at 5pm- 11pm. Weekends, Hall, Living room and Kitchen are at 20c.
I have a solid fuel stove in the living room (inset) so a lot of the heat from it goes into the water. It doesn't go out during the winter.
This is a 24 hr output of the heat "demands" from my tado system
Once a room is up to temperature it shuts off.
I have temperature sensors in the tank, Although not really that well spaced out, the "middle top" is about half way up the tank, with the rest spaced evenly across the the lower half.
I run the output through a mixer valve set to 50c so it just doesnt "blow its load" all at once / also to be able to simulate if could work with a heatpump (eg an ecoforest one, R290, that works a bit better at higher temperatures)
Also have sensors on the pipes in, out, and on the flow out of the mixer. I do intend on putting a bypass on the mixer by using a 2 port valve when the tank is below 50.
As im typing this the top of the tank has just dropped to about 50, you can really see the uptick in demand at 9am!
If i put a flow meter on the system, Id be able to calculate the instantaneous kW of the output/demand and also how much kWh of heat into the tank .
Also when it was basically just the living room heating there now, it was a delta-T of about 10c.
Was doing my stats for December, I put about 700kWh into the tank for heating.
My oil boiler is old, So id say if im lucky 75% efficient? Works out about 90l of oil ive replaced with Night rate electric.
Now once the sun starts to pick up, I'm thinking of doing some automation to boost some rooms when the tank gets hot so the immersions dont cut out during the day.
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Sorry for going OT.
"If i put a flow meter on the system, Id be able to calculate the instantaneous kW of the output/demand and also how much kWh of heat into the tank ."
Nah, you don't need a flow meter. The way I did it was to just assume that each sensor represented 1/3rd (or 1/4 in my case) of a tank and calculate the potential energy in kW.
Here's how I wrote it in OpenHAB at the time.
// Calculate the energy value in a hot-tank of water. // Formula: (Volume in L * 4 * Difference in temperature) / 3412 = Potential energy in kW. // This does not take into account the heating method or efficiency - electric, gas, oil, etc, // My tank is 300L, I have four sensors installed on it, one on the top, one a quarter of the way down and so forward. // Hence I assigned an equivalent volume of 75L to each sensor.if (gHotTankTemperature.state instanceof DecimalType) { // Run through each sensor and calculate the energy... valEnergy = (75*4*(FF_HT_01 - ColdTemp)/3412) FF_HotTank_Energy01 = valEnergy //logWarn("hotenergy.rules", "FF_HotTank_Energy01=" + FF_HotTank_Energy01 + "valEnergy=" + valEnergy + "FF_HT_01=" + FF_HT_01) valEnergy = (75*4*(FF_HT_02 - ColdTemp)/3412) FF_HotTank_Energy02 = valEnergy valEnergy = (75*4*(FF_HT_03 - ColdTemp)/3412) FF_HotTank_Energy03 = valEnergy valEnergy = (75*4*(FF_HT_04 - ColdTemp)/3412) FF_HotTank_Energy04 = valEnergy // Next, add up the combined four values and commit them to the database. valEnergy = (FF_HotTank_Energy01 + FF_HotTank_Energy02 + FF_HotTank_Energy03 + FF_HotTank_Energy04) postUpdate(FF_HotTank_TotEnergy, valEnergy) // Now calculate the delta in kW from 5 mins back and update the database. This will give us data for a bar-chart on utilisation, +/- FF_HotTank_5minsBack = (FF_HotTank_TotEnergy.historicState(now.minusMinutes(5), "influxdb").state as DecimalType) valTotEngy = FF_HotTank_TotEnergy.state //logWarn("hotenergy.rules", "valTotEngy=" + valTotEngy) // Calculate the difference and multiply by 1000 to convery from kW to W. valEnergy = ((valTotEngy - FF_HotTank_5minsBack) * 1000) logWarn("hotenergy.rules", "valTotEngy=" + valTotEngy + " minus FF_HotTank_5minsBack=" + FF_HotTank_5minsBack + "= valEnergy" + valEnergy) postUpdate(FF_HotTank_Delta, valEnergy) }Then I'd subtract the value from 5 mins previously and use that to calculate a loss over that period. It was usually 7w per 5mins when the tank was around 50 degrees C.
You could improve on this by sub-dividing the tank again and calculating off a pseudo temperature (half-way between one sensor and the lower one), etc.
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Nobody knows everything about everything :-)....but to be fair, I'm not much more clued into this stuff myself having not done it. However, in theory it's pretty straight forward. First of all, you will need some form of "charge controller", which will dictate where the power that the turbine(s) are generating.
The above is just an example, and there maybe "better" options out there - but it will help explain.
You'll need to decide on what type (12v/24v/48v/240v) controller you want to get. I'd probably suggest 24v or 48v with the reason being that those voltages are safer to work with than 240v and 12V requires some fairly heavy duty (thick) cables like car battery jump leads, so 48v is (generally) the one to go with. I'd appreciate others may have thoughts here rather than going on my advice alone.
If you look at the 4th picture there on the amazon page, there's a wiring diagram.
You will only be using a fraction of this. You'll be connecting your buffrr tank into the "load circuit" (the LED lamps above). You won't have solar cells, and the turbine is a Vertical access 3 phase in this case, but that will be dependent on the turbine you have. It may mean that this controller isn't applicable if you bought a different turbine which produces DC.
I think it's relatively simple enough and I'm sure people will give additional advice. One thing to remember that the turbine when it's spinning will be producing electricity, so if your working on this, make sure that you take down the turbine and physically stop the blades from rotating or you could shock yourself, or destroy the turbine as the charge will have no where to go if it's not hooked up.
I know it's a bit daunting, when you first look at this stuff, but I'm pretty sure that you can get this to work. There really isn't that many things to account for. Lots of good videos on youtube too if you search for turbine, charge controller, dump resistor etc.
As championc mentions above, I'd also look at 1 big turbine rather than lots of smaller one (simplifies the matter). You could buy 1 small one, test the concept and then invest in a bigger 2Kw one or something. You'll get better results.
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