Do any of us have ...

[PurpleDragon]

... a wind turbine, or solar power?

[Martin]

yes!

[PurpleDragon]

Which? or both?

[Martin]

I've got a "Wren" turbine in the back garden. along with a couple of solar panels - none as a permanent fixture, just "on test" - and sometime next year, I'll be bunging in a solar hot water system

[titch7069]

the power supply to the house is solar, our hot water comes from a solar hot water tank, the lodge will be powered by a gasifier (we have a small one on test as back up to the solar)

[camillitech]

hi purple,
we live off grid and have a 'proven WT2500' it's been up and running since sept last year and i can't praise it enough before that we had a 'rutland FM910' which only finaly died this year! though it was up and running for about 17 years in total, it had had many mods/repairs. the proven gives us more power than we need and the excess goes into heating our porch and bathroom. we live on the west coast of scotland so get lots of wind though. it's been blowing a gale since monday so our house is toasty, all the bedding is spotless and my wife has been doing alot of baking

cheers paul

[PurpleDragon]

Thanks for your replies :)

Camillitech - do you have the 6.5m or the 11m version? We are north east Scotland, and live on a hill that has really strong gusts and an almost continual wind of some strength or other. It is a rare day that it is calm up here!

Titch, I'm not sure we would be able to generate as much solar as that. We are in north east Scotland and don't get that much sun during the times we would really need to generation.

Martin, I quite fancy the solar hot water system. There was someone at a recent green show up here who was displaying them, but he really wasn't interested in selling me one - or hardly even giving me information. I think I would need another tank...

[Martin]

if you've got a normal vented system, it's usual to replace the tank with a "thermal store" with two coils in it - one for the existing boiler, and one for the solar loop - if you had a third heat source like a woodburner, you can specify a tank with three!
ps, sometime early next year, we will be offering a British made 2.5kw turbine, with G83 grid-tie inverter for something around 4k - fitted! - designed to cope with heavy weather - would lap up your conditions!

[camillitech]

hi purple,
just tried to post you a picture there but it went pear shaped! anyway ours is a 6.5m self supporting tower, though i have fitted 4 guys as we do get some ferrocious gusts. the proven is in a good spot but it is 160m from the battery bank so requires very heavy cable (70mm square) the trusty rutland is just behind the house and i'm not sure how tall it's mast is as i've kept extending it over the years! it must be over 12m with lots of guys.
cheers paul

[Wombat]

Yep! Photovoltaics on garage roof and flat plate solar collecter on the house roof. There is an article around the site somewhere on my system, but not sure where it is!

Nev

[Martin]

over the last few weeks we've been involved in a job looking at some largeish turbines for a local company - along the way we've come across a continental turbine manufacturer with whom we've been particularly impressed - I have just received confirmation that we can offer their products generally!
The larger you get with turbines, the more attractive the sums become - we will soon have details of 80 and 250kw turbines with very swift payback times
(ideal for farms, communities, small factories, and anyone who wants to become an exporter of energy!)

[PurpleDragon]

if you've got a normal vented system, it's usual to replace the tank with a "thermal store" with two coils in it - one for the existing boiler, and one for the solar loop - if you had a third heat source like a woodburner, you can specify a tank with three!
ps, sometime early next year, we will be offering a British made 2.5kw turbine, with G83 grid-tie inverter for something around 4k - fitted! - designed to cope with heavy weather - would lap up your conditions!

We currently have an oilfired central heating & hot water system, supported with a combi boiler. We don't have a hot water tank at all, nor immersion heater. We have an electric shower though :) My understanding is that we would have to fit a new hot water tank in the attic to get teh solar hot water. It would be fine in the summer, when we didnt use the heating anyway, but in the winter a solar system would fall down, IMO, because we don't get that much daylight up here. Even my little solar powered driveway lamps give up in the winter, although obviously you're talking 'baby' technology with them.

I think it would be early next year before we could even consider looking at the prices for a turbine - no way we could right now!

[PurpleDragon]

hi purple,
just tried to post you a picture there but it went pear shaped! anyway ours is a 6.5m self supporting tower, though i have fitted 4 guys as we do get some ferrocious gusts. the proven is in a good spot but it is 160m from the battery bank so requires very heavy cable (70mm square) the trusty rutland is just behind the house and i'm not sure how tall it's mast is as i've kept extending it over the years! it must be over 12m with lots of guys.
cheers paul

Yeah, it gets pretty windy up here too. Not quite as bad as Stoney's got, but near enough. Why is yours so far from the battery bank?

[PurpleDragon]

Yep! Photovoltaics on garage roof and flat plate solar collecter on the house roof. There is an article around the site somewhere on my system, but not sure where it is!

Nev

I think you get a bit more sun than me though Nev

[camillitech]

hi purple,
the reason my turbine is so far from my battery bank is that the world has gone mad! there is a perfectly good site 25m from it. indeed i had another rutland there on a telegraph pole for a year as a test (infact the pole has now been there for 6 years) but this is not on land that i own but land that i rent from DEFRA. they have no objections to me mounting a turbine but i have to buy the square meter of land off them at the going rate (not much) and pay for the legal and surveyors fees (an arm and a leg + 9 months) the money was not so much of problem (£1000ish) as the extra thick armoured cable cost me that but 9months! if the power company were to connect me to the grid (8 miles away) they would not need to go through the same perfomance for the several hundred poles that they would need. talk about bureucracy gone mad. the best of it is despite several vists by them they never said a word about the pole that is still there. infact i'm seriously considering putting another small turbine back on it!