Wind Turbine experience

[cuthound]

3 hours ago, Jess-- said:

because with a grid tied system if the grid goes down so do you, even if your solar system is under full sun and you have fully charged batteries, with no grid to sync with grid-tied inverters shut down

Rubbish,

Any generating system of 3.68kW or more connected to the grid has to comply with ER G59/3-2. This stipulates that loss of grid protection must be used, commonly ROCOF relays (rate of change of frequency),  overvoltage, overfrequency,  undervoltage, underfrequency, loss of mains and fault protection relays.

This mandatory protection ensures that you can keep generating when you were in sync with the mains and the mains has failed. 

 

Edited to put the latest version of G59 in

Edited March 5, 2017 by cuthound

[dor]

Referring to the OP's post - it is significant that one of the biggest manufacturers of wind turbines used by boaters is (or was) also a manufacturer of electric fencing kit for livestock farms.  That is what they were designed to deal with - an off-grid battery supplying a low current to an electric fencer.  They could cope with that.

 

Expecting one to satisfy a boater's needs is rather optimistic.

[mross]

If it keeps cows off my boat, I'm happy.

[smileypete]

6 hours ago, Jess-- said:

because with a grid tied system if the grid goes down so do you, even if your solar system is under full sun and you have fully charged batteries, with no grid to sync with grid-tied inverters shut down

There are ways round this, but AFAIK not 100% of the shelf.

Basically an LF (low freq) pure sine inverter may allow grid tie to run, the only drawback they can work in reverse and so the batts can get overcharged!

Its discussed on this aussie forum, they might have got round this problem somehow by now.

https://forums.energymatters.com.au/solar-wind-gear/topic3344-190.html

You'd have to be fully disconnected from the grid to do this of course.

Edited March 5, 2017 by smileypete

[jddevel]

When building my house in a small Cornish hamlet in 2006 I was in contact with the founder of these people- or who they`ve become.http://www.elmiraohio.com/Gasifier Docs/Stirling DK Engines.pdf    Whilst not solving the fundamental problem discussed here it certainly would at the time have suited me. However the lack of his government backing mean`t his smallest domestic model which I was going to run off a pellet/waste boiler producing 9kw and with at the time a estimated cost of under £20000 was forestalled by the revenue from the larger consumer market. I probably naively thought that it could potentially serve myself  and a couple other properties. He could fulfil my order and I in the end out of frustration installed oil and a Rayburn -wood only fire. I would also add my home is very very well insulated and although over 2500sq ft the Rayburn has at times achieved at least 23C and  sometimes nearly 25C in much of the ground floor and 18 to 19c upstairs.. Far too high but leaving the house for most of the day and during the night with no movement I can assure you on returning or getting up it is  the case. Temperature monitored via the roomstats controlling the underfloor heating -part of the oil boiler setup.

[cuthound]

2 hours ago, jddevel said:

When building my house in a small Cornish hamlet in 2006 I was in contact with the founder of these people- or who they`ve become.http://www.elmiraohio.com/Gasifier Docs/Stirling DK Engines.pdf    Whilst not solving the fundamental problem discussed here it certainly would at the time have suited me. However the lack of his government backing mean`t his smallest domestic model which I was going to run off a pellet/waste boiler producing 9kw and with at the time a estimated cost of under £20000 was forestalled by the revenue from the larger consumer market. I probably naively thought that it could potentially serve myself  and a couple other properties. He could fulfil my order and I in the end out of frustration installed oil and a Rayburn -wood only fire. I would also add my home is very very well insulated and although over 2500sq ft the Rayburn has at times achieved at least 23C and  sometimes nearly 25C in much of the ground floor and 18 to 19c upstairs.. Far too high but leaving the house for most of the day and during the night with no movement I can assure you on returning or getting up it is  the case. Temperature monitored via the roomstats controlling the underfloor heating -part of the oil boiler setup.

Unfortunately Stirling Denmark went into liquidation in 2013, taking the company that I was then working for with them. 

Their engines were a fantastic concept, but put onto the market far too soon. As a result they did not work for long before breaking down so the customer was doing the development work. SDK would investigate the failure, improve the part only for something else to go wrong. Eventually they went bust.

The company I was working for was installing them into Waitrose supermarkets free of charge, using the electricity generated to power lights, tills etc, and the waste heat to run absorption and/or adsorbtion chillers and provide heating and domestic hot water. They intended to make their money by charging a fixed amount per kWh of heat or electricity used over a 15 year contract. In the event of a Stirling engine being out for maintenance or fault, mains gas and electricity was used, with the company I was working for paying the difference, so the cost to Waitrose was the same. 

With the Stirling engines rarely working,  and then SDK going out of business, the company found itself effectively having to subsidise Waitrose energy bills for 15 years,  so opted to go into liquidation as well. 

 

 

Edited March 5, 2017 by cuthound

[jddevel]

Interesting. I suppose poor business acumen. Shame. I suppose in essence it was the money providers looking at short term gains and not possibly understanding the concept/possibilities.

[cuthound]

Certainly the banks refusing to lend any more money to SDK brought the company down.  However if the government subsidies were removed at any time in the future the system would also have also proved unviable 

Unfortunately the marketing people who sold the concept to Waitrose didn't understand availability, which cost the company I worked for dearly. They agreed to 90% availability on agreed four engine system without understanding what it meant! 

I  was the first engineer to get involved with SDK and the first thing I asked them was how often the engines needed servicing. "Every 6000 hours or 9 months" they said. "How long  does servicing take" I asked? 

Well, 2 days for the engine to cool down so it can be removed, a day to remove it, 5 days to transport it back to Denmark, 10 days to service it, 5 days to transport it back to the UK, a day to install it, 2 days to heat it up and a day to test it.  27 days per engine in total.

So a months downtime per engine with four engines gave an annual availability of 75% without allowing for any faults! 

The MD went mad, until I pointed out that buying a fifth engine to swap with the ones requiring servicing would allow us to reduce the downtime to 3-4 days per engine or 12-16 days per annum or about 95% availability. He still wasn't happy that he had to fork out £500K for another engine though.

[jddevel]

Under the circumstances seems I escaped a potential catastrophe!!!!

[mattlad]

On 05/03/2017 at 12:13, ditchcrawler said:

Didnt Russell Newbury make one?

 

On 05/03/2017 at 12:14, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

Nope

We made a prototype / demonstrator unit which one of the Register members took over when we sold the company. It was capable of running on waste oil, although it was demonstrated at the Royal Show using some form of veg based fuel.

[MtB]

1 hour ago, mattlad said:

 

We made a prototype / demonstrator unit which one of the Register members took over when we sold the company. It was capable of running on waste oil, although it was demonstrated at the Royal Show using some form of veg based fuel.

Oh I see. He meant 'one' literally. 

So Russell Newbury DID make one after all. Just one which never came to market. Not really what I meant.

[ditchcrawler]

6 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

Oh I see. He meant 'one' literally. 

So Russell Newbury DID make one after all. Just one which never came to market. Not really what I meant.

I didn't know they only made one, I just knew they made them. Hope that makes sense