Small scale wind turbine to a 12v immersion heater - any point?

Waste of time really, and I'd go with higher voltage, less current , less losses with higher voltage, cables don't need to be as thick etc.

When the water is hot you better be sure your dump load does not fail or the turbine will self destruct with no load on it and we get a lot of high winds in Ireland so something like this is not ideal really, if it happens what damage will it do to your property or neighbour if they are close ?

Professional wind installations have failed in Ireland due to poor turbine choice.

Why do I feel it's a waste ? for the same reason Solar PV is without a feed-in-tariff, too much energy has to be dumped but with a small turbine and small inverter direct to the house mains supply you can use much, much more energy to power the house and it will always have some load but again, unless there is enough load , in high winds it can still damage the turbine.

Most people heat water via the central heating most of the year so a turbine to heat water that's going to be hot most of the year is a bit pointless unless your setup is different.

But there's really no point if you got central heating , it will heat the water most of the year, inverters are expensive but the only efficient way to utilise all of the energy and if the power is cut then the inverter needs to shut off and you got no load on the inverter , this will be your greatest challenge, yes a dump load is fine but in my opinion, and I am not an expert, it would want to be guaranteed not to fail in the substantial high winds we get a lot so it would wanted to be rated far higher than it's maximum rated power.

You could also try a few batteries and store some of the energy, I'd go for 24 Volts minimum and just get 4 12V lead acid batteries and connect 2 in series and parallel them together so say 4 x 100 amp Hrs would give you 2.4 Kwh of storage, or probably 1.8 because Lead acid never gives the full AH and you'd be better off not running them low all the time and ensure power is cut at a certain low voltage.

With some kind of battery storage you have a load on the turbine, and not wasting energy by dumping it which defeats the purpose. Especially when the central heating is on where is all the energy to go ? but you'll still need to dump energy once the batteries are full.

You could get a 2-3 Kw normal non grid tie pure sinewave inverter to power other things in the house and or keep a load on the turbine all the time and you could even run a small 500 watt electric heater but your dump load will probably be just as effective but actually probably not as efficient as radiating heat from an actual heater.

You could also tie in a few solar PV cells too a 500 W - 1 Kw array would match nicely and you'd be surprised what the solar could generate when the wind isn't blowing.

To be honest if you were doing all that I would just go with the Solar PV professional installation, get the grant and hope that a feed-in-tariff is offered soon at least you can use as much energy as possible for the whole house or just save your money and buy a proper array properly installed , of course any excess is still going to the grid for free but at least you don't risk turbines exploding or dump loads going Nuclear.

yeah it's all something I would not do, too hard to control and monitor everything.

I'd put all the money and save it for a proper installation of Solar PV if the Government ever offer FIT. Then it's just installed and forget it and all the excess goes to the grid and bought back when you need it and if you can export enough could probably run some electric heaters and save some heating costs. Maybe install a few storage heaters.

Ideally we should all be on electric heating so excess wind can be diverted to heat homes instead of turning off turbines. More people in electric cars would also help for storage.

3 amps at 12V ? that's about 36 watts mate, that won't do much for you , can't see that heating the water for a very very long time.

As I said , when the central heating is in use most of the year it seems pointless to do this, you'd be better off running some low voltage lights but you'd need a battery and charging system.

rolion wrote: »

AND,you may have not heard it first from me...the local / national / Irish grid network will not survive if there will be "more people in EVs" ! There is a major disaster waiting to happen and i dont see any plans from national electricity provider(s) having a plan to deal with the surge. Unless there is a nuclear plant to be built in secret somewhere on this small island...we have to pray for Sellafield to be operational and push the electrons under the Irish Sea all the way to my small battery here...

God Bless EV and their owners...by then, who knows what it will be !??

I'm an ev owner for the last 4 years and the car was one of the largest savers of fuel I could have possibly imagined. Diesel would cost me around 2000-2200 a year EV costs probably 200 a year considering most of my commute is free with work charging and some home charging when off shift or in the worst of weather or when I put the boot down I might need an hour or two to charge for commute.

Annual mileage is about 30,000 Kms.

Anyway, we have plenty of capacity for charging electric cars at night and it would make a lot more efficient use of the grid and renewable energy.

Local distribution is another matter, 100 cars charging at 7 Kw in an estate would = 0.7 Mw extra load on an estate supply so time will tell how that fares out but grid wise it would be a lot better to have a lot more electricity consumed at night.

Good Man, you'll love the Rex !

We'll agree to disagree with on the Solar PV V Hot water tubes. But answer me this , what can you do with all the hot water you'll never use V what can you do with all the electricity from Solar PV including dump it in your i3 ?

Most homes heat the water via central heating. IF we had a FIT solar PV would work a lot better as all excess can be exported and used when needed, my Partners Parents in Germany have 11 or 14 Kw/p can't remember exactly but they export enough to run the storage heaters in the cooler months.

While yes in the cooler months your PV won't generate a huge amount at all but this is usually when the central heating is on heating all that water, in the brighter months you'd generate a hell of a lot more.