Visited the Homebuilding and Renovation show at NEC and saw for the first time a MicroCHP which really looked the dog's doodahs. It was on the PowerGen stand but of course nobody had any details on how to buy one.
Does anybody know the commercial situation with these ? When will they be available and for how much ?
A press release from Gledhill, the intelligent thermal store manufacturer.
The gas bills are no different to using a normal condensing boiler, but the electricity bills drop by around 1/3, depending on household. As electricity is 4 times the price of gas here, that is a considerable saving to the home owner. As time moves on and more energy efficient appliances are being introduced, so savings may be greater on the electricity side as the Stirling unit would provide more local power than drawing in off the grid.
Then there is the environmental impact of less emissions and less power infrastructure, which may mean less electricity pylons ruining the views of the countryside.
See my recent post on this. The Gledhill web site has a few slide show presentations and a page on the central control system that the power provider may use to operate the units remotely.
_________________________________________ Usenet Zone Free Binaries Usenet Server More than 120,000 groups Unlimited download
The unit in question is a "Whispergen", but don't get your hopes up. They were originally designed to provide power, DHW and heating for yachts and as such they are a tad under-sized for domestic use. The electrical power output is laughably small and they only makes any kind of sense if installed in large numbers and used to feed current back into the grid when supply exceeds demand.
The heat output probably demands use of a thermal store of some sortto buffer the heat generated in the same way. I guess they may well work wonderfully as a source of heat for underfloor heating.
If you look up "Whispergen" you will find lots of information about them on the web. They aren't cheap either, units for boats cost in the region £2300 to £3500.
They can supply about 50% of a homes electricity usage, as most is below
1.1kW. If using below 1.1 kW it turns the meter backwards. Grid-tied._________________________________________ Usenet Zone Free Binaries Usenet Server More than 120,000 groups Unlimited download
Thanks and I will do. Hopefully costs will drop but the key advantage I can see is we have so many short power-cuts that if the heating keeps itself, the lights and computer on during these then it's a big gain. However I will need an LPG one which presumably is some way off.
This brings into question the safety of using such generation devices.
Generators should be isolated from back-feeding onto the supply network, and afaik no meters are yet available to allow the "export" back onto the network for a domestic customer.
I spotted an article about an ex-environment minister (?) Donald Dewer I think ? - who was extolling the virtues of being the first to use a "home generation windmill" that simply needed to be plugged into a 13A socket, but no mention was made of a method of isolating that supply from the network.
There are several wind turbines for home/small business use that drive back into the grid and turn the meter back, albeit not at a 1:1 rate. But none use a 13A plug and socket fortunately !
They've been in use in the UK for some 10 years at least. Maggie's conservative government forced the electricity suppliers to buy back any excess electricity a domestic consumer manages to generate and offer to the grid. To encourage the market to get started, the supplier had to pay for the metering and safety equipment required to prevent backfeeding a failed supply (I don't know if that's still the case). Actually, because the CHP equipment has to sychronise to the grid supply frequency, to a first approximation it can't actually work when there is a mains supply failure. There were some add-on optional products proposed to enable a CHP system to operate when the mains supply has failed, but when I last looked (some time ago), none were actually at product status, only planning.
You get a whole replacement meter setup which does the business. (There's no dial going backwards. You have separate digital meters recording what you used, and what you supplied back to the grid, as the cost per unit in each direction can be quite different.)
Well yes. In the same way as your 'most' baths have about two inches of tepid water.
Not from the meter people i`ve spoken to who are in at the sharp end... (i`m talking at a REC here)
Obviously this REC doesn't talk to its energy retailers then :
Interesting - thanks !
It was about 18 months ago when I asked, so the position might have changed since...
Having killfiled the dribbling idiot a while ago its refreshing to know combi knows nothing about metering either (in addition to everything else). The era of induction disc meters being able to turn backwards disappeared some 10-15 years ago. There is no way any generation would be permitted at any level (transmission or distribution) without islanding protection and proper bi directional metering in place. It's a reality in some areas of the USA for instance to have "Net Metering" but in the UK its just not going to happen because of entrenched interests. Also it would appear that yet again Dr Combi has probably only read about whispergen online - whereas i've used one as a sole source of heat and electricity for months at a time.
I some ways I miss his "two combi's mean you never have to have a cold bath because there is always one working if one goes wrong" ramblings
- but then again perhaps not.
Hi,
I think the turbine referred to is this one touted by one time Energy Minister Brian Wilson -
Just in case anyone reading this is thinking of buying one - do some research first. My personal opinion is that this looks well dodgy. For instance, it is rated at 1KW at 12m/s - i.e. 27mph - not a wind speed commonly found in urban areas.
Alan.
Go and stand on your roof (or ask any roofer) and you might be surprised. Perhaps not 27mph but certainly regularly >20mph.
A pair of idiotic fools. The Whispergen/Powergen units going in, in Manchester are grid-tied. They are "distributed power generation". Don't you just like the Internet? Any halfwit fool can said what he likes, even though he knows sweet FA about the topic. Even though I gave the links to the info he still got it wrong. Such fun.
_________________________________________ Usenet Zone Free Binaries Usenet Server More than 120,000 groups Unlimited download
And you always do.
And the information you provided previously was most useful as well.
Why when you are giving useful information do you need to knock others ? If you didn't do it they wouldn't do it back.
....and the dim idiot Dr Combi evidently doesn't even know what Net Metering is and how this is a completely different concept to Grid Tied.
The whispergen units along with many other types of embedded generation can and are grid tied in the UK. BUT I repeat it again as apparently the stupid f****it failed to understand what I said the first time:
net metering isn't going to happen in the UK because of entrenched interests.
Got it dim wit or is your head completely full of dual combi plumbing arrangements?
Don't you just love internet fools who believe everything they read there?
Presumably you now have a 15 inch c*ck?
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.