Home Back Garden Wind Turbines

roboshatner

What if instead of paying all these esb charges.

And instead would it be possible to get a Back garden Wind Turbines

and use them to power our home's.

It's a good idea well I think so but my question is it possible.

As I have a strong belief in Renewable Energies.

muffler

There are private wind turbines located all over the country so its nothing new and they even form part of complying with Part L of the building regs. Its getting people to adapt to the idea is the problem.

paddy147

roboshatner wrote: »

What if instead of paying all these esb charges.

And instead would it be possible to get a Back garden Wind Turbines

and use them to power our home's.

It's a good idea well I think so but my question is it possible.

As I have a strong belief in Renewable Energies.

Where have you been all these years so????

By the way,we also since found out that the world isnt flat,its actually round in shape.

muffler

Leave the sarcasm out of it Paddy. Not everyone is up to your high and knowledgeable standards.

L driver

muffler wrote: »

There are private wind turbines located all over the country so its nothing new and they even form part of complying with Part L of the building regs. Its getting people to adapt to the idea is the problem.

Hello,
Would the cost and ROI not be the hardest thing to adapt to, coupled with the inconsistent energy source to make an expensive investment and still need to be grid tied?

roboshatner

I know about the big private wind turbines in the country they are all over.

I'm taking about a small or medium private one in say my own back garden...

Is that possible to set up to run say the house's mains off lets say....

I know that there would have to be a great degree of wind to power it but if your in the west you wouldn't have a problem.

ei.sdraob

muffler wrote: »

There are private wind turbines located all over the country so its nothing new and they even form part of complying with Part L of the building regs. Its getting people to adapt to the idea is the problem.

I spent alot of time looking into these and wanted to get one via my company, im also on a windy top of a large hill location

But for the life of me I can not get the numbers to add, the payback doesn't seem to be there

kirving

It would be best used as a power source for pumping water to a storage tank, or to heat water.

It's not really suitable for reliably powering your tv for example, far too many problems aside from the actual unreliablity of the wind itself.

quentingargan

Kevin Irving wrote: »

It would be best used as a power source for pumping water to a storage tank, or to heat water.

It's not really suitable for reliably powering your tv for example, far too many problems aside from the actual unreliablity of the wind itself.

Au contraire, IMHO. Electricity is a very valuable form of energy, and it takes about 2.7kw of gas to produce 1kw of electricity back at the power station, so it seems crazy to take valuable electricity (worth 14c per kw Hr) and turn it back into heat which could be produce from oil or gas for less than half that price.

We have been running off-grid for years here and our battery inverter powers everything quite normally. But if I was doing it today, I would go grid tied and take up the new tariffs. They weren't available back then:(

Modern grid-tied inverters are very reliable and seamlessly turn the variable output of a turbine into electricity that can be sold back to the grid for the premium price of 19c per Kw Hr currently available.;)

noddyone2

Hi, be careful and get all the advice you can - and not just from sales people. A guy near me spent 15,000 euro on one, in 5 years it worked only part of the time, he had it dismantled and taken away recently. A neighbour got a small one, swears it's useless to power anything other than lights. Best of luck.

st1979

I have no gripe with windpower or anything but was at the ploughing match in 09 looking at turbines and listening to the sales talk at the different stands and kept hearing about this 19cent but rarely heard about the limit of 3000 units (and after that it was a rather crap price of 9 cent) and felt it was being sold to all the wrong people.
It seems to me that that you would really want to be using most if not all the power a turbine produces. As the savings were greater then than relying on the price you get paid for the power once you supplied over 3000 units. So there not really that economic for a householder more for a dairy farm or somewhere that uses a lot of power.
Also i found very few of the sales people were that bothered with the suitability of location re. wind speed etc more interested in selling as many as possible.

alex73

noddyone2 wrote: »

Hi, be careful and get all the advice you can - and not just from sales people. A guy near me spent 15,000 euro on one, in 5 years it worked only part of the time, he had it dismantled and taken away recently. A neighbour got a small one, swears it's useless to power anything other than lights. Best of luck.

