Random Renewables Thread

Btw, love the idea for a chitchat thread 😁

Basically the issue with asbestos is that when it breaks down it emits carcinogenic particles

So you can imagine any kind of drilling or cutting is going to be hazardous and installers probably won't go near it

It needs to be handled and disposed of properly, I'm not sure a regular roofer is going to be equipped for that job, you'll probably need a specialist

That's going to add some serious cost I'm afraid, but personally I'd consider it a worthwhile investment for not getting lung cancer

That's an interesting and apt question. I'm planning on going "right to the limit" there with some panel reconfigurations that I had in mind. Hadn't considered that there might be some regs prohibiting that.

It was more that I'm on a semi-detached and I'm going right to the limit of "my half" of the roof

i.e. the middle of the overall roof , as it turns into their house if you follow. Their fairly decent to be fair, but I wouldn't take the mick either.

hmm, not sure a subsequent owner would have any right to ask me to move anything even 1cm on my side of the middle line. SEAI guidelines of course only really come into play if you are looking to get the grant and have no real bearings (i think) on things here as this is non-grant work.

there may however be some planning regs but I haven't seen any which outline things like this, but of course the fact I haven't seen any doesn't mean they dont exist.

Great idea for thread ! Next there will have to be a beers.

The restrictions on panel array sizes on a roof without needing planning need to be lifted asap.

Seemed to be progress earlier in the year on this, but someone advised here lately that it's stuck in the senate at the moment.

Once that's gone, more encouragement (low rate loans / grants/ joint ventures) for those with suitable large roof spaces such as farm sheds, warehouses, community centre, schools etc, to install large pv arrays, before committing arable land to ground mounted arrays.

Looking out my window here at a neighbours large slatted shed with the long side facing south, approx 30 deg pitch. rough calcs I'd estimate it'd easily fit 30kWh, 99.5% which would be exported. probably 3/4 times that shed roof space available on the boreen I live on alone.

Don't think it really matters much to be honest. The current regulations of 12m^2 have been in place for years (15 years, more?) and nobody has ever come afoul of it. I've 24m^2 on my own roof - am I worried. Nope. SEAI signed off and everything. :-)

That said, if a Karen of this world was to complain about someone breaking the sq meterage, then yeah, in theory if the council did come out you might have to comply - which would be a shame. But is that likely to happen?

RTE news : Energia to hike gas prices by 39%, electricity by 29%

Ouch

One the good side, they aren't increasing the standing charge. It was already one of the highest so not sure they could justify it

Also they aren't increasing night rates for anyone on a smart meter. That's a bit of clever marketing for people who have batteries and EVs

i doubt it unless you are unfortunate enough to live beside a ####! and planning officers are busy enough with more serious (lack of ) enforcement issues!

Its disappointing with the talk of generators on the news to not see anyone putting in a small wind turbine and a battery. 1 or 2kw could charge a large battery for emergency use.. if emergency use is the concern.

on a larger scale since this is an emergency, why is there no talk of getting extra wind generation on line? again all about generators which need diesel from.. Russia

as well as this, no talk about expediting planning for any wind or solar farms.. it can be done for houses..

It is annoying, but unfortunately those mini turbines aren't much use. You might get enough to charge a phone and a torch on a windy day but you won't be powering appliances from them

Regarding installing wind farms instead of fossil generators, I agree that it's backwards thinking but there's also a question of short term needs versus long term solutions

There's a lot of local obstacles to installing wind farms, not least the fact that mentioning a new turbine seems to trigger every Karen, tinfoil hat brigade and random local heritage group for hundreds of kilometres in every direction

Even if all those get removed, there's the question of production capacity. There's only a few companies that make the big turbines and they can only produce them at a certain rate

Now I'm sure if one or all of those companies decided to scale up production by a factor of 10 they could do it. With the right amount of investment they could probably do it pretty quickly

But, they aren't going to make that investment unless they know there's a pipeline of orders for the next 10-20 years to pay back that initial cost

If they only have orders for 2 years say, then the only economic solution is to charge an insane amount of money per turbine

The same kind of goes for wind turbine sites. All the good onshore sites already have turbines, so it's the more marginal sites that are next, or offshore turbines which are more expensive upfront. For those sites to be economical electricity prices need to stay high. But as more turbines come online, then supply increases and the price goes down (theoretically)

So it's a gamble as to whether any of your wind farms will pay off in the long run

This is where our government and the EU at large should be helping

For example, the EU could just roll out the money printer and pay the cost of increasing turbine production for the manufactures. I'm sure there'd be plenty of conditions attached, like they have to be built in Europe and the price per turbine cannot exceed a certain amount, etc.

