Well you could same about power stations.
And for the pro nuclear brigade apparently it is going to cost about £76 billion to decomission all the old ones.
There is never going to be energy production without envionmental impact.
Would be interesting to know the same about a conventional boiler ...
And usually can be run of gas as well as electricity.
Mary
I would suggest a trip to a place called the Alternative Technology Centre in Wales. I first went in 1982 and have been every few years to watch the latest developments. from what I saw I would go for solar power as the size of wind turbines is silly if you want to power a house or charge batteries. Why not get a diesel generator and run it on old chip fat and vegetable oil - there is no law about it. See some working demonstrations and years worth of research and data for yourself. The staff will also give more info and you get the latest info on insulation.
Also watch out for the latest LED lightbulbs! They look the same as a frosted one but have a coating inside that is similar to what is inside a fluorescent tube. A small
1watt UV LED causes it to light up a brilliant white. So you can imagine what damage this and other low energy devices are causing to power companies - that's why they are putting the price up. It's to reach the amount of profit they promised customers now that demand has fallen with people becoming more energy aware.Philips make the bulb and I have tried some of them out. The 3watt one was best!
I think that's the way to go.
Do we NEED all the power we use?? (as opposed to WANT)
Mary
Evidence?
Not true. But payback isn't an issue.
Which people do every time they switch on lights or the tv of whatever.
>
I reckon I could do it (suitable for camping) for about 200 quid at Maplin.
It is rather windy where I live, slates regularly shifting about on the roof.
Surely if we have a cooling period there will still be the same amount of sunshine.
I'm toying with a DIY version.
That's right. The temperature isn't all that important. when we connected ours up the air temperature was 4C and we got a large cylinder full of water at over 30C in a few hours.
Mary
In message , John writes
and the award for stating the bleedin' obvious goes to ...
A very great deal. David Cameron for one. Grand Designs several times.
We have been down this one many times as you well know.
The NOABL predicted wind speed was optimistic by up to 64%.
There have been noise issues on some sites and quite a number of equipment replacements
What sort of "solar panel" are we talking about? Thermal or photvoltaic, the latter I suspect has a massive enviromental production cost to make the silicon wafers and the process required to turn them into photovoltaic cells. End of life disposal may have toruble with the chemicals/elements that make the cells.
A simple thermal solar panel probably isn't to bad dfor production and there isn't a "nasty chemicals" problem at end of life. A vacuum tube based panel won't be so good.
Fairy Nuff, I was going from memory of reading the rating plates... Still
5.5A @ 14v is still the best part of 80W and bear in mind that 120W panel will only do that in bright, full, sunshine... You'll probably still need one that size to ensure that you have enough power when it's not full bright sushine. And what about night time...on a hot day there's a lot of work for a fridge to do, a hippy friend of mine had his solar power fridge on all day and got a few ice-cubes for gin at sunset
-- [george]
Not much extra, but there's usually a fan as well.
I have a small wine fridge that uses this type of cooler and fan. Rated about 75W IIRC. The main limitation is it can only drop about 15 degrees below ambient - which means it is only going down to 10 or 11 degrees at the moment.
Perhaps, but will need a fairly serious panel...
That is far less likely to pay off alas. The 2kW will be the maximum output of the turbine - probably at a wind speed of 12 m/sec. There are few places in the uk that average half that. Remember also that the power you can recover will be proportional to the *cube* of the wind speed. So halving the wind speed on a 2kW turbine will reduce the output to 500W or so. Note also that they work best with smooth air flow with little gusting and turbulence - which rules them out in most urban environments.
Solar thermal is usually your best bet in the UK if you DIY and build mostly from scrap. You need to chose carefully what to do with the energy though. Charging a heat bank or heating a swimming pool are probably the most useful. Lots of people go for domestic hot water systems, but unless you spend vast amounts on hot water it seems unlikely you will make any return. (most people spend less than 30% of their total heating costs on hot water).
Says who? If it never pays back in financial terms, there is a fair chance it will never pay back in environment ones either.
At my previous house, I estimate my annual hot water costs were about £100. Say a solar system could save me 70% of those costs over the year
- it would take ten years to recover the costs if the system cost £700. Many of the commercial systems cost more than double that.
A system put together from scrap radiators etc may work out ok if you can keep the capital costs low and can afford to donate the time etc.
That depends if it's a peltier type which uses a lot of power or the more expensive but lower consumption compressor type.
Oh, but there are laws that cover how you obtain such fuel. I very much doubt that even a large family would generate enough of its own waste oil to run a generator - so we are into the realms of collecting waste from commercial users, such as chip shops. In order to do that legally, in the UK, you need a waste transfer licence from the Environment Agency. The supplier commits an offence if they allow you to carry the waste oil without a licence, and you commit an offence if you take it without said licence.
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