Author Topic: Advise for wind turbine in Ireland  (Read 3188 times)

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ballycummin

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Advise for wind turbine in Ireland
« on: March 05, 2015, 01:13:29 PM »
Hi,
    I recently acquired the book Homebrew Wind Power and im trying to figure out what the best route is to implement RE in my house. I live in Ireland where electricity prices are 14.60 cent (euro) per kwh. You can only get 10cent per kwh selling back to the grid.

My house is newly built, highly insulated and heated via a ground-source heat pump. There are a variety of electric pumps in use at any one time: water is pumped around the house and then the ground source pumps themselves, also we have a sewage pump. This all contributes to the house idling at around 0.8 - 1kwh.

The good news is I live on a very windy NW Atlantic cost where the average wind speed is 15.7mph. Im thinking about building the '10-footer' described in the book.

From reading the book it seems the best method is to go for an off-grid battery system (especially due the low export price here), can someone give me a rough estimate of number of batteries needed for my situation? And how can you connect your battery system to your existing house wiring? Can you have your whole house running off your batteries and then switch back to the grid when the batteries get low?

 Maybe this is possible via one of the high-tech Xantrex inverters that can switch seamlessly to a different power source.. but even so, would I have to wire up totally different lights and sockets for the battery system- or can battery and grid 'share' the same wiring?

Any help would be very much appreciated, im struggling to see if this is a viable solution for me!  :)

tanner0441

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Re: Advise for wind turbine in Ireland
« Reply #1 on: March 05, 2015, 04:35:21 PM »
Hi

I put a small system in for evaluation, I fed nothing back into the grid and only ran lighting from the RE.

What I did was lift live wire for the lighting from consumer unit and connected it to the moving contact on a contactor, the normally closed contact went into the consumer unit. The normally open contact went to the inverter, as did the coil wiring. When the batteries had enough power to run the lights I flicked the inverter on this pulled the contactor in and fed the power from the inverter to the lights. When the battery voltage dropped and the inverter cut out the contactor switched the lights back to the grid.

Not knowing your requirements it is difficult to know what size battery bank and inverter, Also would you be better with one big inverter or several smaller ones.

Brian.


ballycummin

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Re: Advise for wind turbine in Ireland
« Reply #2 on: March 11, 2015, 03:19:06 AM »
Thanks very much for the reply, did you manage to make much of saving to your energy costs?

The more reading I do, the more this seems to be more of a hobby than actually to power your home: the 10-foot design in the book can produce 1kw in strong winds. My house uses a minimum of 1-4kw and occasionally rises to 6-7kw

So id probably need a 5-6kw machine which would be huge and experimental to build!

Has anyone any experiance with: http://kingspanwind.com/products/kw6/ ? Seems too good to be true?

Isaiah

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Re: Advise for wind turbine in Ireland
« Reply #3 on: March 11, 2015, 03:40:36 AM »
cut some of the consumption.once you make your own power you will be more conservative and sort out things you don't really need
Isaiah

DamonHD

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Re: Advise for wind turbine in Ireland
« Reply #4 on: March 11, 2015, 10:23:57 AM »
Absolutely.  I have cut my energy consumption three-fold, while adding two children to the household.

As a consequence my solar PV covers my electricity and gas use fully year-round for carbon footprint and money.

http://www.earth.org.uk/saving-electricity.html

2014 gross consumption figures, ignoring PV, were ~1700kWh electricity and 3000kWh gas.  So the electricity side *averages* under 200W gross consumption.

The renewables is easier after you get rid of 50%+ unnecessary consumption!

Rgds

Damon
Podcast: https://www.earth.org.uk/SECTION_podcast.html

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tanner0441

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Re: Advise for wind turbine in Ireland
« Reply #5 on: March 11, 2015, 04:40:48 PM »
Hi

Reading your post, if your background consumption is a Kw plus look at your usage. When I started, the lighting load on this house was 2.7Kw alone so by changing from incandescent bulbs to CFLs I reduced it to 700 W, I have since where possible gone over to LEDs. Now in the evening with a normal lighting load, TV running  etc. the total load for the house is (at this moment) 480 W and that includes two ponds with pumps and UV filters running.

I took some convincing to start with but the grid is still the cheapest way of obtaining your power. I only have 80W of solar and when I bought it it was still running at about 3GBP per watt it is now less than 1GBP per watt but add the charge controller and inverter, and they haven't dropped  a  great deal in cost.

Find out what your maximum and minimum requirements is for a month, average it out, and that is the minimum you can get away with. Look at your use find out where you can reduce it.  The grid runs, to the great part, 24 hours a day. The wind doesn't always blow, the sun doesn't always shine, you get night time even in the desert, and batteries, unless you put more in than you take out will go flat.

Living on a hill with a decent fast flowing stream is the only way of 24 hour power, but even then the cost of the turbine and alternator will take a long time to recover.

Brian

Flux

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Re: Advise for wind turbine in Ireland
« Reply #6 on: March 11, 2015, 05:00:52 PM »
"Thanks very much for the reply, did you manage to make much of saving to your energy costs?

The more reading I do, the more this seems to be more of a hobby than actually to power your home: the 10-foot design in the book can produce 1kw in strong winds. My house uses a minimum of 1-4kw and occasionally rises to 6-7kw"

If you have grid power then you will be hard pushed to save anything . Alternative energy comes into its own for those off grid and even so it needs careful reduction of all unnecessary loads.

To save if you are on grid you will need a big long term investment. In good sunny regions it is realistic with solar but the initial cost is high and payback will take time. In Ireland , solar may not be viable. If you are in a first class wind area it can be done but not with a tiny turbine.

The average power out of a 1kW turbine is not likely to be much over 150W even on a good site.

If you are on grid then batteries will kill you, it's not an option unless you need backup for grid failure.

With a 1kW turbine you can grid tie and on a really good site you may break even long enough before the inverter dies to make it viable. Feeding back for payment will be too much hassle but using the grid as a buffer should work as long as you use all the turbine is producing in times of wind.

Bigger turbines will do better but the initial cost will be formidable. Saving energy is the way to go.

If you can reduce needs drastically and you are in a first class wind area then grid tie with a 10 footer could be an option. With the mppt of a grid tie inverter a 10ft machine should produce quite well on a clean site with 15mph average wind but the clipper to protect the inverter the initial cost including the inverter will be high, factor in maintenance and see if the payback time is reasonable.

Flux

bob golding

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Re: Advise for wind turbine in Ireland
« Reply #7 on: March 14, 2015, 06:11:18 AM »
i live  the the far west of cornwall,near lands end, so get the same sort of winds as you. usually people are advised to check if they have enough wind. it is also worth bearing in mind you can get too much wind as well. building a turbine to withstand the high winds you will get is a major challenge. my turbine worked well for a few years. but they do need to very well built. not something that is easy to do. maintenance is vital as force ten gales will test your design to the limit. i have given up on wind and moved to solar instead. much less of a headache and about the same cost if you look in the right place you can get panels for around 60p a watt last time i looked. wind is fine in most situations but near the west coast of the UK or ireland it can be a challenge.
if i cant fix it i can fix it so it cant be fixed.