CORRECT!!! Ireland is NOT setup for small scale home wind turbines. One big obstacle is that if you have a home turbine you can't feed power to the ESB grid. So basically it the wind is blowing you will get some power, if you don't need the power (say U are on Holiday) then its wasted. I know some home systems have a battery feeding system. But even that would not power a Washing machine.

So basically unless the ESB allows you to sell excess power to them your home system is useless.

My ESB bill is 72 euros a month (4 bed house with 3 kids, we don't use immersion or Dumble dryer a lot)

To pay 15,000 euros = Aprox 12-15 years of ESB bill. To be honest for me its a waste of Money with no return.

sh1tstirrer

alex73 wrote: »

CORRECT!!! Ireland is NOT setup for small scale home wind turbines. One big obstacle is that if you have a home turbine you can't feed power to the ESB grid. So basically it the wind is blowing you will get some power, if you don't need the power (say U are on Holiday) then its wasted. I know some home systems have a battery feeding system. But even that would not power a Washing machine.

So basically unless the ESB allows you to sell excess power to them your home system is useless.

My ESB bill is 72 euros a month (4 bed house with 3 kids, we don't use immersion or Dumble dryer a lot)

To pay 15,000 euros = Aprox 12-15 years of ESB bill. To be honest for me its a waste of Money with no return.

+1 wind turbines need constant maintaining and after 15 years your wind turbine would worn out and would need replacing.

quentingargan

alex73 wrote: »

CORRECT!!! One big obstacle is that if you have a home turbine you can't feed power to the ESB grid.

This is no longer the case. There is now, as ST1979 pointed out, a 19c tariff for the first 3,000 units exported.

I agree with ST1979 that few sales people are pointing out that this is capped at 3,000 units, with a fall to 9c after that. This encourages people to buy smaller turbines in the 1.5kw to 2.5kw category, which can only be expected to export that amount of power (assuming they consume the balance of the production).

I go along with this, though I think the tariffs need to come up a bit to make it more worthwhile. But there is an argument that says why should electricity consumers subsidise domestic wind turbines when we can buy wind from wind farms for less? Even offshore windfarms only get paid 14c per Kw Hr.

bladespin

sh1tstirrer wrote: »

+1 wind turbines need constant maintaining and after 15 years your wind turbine would worn out and would need replacing.

Not always the case, what makes are you basing this on?

Where did you get the 15 years part from, surely there aren't enough turbines standing 15 years to know this, any that I've seen should last well beyond that especially if they were maintained to that kind of level.

roboshatner

o.k so how do i go about setting this up and powering my house with 1 wind turbine.

bladespin

roboshatner wrote: »

o.k so how do i go about setting this up and powering my house with 1 wind turbine.

Look at what's on the market from 2kw to 6kw, depending on your needs, get a site survey done (not by the sales people) and see if you think it's worht doing. Get that bit sorted before you even think about the rest.

If you're in a good location with a decent site most installers offer turn-key packages which covers everything you'll need, including installation and connection to sell any surplus back to the grid.

imitation

The biggest problem with household wind turbines is the quality of the wind, a wind turbine located on a hilltop, or on an offshore platform has a clean stream of wind, where as the wind blowing closer to the ground is turbulent, buffeted off houses/trees etc, so it doesn't have the same force that commercial turbines take advantage of.

If your after the eco cred, or as some sort of hobby then go for it, otherwise your moneys better off in a deposit account (of a non national bank of course !)

quentingargan

imitation wrote: »

The biggest problem with household wind turbines is the quality of the wind, a wind turbine located on a hilltop, or on an offshore platform has a clean stream of wind, where as the wind blowing closer to the ground is turbulent, buffeted off houses/trees etc, so it doesn't have the same force that commercial turbines take advantage of.

That's very true, but a wind farm usually only gets paid 7c per Kw Hr of electricity exported, whereas domestic turbines get 19c on the first 3,000 units exported, and 14c for any electricity consumption that was displaced. They also don't have the expense of installing the grid.

There are many good domestic sites in Ireland, but the turbine should be a good distance from trees, hedgerows and buildings if it to work effectively.

