Wind Turbine experience

[I Spartacus]

54 minutes ago, Jess-- said:

Very recently we were looking at what it would require to take our house completely off the electric grid.

with the roof space we have and the direction it faces we could (just) fit 15kw of panels where they would receive unbroken sun from dawn to dusk (losing the last hour in summer as the sun goes past west)
Batteries were to be an 8,000 - 10,000Ah bank @48v and  240v was to be supplied via a pair of 10 KVa inverters 
Because the system would be used to cut off from the grid there would be no feed in tariff or subsidies

total parts cost would be in the order of £22,000 - £25,000 (depending on minor changes and exchange rates)

based on our current annual electric bill and allowing for that bill to increase by 5% each year the system would have to perform perfectly (including batteries) for 19-24 years to be able to hit the break-even point, any failure in the system that required new parts would push this date back by years.

given that most panels will start to lose efficiency long before that time, batteries would almost certainly not last and I doubt that the inverters would last that long I suspect that with replacement / maintenance costs added in the system struggle to hit break-even in my lifetime

It does look like an over kill  to me Jess, how were you planning to heat the house in the winter, by electricity only, or were you looking at installing a ground source heat pump .If it was me I would always have a small diesel CHP plant to provide heating to the hose and help to top up the batteries when needed. 8kw of power in from the generator will also give you 10 kw of water heating  

[mross]

Ans why go off-grid?  You are morally entitled to any subsidies and exporting any surplus is 'green'.

[MtB]

11 minutes ago, I Spartacus said:

It does look like an over kill  to me Jess, how were you planning to heat the house in the winter, by electricity only, or were you looking at installing a ground source heat pump .If it was me I would always have a small diesel CHP plant to provide heating to the hose and help to top up the batteries when needed. 8kw of power in from the generator will also give you 10 kw of water heating  

 

Ah, can you nominate a "small diesel CHP plant" currently on the market please?

The only one I can think of is the Whispergen, long discontinued.

[ditchcrawler]

2 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

Ah, can you nominate a "small diesel CHP plant" currently on the market please?

The only one I can think of is the Whispergen, long discontinued.

Didnt Russel Newbury make one?

[MtB]

Just now, ditchcrawler said:

Didnt Russel Newbury make one?

 

Nope

[Jess--]

2 minutes ago, I Spartacus said:

It does look like an over kill  to me Jess, how were you planning to heat the house in the winter, by electricity only, or were you looking at installing a ground source heat pump .If it was me I would always have a small diesel CHP plant to provide heating to the hose and help to top up the batteries when needed. 8kw of power in from the generator will also give you 10 kw of water heating  

heating and hot water are already covered by a boiler that runs on chipboard offcuts from a local office furniture manufacturer, running costs are around £150 per year

 

3 minutes ago, mross said:

Ans why go off-grid?  You are morally entitled to any subsidies and exporting any surplus is 'green'.

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

[mross]

That's certainly true for my system; but are there no systems available that operate on and off grid?

[ditchcrawler]

20 minutes 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

It has to or you would back feed into the grid when the isolators are opened and men working on the system

[I Spartacus]

17 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

Ah, can you nominate a "small diesel CHP plant" currently on the market please?

The only one I can think of is the Whispergen, long discontinued.

You have to build them Mike, they are quite simple to make. we used a Controllis prime power 24v PMG and a water cooled Perkins engine with Bowman heat exchangers with a few other bits and pieces, added.

Controllis now sell the kits including the engine and control systems but you still need to add the heat exchangers and other bit an bobs. It was very very efficient more information can be found here regarding how they work. I have still got one of the generators sitting in my garage that I am planning to use.

http://www.controllis.com/DCPrimePower.html

[system 4-50]

49 minutes ago, mross said:

The world population will probably top out at 11 billion.  We can feed 11 billion.  Anyone who looks forward to a plague that killls 90% of the population is a psychopath!  I hope you did not mean that?

In a sense I did. If we lose 10 billion we might save the 10 billion billion that follow on.

If we lose the planet then we likely lose the 10 billion billion and all the rest.

And no way can we feed 11 billion, except in this exceptionally "good" time. 

[mross]

All the souls who ever live can not total 10 billion billion - not in a million years!

[Jess--]

6 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

It has to or you would back feed into the grid when the isolators are opened and men working on the system

that can be handled with appropriate switchgear...
we already have an isolator in place that drops in/out with the grid, if the grid is down the whole house is switched to a generator input and will not switch back to the grid if there is power from the generator, this makes it impossible for us to back-feed accidentally. 

