renewable energy/generate-it-yourself

[Anonymous]

On Working Lunch today they had a short piece on the Clear Skies grants and the clear skies home page has the info.

They finish on 5th March, by which time your full application has to be in. They only have £120,000 left to send out. All Solar powered grants have finished.

On April 1st the government announces new grants available.

Whereas we got a max of 33% in England, NI still get up to 50%!!!

Apparently the government say that they don't want the renewable energy to grow up dependant on grants......... What like the railways.............. Save the world with a grant or ruin it with one, which shall I choose....... ah yes big companies have more clout than individuals forgot that bit..... Anyway that's getting too political even for me <IMG SRC="http://www.periodproperty.co.uk/discussing/smileys/smile.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="">

I'm now reconsidering my choice of heating.



Clear Skies

 

[Anonymous]

The scale of the problem:


http://www.vitaltrivia.co.uk/

 

[Anonymous]

I had an experimental solarthermal setup at a previous address, and it was successful.

Solarthermal can be easy, cheap to install, and offer excellant ROI if competently designed. Regrettably so many solar systems are not, and never pay their cost off.

Solar pv has no chance of paying its way unless a grid connection is not present, and would cost a small fortune. PV is an unlikely candidate for home generation.

Solar space heating has the capacity to save far more money and energy than water heating, and system costs are much lower. For home energy saving, solar space heating is normally the best way to go. 2 systems I'd suggest looking at are....

http://builditsolar.com/Projects/SpaceHeating/solar_barn_project.htm
This one is a large space heater with 100% ROI in the US climate. ROI would be lower here because we have a lot of cloudy days during the heating season.

The other one I'm not finding the site for... it consists of a nearly horizontal mirror under each window, which reflects more sun into the room. A small/medium window can gain a few hundred watts this way, which reduces the heating burden noticeably. It also produces around twice the light level in the rooms, which is very welcome in most old houses.

The sort of systems you buy from people marketing themselves as solar professionals and get grants for are another matter. Personally I would stay away from 99% of them. If they were competently engineered systems, which implies a sensible ROI, there would be no need to offer any grants for them.

NT

 

[Anonymous]

Nice post, NT. I love the Gary Reysa’s barn heater, especially the concept of junk being reclassified as thermal mass. Must tell wife.

There are two caveats to your assertion that solar pv has no chance of paying its way. You assume that the price of pv will not fall and that the price of grid electricity will not rise. In the light of recent power price rises, the upcoming gap in generating capacity as older stations close and the incalculable changes as Peak Oil begins to bite, I suggest we will see a very different picture within a decade. In the meantime though, there is a great deal we can do to get ready for the worst without paying fortunes for highly engineered systems.

I just wish I lived in a barn with a big south-facing wall. And a view like Gary’s.

 

[Anonymous]

I understand what you're saying about future energy prices, but are you also saying that pv equipment is likely to fall in price? Do you have a view on that?

 

[Anonymous]

No, I dont assume either of those things. It is you who assume.

I deduce that energy prices will rise, and estimate they'll rise to no more than 2-3 times present cost at most. And further down the line they will fall to below todays prices. PV will never pay for grid connected houses. PV is good for remote houses, but thats all.

PV is mostly the triumph of marketing over substance. Anyone that does the maths can see its a non starter, anyone that googles for home energy gen can see its very low on the list of options, it is one of the most overhyped technologies today.

NT

 

[Anonymous]

I was once involved in the refurbishment of an outdoor swimming pool. A small private club, not a grand liesure type place.

When the car park was laid a few years earlier somebody had the bright idea of laying a grid of old water pipe (back in the days of black pipe) underneath the blacktop. Amazingly it was enough to make the water temperature in the pool quite reasonable - and for just the cost of a length of old black pipe and running a pump.

 

[Anonymous]

Bear in mind that pv equipment cost falling has no effect on ROI of systems installed today or in the near term. It would have to fall a very long way to ever become worthwhile for more than 0.1% of us.

Cost of most things is falling, due to new technologies, improvement in design, production methods, business technique, and global economic growth. So its quite likely PV costs will fall to some extent.

PV is not just uneconomic today, but grossly uneconomic. It is an order of magnitude too expensive to be of widespread use.

Unfortunately there is no PV tech on the horizon that looks promising. A fortune was invested in solar research due to its apparent promise, but there has been no harvest. Of all the popular alt techs its one of the ones with the least promise both now and in the foreseeable future.

Of all the alt techs, PV has one of the highest energy input per watt out, the highest costs, and the lowest chance of ever becoming widely useful, yet it has become the mascot for renewable energy. How ironic.

In 200 years, I hope we will see widespread use of roofing materials with lec gen layers printed on at minimal cost, but there is no likelihood of seeing this become realistic for a long time. PV roofing shingles do exist, but their price ensures they're useful to almost no-one.