Similarly in Ireland the government could get more aggressive in terms of providing loans and investment to wind farms. In this case the government absorbs the risk. It could be a raw deal for the taxpayer because if those turbines don't pay off then they'll be footing the bill. But then it's a political decision as to whether the government is willing to take that risk with taxpayers money for increasing renewable generation

And even best case there won't be enough renewables installed to get us through winter

So we're left in the bad situation that extra capacity needs to be found and the only available technology that can scale quickly is fossil fuels. It's a short term solution hopefully

Of course the fact that this was an entirely predictable situation and experts have been warning every government in Europe for years that they're too dependent on Russian gas and should be investing in renewables seems to be getting glossed over a lot

Nahh good post that raisin.

The idea of residential wind turbines comes up a lot on these formus. On paper it looks appealing. You bang in a small 1m turbine. Sure it might only do 500w as opposed to the 5Kw that you might have in panels, but it does it 24x7 (assuming the wind is there). What's not to like eh?

Unfortunately most of the time turbines do about 50-100 watts, if even. Here's a good vid (by a wind engineer) which explains why small turbines generally are pants.

(676) Wind Turbines for Home: Is it Worth It? - YouTube

Love wind me, and there are places in ireland where you can get a wind turbine to work for your home, but perhaps not in Cabra or Tallaght :-)

Yeah I hear ya about small turbines. I think theres plenty of folks down the country who could make something slightly bigger work. Not necessarily to power everything, but to tick things along when you've already got solar and batteries that arent doing much in winter.

As for larger scale wind, again good info there. Probably more that the govt could do about the medium term there, but not any evidence of it yet.

Oh yeah, absolutely batteries are better.

If I'm running off a generator next year then it pretty much means the **** hit the fan big time and it's time to resort to drinking my own pee

Unfortunately I've no solar or batteries yet, so I'm going to have to survive winter before I can afford them

I would like to point out that a lot is being made of power cuts this winter but there needs to be some realism applied

Gas storage in Europe is currently at 80%, so if there's no curtailment of demand and no additional supplies come online then there's enough in storage to last most countries until February or March of 2023

Of course our wonderful governments over the years neglected to build up any gas storage over the past few years, so we're depending on imports from the UK.

Hopefully Ms Truss doesn't decide to let the Paddys freeze to protect her own people. It's not like the UK has a history of doing that or anything

In any case, I don't think we're facing the end of days. It's going to be a tough winter and in general people are going to be a lot more reluctant to use energy where they can avoid it

I think there's some fairly obvious load shedding that could be done, for example subsidizing some industry to run at night to avoid that evening peak

As grim as it is, I think the idea of not running the Christmas lights this year is a good one. I mean they could probably switch them on for 3 days over Christmas to give some cheer while everyone is off work

Realistically, we might be looking at rotating blackouts during peak times for an hour or two. In which case a battery is going to be more useful.

But I can also see how all this talk might have people running scared. And I can't really blame any folks who worry about keeping the heating on getting a generator as a short term solution. Especially if they have any kind of medical equipment they need to run

True 5pm is a bit optimistic maybe. But we're supposed to have the right to switch off from 7pm or something so it's probably not unreasonable to lower the heating demand

Could do some automation with the desk sockets, just kill them all at night

There's a few desks around me with some "do not unplug" signs on the desktops. Facilities really should be bringing the stick out and tell teams to move that equipment into a lab where it belongs

Companies will get a short sharp shock with bills.

I've a question with trying to boot up a non hybrid pv system in the event of a power cut. feed it 220v mains from a car battery via an inverter. all is well until it decides to export. anyone tried this?

Thinking with a steady load it might work? or a load I could vary.. or if an eddi was in place.

Can you set the export to 0 temporarily so it won't try and export anything?

Does anyone here have an induction hob? If so, do you know if it draws a constant load does it constantly switch on and off like an electric hob?