Random Renewables Thread

For anyone looking for cheaper shelly devices like energy monitors, now is the time to get some with the discounts:

https://www.shelly.com/collections/all-products

Found this cool little addon https://www.shelly.com/products/shelly-plus-addon-3x-sensor-ds which I plan on using in the CU to get live readings of temps inside and if things get toasty then throttle back the battery/EV charging

While it's obviously not " nothing" , is district heating powered by waste heat from data centers -or any waste heat , really worth it ?

Waste heat is more of an issue in summer - our heating season is 6 or 7 months in winter , so the producer of the waste heat still needs a second system to get rid of heat in summer ,

Plus the heat coming from data centers or offices is probably 25 ISH degrees so very low grade , would a huge heat pump be needed to boost the temperature to make it more worthwhile, so electricity costs of 4units of heat to one unit electricity , ? And then the general pumping and controls all use electricity ,

Before you get to the capital costs of running substantial insulated pipes all over the place , ( I assume they'd be underground ? )

Anyway , is it worth it ? 😁

I get you , but it's very low grade heat , the lower the heat temp ,either the more you need to spend concentrating the heat, or the bigger the pipes need to be to distribute the heat , and it's not like we'd be piping tepid water to 100s of apartment buildings it'd need to go to 10s of thousands of houses , flow and return pipes going up and down estate roads and streets

Some cities pump steam, nevermind 90 degree water.

You'd still need a fair heat pump to upgrade the water heat to 35 degrees ,and you'd need to pipe and pump a fairly massive volume of 35 degrees water around a neighbourhood , as well as pretty significant engineering to divert warm water/refrigerant / heat transfer medium into residential heat exchangers all along the way and then send it back via the return pipe ,

It's a lot of pipe - trenches , engineering , pumping and electrical services , and ultimately money , to take advantage of free or cheap low grade heat ,

In a way if it was being dumped into huge greenhouses and veg growing areas in north Dublin , or I dunno , massive outdoor swimming pools near the heat source it'd be a easier task ,

Oh god , it'd be a very expensive system to set up , and a fair cost to run and maintain, even if the heat itself is free , upgrading the heat, pumping the heating medium ( water ? ) , and what ever system goes to individual houses , all cost to run ,

So yeah - free it ain't .

ahh there's a grand stretch in the evenings again - LOL !

Sunrise and sunset times in Dublin

Very interesting and some decent data to back it up.

Is it safe to assume the same would happen here? They don't say where the house is located in the UK i.e. north or south

I think it's a lot more of a runner these days than it was in yesteryear. Can't remember the thread it was in , but someone posted there recently (within the last week) asking for advice on 420-430w panel there for €57 each.

Jeez, I remember paying double that and then some for a 365w panel 2 years ago. At those kind of prices for panels nowadays things which weren't that feasible even a few short years ago are suddenly much more viable.

With panels so cheap - even north facing will recoup your outlay quickly enough. To be fair now, you won't get much production out of them in winter, but they will pay for themselves.

True - though many people in the past skipped installing panels on north roofs as it simply wasn't worth it. I'm lucky enough to have East / West (and south on my shed), and I'd have thought twice about it myself a few years back. Nowadays I'd be plastering all and sundry. :-)

Agreed with you about the NC6 restrictions….still some inverters even go to 100% over provisioning. (got to watch the string voltage though that's probably the determining factor for most now)

Great re-use of legacy Cold War underground oil storage in Sweden to store heat for a district heating system.