NT

 

[Anonymous]

Steady on NT, I agree with most of what you say about PV. But your line "...And further down the line they will fall to below today's prices..." puzzles me. How do you come to that conclusion?

 

[Anonymous]

Presumably on a hot day the fewer parked cars the better, while on a cold day the opposite?

 

[Anonymous]

We all know whats ahead of us in the short and medium term, rising prices, and why.

Long term is quite different. Look at the history of various alt techs: the technologies improve over time, the cost per watt keeps dropping. Windmills are now economic, 20 or 30 years ago they weren't even close. As time goes by, the cost per watt of many of the current non-oil techs will reduce, and at some point - and we're not very far off it now - one will drop to below todays energy prices. And as tech dev continues, cost will keep dropping.

We face a glitch, an energy barrier in the short term. Once its past, energy will become available like never before. The long term energy future is almost certainly one of massive avilability and affordability.

NT

 

[Anonymous]

Pools are especially well suited to solar water heating. A big hosepipe collector can deliver massive output power for a setup cost of under £100. Pipe, polythene, pump, thats all.

Burying one under tarmac is a neat trick, would make it attractive for fancier premises, ugliness being one of the main problems with solar pool heaters.

NT

 

[Anonymous]

On the other hand...



Olduvai Theory

 

[Anonymous]

"The long term energy future is almost certainly one of massive avilability and affordability."

Whoa Man! That sounds like a public info statement on nuclear from the 60's.

Peace & Love & stuff.

I'm not so sure. At least not on PV, I seem to remember that PV panels have an overall cost in terms of both cash and energy. That is they require more energy to produce them in the first place than you get out of them in their quoted lifespan. Is that no longer the case ? I admit I haven't paid much attention to PV.

Ground source and solar water look good but still seem expensive and do not provide an alternative to oil, and I'm not sure they ever will (either as retrofit into an old property or for other use transport, etc)

I think that there are interesting things going on with tokamaks to investigate nuclear fusion (as opposed to fission) but not enough is getting spent on the research, and there is not a good understanding of long term cost/pollution.

I find it difficult to go along with the 'technology will solve all our problems' argument. The evidence seems to be growing that the problem is rather nearer than governments and public opinion realise. Technology takes a long time to go from theory to practical application. You need infrastructure, experience,etc.

But then I'm a loopy greenish socialist.

 

[Anonymous]

> Whoa Man! That sounds like a public info statement on nuclear from the 60's.

Yes, and it must sound odd in the present climate.

I doubt it wil be nuke that gets us there though, alts like wind and so on have an inherently lower cost potential. Nuclear will always have significant millstones round its cost-neck, eg security, disposal, containment and so on

The downside is that this cost reduction may come after we're all dead. But equally it may be sooner.

Meanwhile prices will keep rising, but only so far. The costs of wind and other available alt techs will cap the cost rises. Sale price may go up further as a marketing/political strategy

NT

 

[Anonymous]

what about MCHP - where you have a diesel generator type bioler thing (which you can put veg oil/bio-deisel into) and this produces you elec, the coolant water which is heated when cooling the thing is then put round rads - or something like that.
Plymouth bio-fuels (centre for implosion research)is doing work on this idea. still not free but an interesting idea.

 

[Anonymous]

we've been going round the bend with this decision and looking at all the options and amazing tanks available, etc. I have come to conclusion to go for and old fashioned tank with water storage in the loft but the cylinder/ tank will have 3 coils in it. 1 for wood burner - needs gravity to cylinder and gravity to heat leak rad needs seperate feed and expansion tank, 1 coil for oil which hopefully we won't use much or can replace with a bio option at some point and the 3 rd bottom coil for solar should we afford this in the future. it does mean a slow hot water pressure but have never had this before so don't know why getting wooed by mains pressure options. seems that all the other special tanks have build reg issues, etc with putting wood in or whatever and that the old system is most adaptable to wood, solar, and oil as back up. all this would do hot water and rads would be oil but hopefully the wood fires will diminish need for it to fire up so often.
We have a river of huge preportions near our house but the options seem so expensive.
Went of the ground source heat pumps because they seem to be best in mega insulated houses with underfloor heating and if not will still require large amounts of mains elec to run the system which put me off. I don't like the idea of being totally dependant on an external company and like the simplicity of wood and solar because (hopefully) it is less likely that these options can be take away.

 

[Anonymous]

If you want good pressure without the pressure vessel/certification issues, you can have the hot tank vented and run mains pressure pipe/exchanger through it, so your hot is delivered at mains pressure, but the tank itself is at low pressure.

Wood water heating is likely to be much lower power than oil, so if one has to use a lower rated (and possibly homemade) heat exchanger somewhere it could be on that one. Gravity makes for poor performance, and wood hw doesnt need to be gravity as long as you have one heat dump circuit that is, this could be a radiator instead of hw tank. So in principle you could pump the wood water heating circuit, and possibly even use a microbore heat exchanger. This way you could generate a greater proportion of your hot water from wood burning.

NT