has anyone got a wind turbine?

[Carrerahill]

4 minutes ago, Wil said:

I did have a self installed 1kW wind turbine...

 

It died in a storm after about 9 months of generating very little. It was a total bodge job, but in comparison to my solar it did almost nothing... It was good to have and I miss it's minor contributions on overcast winter days and nights.

 

What a shame! That's sad!

[Wil]

It was a sad day indeed. It's still sat in the shed awaiting a new set of blades and a better mounting structure!

 

It managed to bend a scaff pole to 45degrees on it's way down too... My self installed bodge didn't include a good way of getting it up and down in the event of high winds, so was kind of inevitable it was going to overload at some point.

[saveasteading]

If I was to get one it would be for an outbuilding where the noise was far enough away and power demand low, rather like the ones on yachts that can power 3 lights and a radio.

 

[SteamyTea]

14 hours ago, saveasteading said:

If I was to get one it would be for an outbuilding where the noise was far enough away and power demand low, rather like the ones on yachts that can power 3 lights and a radio.

Boat ones tend to be low power devices (200 to 600 W), put them on land and they will produce even less.

Power generation is proportional to the cube of the windspeed.

 

[saveasteading]

3 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

put them on land and they will produce even less.

true. There is nearly always a wind even in harbour.  but on a shed roof in the right spot, just to run the led lights.

[SteamyTea]

18 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

just to run the led lights.

Get a half decent battery powered one.

 

[saveasteading]

8 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

a half decent battery powered one.

A battery powered windmill?

No, it is all hypothetical, I won't be getting a wind turbine?

[SteamyTea]

10 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

A battery powered windmill?

No, shed light.

[ReedRichards]

On 13/01/2022 at 06:32, Mike_scotland said:

So i got a rough quote back from a wind turbine guy a 6w turbine is around 35k!!! Jesus haha

 

6 W or 6 kW?  If it's the former I can do you one cheaper.  

[Dave Jones]

water turbine all day long.

[SteamyTea]

2 hours ago, Dave Jones said:

water turbine all day long.

If you think getting planning for a wind turbine us hard, even harder with a water one.

[Mike_scotland]

On 15/01/2022 at 18:39, ReedRichards said:

 

6 W or 6 kW?  If it's the former I can do you one cheaper.  

6kw sorry. What you looking at for one mate

[ReedRichards]

I was joking but a marine wind turbine costing, say, £1.25 k should very comfortably give you 6 W; the one I looked at said 160 W rated power.  You would need to mount it on a scaffold pole and then you would need an inverter and wiring. 

[Wil]

That one I posted that died above, was about £800 all in for inverter and controller plus probably another £100 of scaff and mounting brackets. As above, stuck on an old stable away from everything else.

 

It tended to gust (funnily enough) rather than constant and would often overspeed and dump to a resistor. In a strong wind it would do about 100Wh constantly with peaks of up to 600W instantaneously.

 

Currently wondering whether I can homebrew some VAWT blades to attach to the hub as it's only really the blades that are knackered.

Edited January 17, 2022 by Wil

[SteamyTea]

21 minutes ago, Wil said:

Currently wondering whether I can homebrew some VAWT blades to attach to the hub as it's only really the blades that are knackered.

If you have one blade that is intact, find a GRP company and see if they can copy it.

[Wil]

 

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

If you have one blade that is intact, find a GRP company and see if they can copy it.

 

Eeenteresting. Hadn't thought of that approach. Only problem with that is I need to come up with a better mounting system too!! ? Will go and google GRP firms locally... thanks!

[SteamyTea]

6 minutes ago, Wil said:

 

 

Eeenteresting. Hadn't thought of that approach. Only problem with that is I need to come up with a better mounting system too!! ? Will go and google GRP firms locally... thanks!

They would probably have to make a simple, single sided mould, but should be able to modify the mountings.  May not perform quite as well, but would be a relatively easy job.

The small Proven WT had plywood vanes.

[Wil]

Sorry I meant mounting system for the pole and furling system. The blades are well held on fortunately!

[Kelvin]

Anyone looked into these:

 

https://flowerturbines.com/locations/europe/

 

I’ve contacted them twice but they aren’t very forthcoming with information beyond what’s on their website. 

[SteamyTea]

Just the name would put me off.

[JohnMo]

Just took a look at the largest one they do.

 

Production of power will be in the range of 1 kilowatt hour for an hour of 6 meters per second wind for a single turbine.

 

Pretty low output for a 6m turbine.

[saveasteading]

NO. It is a gimmick and an expensive one.  

 

To put it in perspective, about 15 years ago at Ecobuild in London there were 20 companies displaying wind turbines. I spoke to every one, and they were all commercially unviable, just gimmicks.

That dropped to none over a few years.

I haven't been for 3 years but there was one at last visit and it was basically a yacht model, plus another fixed to a lamp-post, so it could run an led light for one night, off mains.

[JohnMo]

Unless there a gale blowing the generation is best of nothing, if there's a gale blowing they shut themselves down.

 

Big one are ok, small domestic ones not much use.

 

And still the SAP assessors insist on putting as a recommendation on their reports.

[saveasteading]

2 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

SAP assessors

I sat through many a talk by BRE about SAP, EPC and Breeam and never got a sensible answer about any queries. 

The presenters were simply that. The boffins I met who created the nonsense computer suites (garbage in , garbage out) didn't really understand what they were doing either, and it is they who put in the stuff about turbines, air conditioning....and for Breeam, whether there are buses running or furry animals introduced.

 

We bought the EPC computer suite and played with it, to get good answers.  Not what you are supposed to do, but showed where the junk bits of  formulae were, to avoid them. 

Then all these years pass and .....no change.

I think you get bonus points for a water turbine too, regardless of its efficiency. (See Prodave experiment).

[DOIGAN]

Hi Mike,

I stay in Orkney and it's very windy here. There are windmills everywhere. I think most were installed when the grants and feed in tariff were big.

I just installed a 6kW/h solar array and have 15kW/h battery storage. In my opinion this is the way to go. 

System was installed at end of March this year and has generated 3300kW. 

Agree about solar gain being poor in winter but I am now on Octopus Go and charge my batteries up during the cheap rate. Put the underfloor heating on and do any washing etc during this period. Only been on this tariff for a week but my consumption has been 134. Only cost me about £10.

I cannot complain. Come April I expect to get maximum solar gain and not need much if anything from the grid for most of the year.

Unfortunately my array is on an East facing roof so do suffer low solar gain this time of year but good in spring summer. In hindsight I would fit an East/west array to maximize sunlight hours. Hope my experience helps.