Renewable energy

[Murphyv310]

Hi.
Not sure if this is in the right section and to the mods feel free to move it.
For some years I've had two solar panels on the shed roof, two ancient 100ah batteries and charge controller. It did a reasonably good job running a good few items iin the shed and background lighting indoors. It did sag though in winter. Early this year I added extra 100 and 30 watt panels and a more efficient charge controller. Two new 110ah leisure batteries were added last year. This saw a good increase in charge in low light and the new batteries didn't self discharge. Only 12v is fed indoors, I've since beefed up the wiring and added the feed to the two bedrooms. I now have better lighting running all over the house from the 12v system. A 1500 watt inverter was added to the shed and so far in the summer have had no issues.
Yesterday I saw a 230watt wind generator on eBay for under £100 which I've bought, this will of course charge when it's windy and at night, it's never calm here so I expect a decent level of charge. The great advantage of the system is it can be added to with no issues. I'm not interested in feed in etc as each thing I add is one item reduced from the mains.
Including the new wind generator its cost me under £600 in ten years, I've easily saved that in electricity. Since March I've used 29Kw/h of solar power for all the things I've run from it.
Addendum, this figure doesn't include inverter power consumption.

[peter scott]

Hi Trevor,

I think the saving from changing filament lamps to LEDs has been useful but having done that, my electricity consumption since March has been 1169kWh and that has cost me £164. If I were to change to solar I would need 40 times the area of your system.

Peter

[Murphyv310]

Absolutely Peter.
To be fair I've more capacity than I use. I'm hoping to increase the use more than I do. In winter I run a 200 watt space heater off the mains 24/7 in the shed and I'm hoping that I may be able to run it but not necessarily continuously.
One thing is the system is good for is power cuts, which there is more chance of as each year goes by.

In the shed I run the following.
Aurora's, Hedghog, Loop aerial, Raspberry Pi, lighting, Philips Tvette, Perdio Portarama, aerial distribution amp, Lafayette coms set, low voltage soldering and phone chargers.

[Cleggy]

My back garden faces pretty much due south, but we've been planning to re-locate, so I haven't done anything to take advantage of it.

Two questions;

1.  how do you go about choosing your solar panels? My impression (perhaps false) is that there is some junk around.
   
   
2. Is sulphation of batteries a problem? Some years a go I bought a "pulsating" de-sulphator, which I'm really convinced does work
   

C

[Murphyv310]

Hi.
There is junk around. I've been fortunate though. My first two panels came from Eco Worthy, the other ones this year came from Amazon and they have all been fine. My original 10 amp charge controller was a HD again from Eco Worthy. When I upgraded this year the 30 amp controller was very poor which was returned and I bought a more expensive one that is first class.
I've no idea of the quality of the windmill but the seller gets excellent feedback so I really won't know till its up and operational.

[Nick]

One of the key things to do first is to just reduce the energy you use...

LED bulbs, AAA-rated white goods, low-standby TV and similar systems, less water in kettle, run everything you can under Economy 7 (if you can), don't tumble-dry, don't leave stuff on longer than absolutely necessary... etc .

In addition, we moved to a ground-source heat pump some 15 years ago - at that time it was very cheap to install as we were doing a self-build and had all the diggers etc. on site.

15 years later, it's not missed a beat and paid for itself (as far as I can calculate) in just 3 years, so since then, all our hot water and heating has been very very cheap - our total electricity usage has plummeted. Add added bonus is no annual maintenance is needed either - just the occasional top-up with water to replace the tiny amount lost each year through osmosis.

Plus, we buy all our electricity through Bulb, i.e. 100% renewables.

[ppppenguin]

The biggest single energy use for most people is space heating. For a new build this means working to Passive House standards. These should be mandatory in the building regs but the housebuilding lobby has too much influence for that and they have to be dragged kicking and screaming all the way. Another problem is that for both homes and offices the people who commission the building are not usually those who pay the bills.
https://www.passivhaustrust.org.uk/

Upgrading an older house is more difficult and expensive. After easy wins like loft insulation and draught elimination it's harder. Good quality double glazing isn't cheap. For solid walls, internal insulation loses space while external is very expensive. It's also unfortunate that some previous schemes have been badly thought out. A lot of cavity wall insulation has been badly done and has caused damp. A house with no draughts and minimal air exchange will get horribly damp unless correct ventilation is used. For the average hosueholder this all needs to be as automatic and hassle free as possible.

[BusyBee]

I try to look at reducing energy useage too. The house points in a non-descript direction so solar panels would not be easy. I think a wind turbine would create too many local issues.

I just had a quick look at various options in wind turbines for sale. It does look a bit involved with wind speed ranges etc. I presume those large ones have automatic blade feathering for high wind conditions, but there look to be limits on small ones which seem very low in many cases? A nice idea but too many problems for me.

Tracy

[Murphyv310]

A small wind turbine should pose no problems. They don't have blade feathering, just electronic braking. The one I've ordered is safe to 55m/sec roughly 110mph which we don't get here.
It's blade diameter is 1.3 metres so not obtrusive.

[Nick]

A small wind turbine should pose no problems. They don't have blade feathering, just electronic braking. The one I've ordered is safe to 55m/sec roughly 110mph which we don't get here.
It's blade diameter is 1.3 metres so not obtrusive.

One small point about these - sometimes they're not incredibly well balanced and so mounting them on a house can be very noisy, especially as the wind gets up... mounting on a pole obviates that problem...