B&Q Solar

On Sun, 15 Oct 2006 18:51:46 +0100 someone who may be Peter Parry wrote this:-

And did they do a survey of his house and wind measurements over long periods which would be necessary to give specific advice? I doubt it very much.

.. and neither would they, which is what makes the whole thing so ridiculous.

NB this was *not* a solartwin installation.

I probably agree but see below. IMO displacing enough gas to produce a decent roi is good enough.

You miss the point that an expensive "solar" dhw tank was fitted and it replaced an adequate normal one. There was no benefit in the "solar" tank other than increased capacity because it was not configured to make the best of the attributes of the solar heating.

AJH

This strikes me as lacking the means to verify the various claims, I wonder why? John Rumm pointed me to an isp that provides real time graphs of their bandwidth use by different types (ftp, http, e-mail p2p etc) higher in this thread. Now why won't my local council, a leader in sustainable energy provision, publish the same real time graphs for their pv installations. BTW they propose for 3 wind turbines here and as far as I can see average windspeed at 30m above ground is

Of course not, propaganda doesn't need facts. The information to allow a correct answer to be given for an urban environment is freely and easily available. Rather than give it they chose not to use it. They gave an answer which would be wrong for 90% of the population. They deliberately chose to mislead.

This is the problem of greenwash - it is made of lies and deception.

It may have something to do with the only one which has been publicly verified having produced less than a third of its promised output, but I'm sure it isn't.

A few places (Southampton University is one ) do have on line monitoring of experimental PV panels but not turbines. Most wind purveyors seem to prefer the used car salesman's approach and quote the highly scientific output figure of "3,000 average households" or the like. What is pretty clear is that both the availability and the real output invariably fall well below the predicted figures.

Apparently when a local school installed a windmill with data logging intending to make the information available on the schools web site the supplier put a clause in the contract forbidding access to the information from it to anyone outside the school intranet.

There is a vast amount of money being made from subsidy farming, far more than from wind collection and no one wants to rock the boat.

Been reading this discussion with interest as I live in a very exposed and windy location. What would be the best and cheapest way to measure wind speed so I can decide whether a wind generator would ever pay for itself in my location.

On Sun, 15 Oct 2006 22:56:38 +0100 someone who may be AJH wrote this:-

I never claimed that it was. However, their instructions to installers speak about altering existing controls and I imagine other instructions are similar in this respect.

Incorrect.

On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 00:39:33 GMT someone who may be DJT wrote this:-

The equipment is often expensive. However, navitron sell a weather station that may be suitable for under £100.

You probably don't need to, nature has already done it for you. Firstly, if you are in an exposed area away from other buildings the DTI estimator at

is reasonably accurate. If you are in an urban area divide what it says by two at least.

Secondly, and probably more significant, is look at the trees. Use the diagrams half way down the page at

to estimate the wind.

If this all looks good read

In the tradition of DIY :-) A toilet-roll and sticky-backed plastic solution:

Yes that's the sort of thing I meant, the graph could be a better definition and I would have preferred to see the output visualised as a fraction of the installed capacity. Also a view of recent history and the date from which the accumulated total started as well as the accumulated total as a fraction of the installed capacity times uptime. I think this would give a lay person an immediate feel for the possibilities.

That's fairly apparent from comparing the wholesale electricity price with the value of the ROC. It was probably necessary to reward the early adopters like this as we have seen from other subsidies that the incentive has to be very great before people will change.

AJH

On first looking it seems the measuring equipment is nearly as expensive as a small wind generator! If you have the space, and to my mind that means enough room for the wind generator and pole to fall over and not damage anything, I'd have thought just logging dc Volts across a resistive load (same as impedance as generator??) and amps would be simplest.

After that you have a complicated calculation to decide how the generated power fits in with your use. The best scenario I have seen, and I may have mistaken the meaning, is that you can export all your power to the grid via an "approved" inverter, buy back what you generate and use at no net cost, give away any surplus to your (one specific) electricity provider who also then collects and sells the ROCs on all your output and credits you these.

Having seen the goldplating necessary when you are obliged to use approved installers and equipment I'll bet a home grown solution requiring no direct grid interconnect will get a better return.

AJH

The message from Peter Parry contains these words:

They perhaps might. The Dti figures give the load factors for the years since 1998 and that year was the only year 30% was exceeded (30.7%) but as the load factor is calculated crudely by averaging the installed capacity at the beginning and end of each year it probably just means that the new capacity was installed on average later in the year than earlier.

Too true.

The governments own figures also suggest why B.Liar is now so keen on nuclear. The CO2 lifetime output for nuclear is marginally better than that for windpower, a range of 11-22 grams per kWh as opposed to 11-37.

On Fri, 13 Oct 2006 17:33:02 +0100 someone who may be AJH wrote this:-

It is more accurate to say they are complicated and site specific. The end result tends to be complaints from the antis that site specific information is not typical and averages are no use either. They then muddy the waters even further by claims that German wind conditions, geographical dispersal and the way the electrical system operates are similar to the UK.

Have you read the reports that I have referred people to? The answer to your point is in them.

On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 12:17:25 +0100 someone who may be AJH wrote this:-

Financial return? Depends on the circumstances, in particular whether one has an existing external supply. If one doesn't then a stand-alone system will usually be cheaper, but there are costs (financial and environmental) to storage batteries.

On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 12:30:59 +0100 someone who may be Roger wrote this:-

The message from David Hansen contains these words:

Dti

On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 14:18:58 +0100 someone who may be Roger wrote this:-

money down the nuclear hole since the Department of Energy was abolished.