The planning exemption also encourages householders to go for a 10m tower, whereas a smaller turbine on a taller tower may be appropriate for many sites. But there are a lot of good sites, particularly on the west coast...

fclauson

You need to look very carfully at the ROI - I did some rough maths for one I looked at

9K + Vat to install
would generate a realistic 2000Kwh/annum given local winds etc (25% to 30% of is max rated value) for which you could get 19c - but that is only for the next couple of years - and then its only 9c

So thats 2000 x 0.19 = €380 per year = very long time to pay off your €9K

If you are doing it for eco-bling then thats one thing - but 9K for a generator - I can buy a whole car for that - hence the price has to come down a long way before this all makes sense - and it will as more models come onto the market and real competition takes off.


Francis

Kristopherus

fclauson wrote: »

You need to look very carfully at the ROI - I did some rough maths for one I looked at

9K + Vat to install
would generate a realistic 2000Kwh/annum given local winds etc (25% to 30% of is max rated value) for which you could get 19c - but that is only for the next couple of years - and then its only 9c

So thats 2000 x 0.19 = €380 per year = very long time to pay off your €9K

If you are doing it for eco-bling then thats one thing - but 9K for a generator - I can buy a whole car for that - hence the price has to come down a long way before this all makes sense - and it will as more models come onto the market and real competition takes off.


Francis

+1
Take the scenario where you install the best available. which can cost anything up to 25k, and your buyback adds up to, say, €1000 per annum, then its a no brainer not to go down that road. Your 25k unit will have to halve in price before the payback will be anyway reasonable.

quentingargan

“Why should it necessarily compete against cheap power from polluting engines? …The satisfaction of generating your own power, independently, from a clean endless source, is hard to quantify.” Hugh Piggott


I don't call it eco-bling, but at the time when I paid €20K for a turbine, my colleagues were spending a lot more than that on their cars - I bought a banger that year for €500. People don't ask the payback time on cars, fitted kitchens, or a range of other purchases.



Since then, more turbines have come on the market, and prices have come down. The figures aren't as bad as are made out here, unless you have a very poor site. There are good quality 2.5Kw turbines for in or around €13K and 6kw ones for about €25K. On a good site, the payback time may be ten to twelve years at current feed-in tariffs (and there are no indications that these would be cut after five years - the trend in other counties has been to keep them).



That's a return on investment of 8% to 10%. Anyone know of a bank offering that on deposits?

tred

quentingargan wrote: »

“Why should it necessarily compete against cheap power from polluting engines? …The satisfaction of generating your own power, independently, from a clean endless source, is hard to quantify.” Hugh Piggott


I don't call it eco-bling, but at the time when I paid €20K for a turbine, my colleagues were spending a lot more than that on their cars - I bought a banger that year for €500. People don't ask the payback time on cars, fitted kitchens, or a range of other purchases.



Since then, more turbines have come on the market, and prices have come down. The figures aren't as bad as are made out here, unless you have a very poor site. There are good quality 2.5Kw turbines for in or around €13K and 6kw ones for about €25K. On a good site, the payback time may be ten to twelve years at current feed-in tariffs (and there are no indications that these would be cut after five years - the trend in other counties has been to keep them).



That's a return on investment of 8% to 10%. Anyone know of a bank offering that on deposits?

Sorry to jump on this thread. But say one does buy a turbine in 5 years time, but is currently building. Is there anything they can do now with their ESB connection so they can feed back?..

quentingargan

tred wrote: »

Sorry to jump on this thread. But say one does buy a turbine in 5 years time, but is currently building. Is there anything they can do now with their ESB connection so they can feed back?..

The ESB bit is straightforward - they just change your meter. But you would do two things;

1) Include a spare MCB in the consumer unit which would be cabled to a point where you might put your inverter (which converts electricity from the turbine into grid compatible 230V AC).

2) You might also run armoured cable from the inverter location to outside the house.

Inverters and controllers can be a bit noisy. If you don't have your consumer unit in a utility room, you might decide to put them in a garage. In that case, you would need to wire that shed with cable strong enough to take the power from the sort of turbine you might opt for.