I have just got back onto the site after 3 weeks or so without Internet or electricity or both - almost everything in our system of wind turbine/ solar panels has gone wrong and I crowned it all by cooking the inverter, ouch, an expensive mistake.
Reason for post, I've got a lengthy backlog of unanswered PMs but I will now try to reply to them all asap. My apologies to any of you who might have thought I was ignoring you - I wasn't, I was tearing my hair out!
May I enquire about the wind turbines and solar panels? Have you cut your house of from the national grid? and produce all your electricity needs by these methods?
In my opinion producing renewable energy is more than worthy as a reason for a few weeks absence!
And here my geekdom comes out (I'm studying environmental science at uni!), what kind of photovoltaic cells are you using? Do you sell your excess energy back to the national grid or is there not really any excess? And eek for your expensive mistake! Hope your power systems function better in the long run.
xxx
I'm posting from our cottage on its own island in the Western Isles of Scotland. We have no mains electricity and use a small wind turbine, plus photovoltaic panels, to charge a bank of 24 volt batteries. These in turn power an inverter which produces 240 volts AC. In the cottage we have both a 24 volt DC circuit and a 240 volt AC circuit, though with the inverter working we run off the 240 volt system most of the time.
We also have an ancient Lister diesel generator which is powering this now since almost everything else is jiggered for the moment. It must be at least 50 years old and was originally designed to start automatically when anything was switched on in the house, but that side of it has long since given up so it needs swinging by hand to start it which is very hard work.
The solar panels are made by BP. They each measure 1 metre by 1/2 metre and produce 12 volts DC. We have 4 wired both in series and parallel to give the necessary 24 volts for our system. At midday, if it is sunny, they produce just over 10 amps but of course they're doing nothing at night and very little on a grey wet day.
The wind turbine was made in the US and given enough wind produces a nominal 400 watts (16 amps) but I've actually had 23 amps out of it in half a gale.
Overall, developing the system has been very satisfying except at moments like this when things suffer problems. Happily this is rare and most of the time we live with adequate power and no electricity bills. But the Western Isles are windy and in many parts of the UK a wind turbine for domestic use would not be a viable proposition.
Don't be fooled by my smooth skin. The deepest scars are the ones unseen.
Remember compliments you received, forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how..~ Baz Lurhman.
Letting it get to you - You know what that's called? Being alive. Best thing there is. Being alive right now that's all that counts. ~ Doctor Who "The Doctors Wife" 06.November.2011
Miiikeee, I should make it clear that our system has been designed to suit our holiday cottage where we live a fairly spartan existence. It can in no way cope with any heavy current draw such as electric heaters or, still less, an electric cooker; but it does provide enough power for lighting, television and this computer. We run the Lister generator for hot water for baths, though we do have a system which automatically dumps excess battery voltage into an extra DC immersion heater in the hot water tank.
In terms of cost, the wind turbine is about £700, the solar panels about £1000, batteries about £500 and the inverter £3-400 but, as I've said, it's not a system which would suit the average household in UK which uses very much more power.
We also had a woodburner with a back boiler which did hot water and there've been times in winter when I've sat snug in winter burning driftwood off the beach, watching TV or reading by my own green power supply, and eating fish or fowl which I've gathered myself - all very satisfying!
