You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
My thoughts are that if the current nastiness happens again in the winter we will run out of power as well as food.
So ,maybe this is the year to produce some power at home. Firstly to power the fridges we have and produce a bit of light.
Obviously we would need a battery and panels but is it worth adding a wind turbine for the cloudy days?
What could we get for a budget of £15000 and how easy is it to take it with us if we move?
We face East but do have a small section of roof that faces south. Are turbines best on the roof?
is it worth adding a wind turbine for the cloudy days?
No.
Power output is the square of the size.
Halving the size = a quarter of the output. Keep halving until you have a tiddler that won't rip the roof off, plus turbulence from other buildings, trees, the ground, and it's not great.
Then get the annual or biannual service charge for a mechanical device....
I helped run two 4kw mini turbines on 7m high poles halfway up a Scottish mountain with barely any trees around. The annual service cost was about 1/3 the power they generated. Then when one of them shattered some blades it was game over... They had a life of less than a decade.
He’s right.
Unless ridgeblade is available and works. It’s been a long time coming though and I’m not sure if it’s commercially available.
We rely on oil where we are and would like to make a move towards solar hot water system. However, we currently do not have the funds at present. Are there still any worthwhile grants about at all? If we can at least generate hot water in the summer months, it would ease the burden on our oil.
My thoughts are that if the current nastiness happens again in the winter we will run out of power as well as food.
There is currently more food sold per day in the UK than at any other time. There is no scenario that reduces the supply of food. There is no scenario where this affects energy supply
On a snow day the shops opposite us lose their power .
Reason being that when they converted the offices to flats they didn't upgrade the essential gubbins.
So the flats get heat and their washing done , the shops are stuffed.
I'm assuming a winter with more people home and engineers getting poorly will mean power cuts
Power would just be rationed at worst.
Just get some solar panels and a battery bank. You can always charge the batteries from a bike on a turbo trainer 😉
Solar power has really come down in price over the last few years and you should be able to get a good deal. It's the battery system that will be the expensive part.
I have solar panels with a solar iboost for charging the hot water with a immersion heater. I don't pay for hot water between the middle of march and the middle of October. Over winter we get the odd day when it's sunny and not cloudy.
I’m assuming a winter with more people home
My apologies that makes sense
As above wind is pointless on this scale
I suspect the hardest part by far is the battery. Did you plan to run an inverter and power your normal sockets? A Tesla power wall is £7000 plus VAT. It's 13.5 kWh. A useful amount for lighting and gadgets.
The big question wound be how many panels to charge it in a day in winter?
We have 4kwh solar panels ( for about 5 years now), and a Tesla Powerwall 2 battery.
We live in South Wales.
The PW2 was installed about halfway through 2017.
The lifetime figures since mid 2017 are
Home usage 14905 kWh
Solar energy produced 9933 kWh
From the PW2 4294 kWh
From the Grid 6971 kwh
To the grid 1172 kWh ( on the occasions when the PW2 is full, usually in the height of summer.
Therefore, if you price 1 kWh @ £0.16p
Home usage - from the grid
14905 x £0.16 = 2384
Actual purchased from the grid
6971 x £0.16 = £1109
This also includes 95% of home charging for our Nissan Leaf EV car , approx 7,000 miles a year.
For us it works really well, considering we haven’t bought petrol or diesel , and the generated electricity powers our house and car.
Also, we get £800 per year Feed in tariff payment tax free
Denis how much was your kit and install?
Our house had panels already fitted, they are the leased type so we get to use all we can and the rest is fed back in.
No idea how much we get out of them, we did make sure when we bought washing machine, dishwasher and tumble dryer that they all have delay timers so that we can stagger when they run during the day.
Eskay
If you have a hot water cylinder I hope you've fitted an immersun type diverter.
Possibly the best use you can get from panels.
we haven’t bought petrol or diesel , and the generated electricity powers our house and car
Denis you paint a rosy picture and I agree that PV is great, but it's not much use for the 4 months of the year when usage is at its maximum and generation is at its lowest (sometimes 1Kw/day or less).
As for the Powerwall, have you come up with a payback period yet compared to the lifespan of the unit?
Do the numbers add up yet?
The solar panels were about £6500 back in 2017.
The PW2 was £6750
More of a long term investment in many ways.
Now retired we wanted to reduce our outgoings, so panels , battery and EV car seemed the right choice.
Energy costs, electricity and petrol/ diesel only going one way.
Also much better for the environment also, which is a very big factor for us.
Don’t plan on moving house either.
Probably more like three months of the year that are low.
You really need to look at it for a year as a total.
The numbers add up for us.
Could have bought one of those £25000 cars and just watched the depreciation fall off it over the years, plus the petrol or diesel to feed it, plus the servicing, cam belt, erg issues ( yes I had those in the past).
Well worth it.
If the power went down on Christmas Eve and we used up the power in the battery but the power came back on on Christmas Day would we be able to top the battery up from the grid?
Or would we have to wait for March before it was full again?
In the event of a power cut, you have no electricity for the house in the UK.
I believe it’s a safety device , not sure of the real reason why.
The battery will naturally charge from the solar panels if the panels are producing more than the household demand.
Some energy suppliers allow charging to the PW2, quite useful if you can make use of off peak electricity rates.
Charge the battery for cheap night rates, use the energy in the day when the electricity is at its most expensive.
No hot water cylinder in our system unfortunately sharkbait
I believe it’s a safety device , not sure of the real reason why
Without an automatic isolation switch the PW2 will back feed I to the grid and potentially zap line workers.
Same reason why a grid connected PV system will automatically disconnect from the house if there's a power cut.
Ironic but necessary.
Powerwall has 13.5kWh capacity, Tesla reckon on 15kWh usage per day. Personally if I was going for the absolute worst case I wouldn't be relying on it for anything but the shortest outages.
FWIW I don't think you have anything to worry about but ask me again in a month. We've been caught on the hop but very quickly made plans for resiliency. Generation isn't going anywhere and if it actually did fail a powerwall is going to make naff all difference.
Whilst solar panels are a really good idea, they need to be linked to some form of battery storage.
The problem with the solar panel installation, is that most people are in work whilst the energy generation is n progress.
Having a storage battery allows the energy to be used effectively for the home owner.
The only downside to this is the initial cost.
We need the government to increase the incentives to allow households to generate green energy and reduce the demand on coal / nuclear powered stations.