[MtB]

11 minutes ago, I Spartacus said:

You have to build them Mike, they are quite simple to make. we used a Controllis prime power 24v PMG and a water cooled Perkins engine with Bowman heat exchangers with a few other bits and pieces, added.

Controllis now sell the kits including the engine and control systems but you still need to add the heat exchangers and other bit an bobs. It was very very efficient more information can be found here regarding how they work. I have still got one of the generators sitting in my garage that I am planning to use.

http://www.controllis.com/DCPrimePower.html

Ok thanks for the link.

Those seem little different from a conventional genset though, other than the idea of mounting the alternator rotor directly on the engine flywheel. So not quite what us heating bods think of as micro CHP. Still a noisy IC engine.

[mross]

Watch an amazing video from Hans Rosling and you won't be so pessimistic about our planet's future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1021&v=Sm5xF-UYgdg

[mross]

Russell Newbery delivered a CHP but their website is currently 'under construction'.

[ditchcrawler]

7 minutes ago, Jess-- said:

that can be handled with appropriate switchgear...
we already have an isolator in place that drops in/out with the grid, if the grid is down the whole house is switched to a generator input and will not switch back to the grid if there is power from the generator, this makes it impossible for us to back-feed accidentally. 

I would need to think about this one, what you are doing so far is easy. This would be much easier to push around in a real pub with a couple of pints in front of us, so I think I will give it a miss here

[Jess--]

2 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

I would need to think about this one, what you are doing so far is easy. This would be much easier to push around in a real pub with a couple of pints in front of us, so I think I will give it a miss here

it becomes a lot simpler when you say "F*** it, just cut off from the grid altogether"

[ditchcrawler]

4 minutes ago, Jess-- said:

it becomes a lot simpler when you say "F*** it, just cut off from the grid altogether"

[I Spartacus]

10 minutes ago, Jess-- said:

it becomes a lot simpler when you say "F*** it, just cut off from the grid altogether"

I tend to agree with that Jess , and the switchgear is quite simple, Our whole site was designed to run off grid if we lost incoming power.

Edited March 5, 2017 by I Spartacus

[I Spartacus]

14 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

Ok thanks for the link.

Those seem little different from a conventional genset though, other than the idea of mounting the alternator rotor directly on the engine flywheel. So not quite what us heating bods think of as micro CHP. Still a noisy IC engine.

Not fully aware of how they worked and what generator they used in the conventional getsets . the modern PMG's are very efficient  these days. our unit was cocooned you had a job to hear it when running 

[MtB]

18 minutes ago, I Spartacus said:

Not fully aware of how they worked and what generator they used in the conventional getsets . the modern PMG's are very efficient  these days. our unit was cocooned you had a job to hear it when running 

 

Well a lot of effort also seems to have been put into developing a 30 phase alternator for (almost) ripple free DC, but that along with putting it in a well insulated box hardly qualifies it for the (admittedly woolly) label of CHP.

[MtB]

Or perhaps connecting up the cooling system of any IC engine running an alternator to some central heating radiators would qualify it for the (woolly) label 'CHP'.

[I Spartacus]

16 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

Well a lot of effort also seems to have been put into developing a 30 phase alternator for (almost) ripple free DC, but that along with putting it in a well insulated box hardly qualifies it for the (admittedly woolly) label of CHP.

Mike they are not selling it as a CHP only as a generator, we modified it by adding an exhaust heat exchanger and also used the jacket cooling water, thus scrubbing any wasted heat from the exhaust, most of all the waste power goes out as waste heat from the exhaust..

Edited March 5, 2017 by I Spartacus

[MtB]

9 minutes ago, I Spartacus said:

Mike they are not selling it as a CHP only as a generator, we modified it by adding an exhaust heat exchanger and also used the jacket cooling water, thus scrubbing any wasted heat from the exhaust, most of all the waste power goes out as waste heat from the exhaust..

 

True, it was you described it as a CHP plant!

But fundamentally I agree, if the waste heat is all recovered, then it fits the unbelievably woolly term "CHP". Invented by the marketing suits I imagine. 

[WotEver]

1 hour ago, mross said:

Watch an amazing video from Hans Rosling and you won't be so pessimistic about our planet's future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1021&v=Sm5xF-UYgdg

What a fascinating talk. Thanks

And, have a greenie!