The Great Winter Heating Experiment

[Jane Smith]

I want one! I used to have an old Land Rover, and it was fantastic. I could go just about anywhere in it. Then I went and had another baby and had to sell it as there was only room for one child-seat in it. We replaced it with a Discovery, which is no fun at all. But it does have heating, and a radio.

If I had an electric Land Rover I wonder if I'd be able to stick a little wind turbine and PV panel on it? That would be even better.

 

[Lime]

I want one! I used to have an old Land Rover, and it was fantastic. I could go just about anywhere in it. Then I went and had another baby and had to sell it as there was only room for one child-seat in it. We replaced it with a Discovery, which is no fun at all. But it does have heating, and a radio.

If I had an electric Land Rover I wonder if I'd be able to stick a little wind turbine and PV panel on it? That would be even better.

I still have an old series 1 with just three seats in the front.
(Plenty of room for batteries in the back)

Heating?!
Radio??!!
What's that?

 

[Gervase]

I've got a Ninety, and that's almost as basic. Not a lot of point in a radio, really, as you'd never hear it anyay.
Still, it's nearly 23 years old, still going strong, and regarded with the fondness one usually has for an old, smelly but affectionate dog. Smelly being the word, as it reeks like a chippie thanks to the cheapo rapeseed oil I bung in the tank.

 

[skier-hughes]

The turbine is next to a bank of rhododendrons, a good way away from the trees. I'll see if I can post a photo or two here, if you like. The house will be mighty fine when it's finished. For now we have a two up, two down buried in the middle of it, and the rest is a bit haphazard.

I meant is that the turbine as seen in the picture up by the tree, as it's ahrd to tell. I wasn't expecting it to be next to the trees.

Did they come out and do a site survey to see if the area was suitable for a turbine?

Graham

 

[Jane Smith]

Sorry, Graham, I misunderstood. I hope you can work out where it is from the photo I posted here--it is a bit clearer.

We did have a site survey several years ago, but had all ready worked out that we had an excellent site for a turbine, and where the turbine should go. There's a lot of information on the internet about it, and we got a book or two from the CAT.

I think it was Penners who asked what we do on warm, windy days when we don't want any heating: we use electricity elsewhere. I always have lots of washing to do, with two small boys, two dogs and too much mud outside, and the tumble-dryer sucks power up like I drink gin. Then I could make a margarita with the blender (I like it like a sloppy sorbet, with lots of ice). To be honest this hasn't happened yet: we did run the generator once or twice last summer as there wasn't quite enough wind to keep us going. We have a south-facing roof which would be excellent for PV panels, and could fit about 2kW on there; but we're concentrating on another bit of renovation first so they'll have to wait.

 

[Penners]

the tumble-dryer sucks power up like I drink gin. Then I could make a margarita with the blender

Jane

Never mind yer electric Land Rover dreams - it seems to me that the best thing you could do with that surplus power is run a still.

 

[bournonite]

Well I've now gotten well into the renting out of the top floor of this place. I survive well on the woodburner - which heats 12 rooms on the other two floors nicely. The apartment is let out. 2 bed, kitchen, bathroom, lounge, by the week to tourists. I had no idea of what townies see as comfortable - I was up there the other day and the heat was unbearable - I was sweating within seconds. I never run the heating here except when people are in residence - and only then turn it to a flow temp of about 60 degrees - the guests still turn on two electric convectors, up full bore, and leave them on all the time. I now get sneaky - as soon as they are out of the apartment to do their grockeling, I turn the power to the apartment off until they come back. I worked out it was costing about £100 a week in LPG to heat the apartment - not much of a return when they pay £175 a week in winter - !! Add the cost of electricity - I'm probably giving them a present of some power ...

I'm off to research Janes turbines - think one of them will go very well here...

Pete

 

[Lime]

Well I've now gotten well into the renting out of the top floor of this place. I survive well on the woodburner - which heats 12 rooms on the other two floors nicely. The apartment is let out. 2 bed, kitchen, bathroom, lounge, by the week to tourists. I had no idea of what townies see as comfortable - I was up there the other day and the heat was unbearable - I was sweating within seconds. I never run the heating here except when people are in residence - and only then turn it to a flow temp of about 60 degrees - the guests still turn on two electric convectors, up full bore, and leave them on all the time. I now get sneaky - as soon as they are out of the apartment to do their grockeling, I turn the power to the apartment off until they come back. I worked out it was costing about £100 a week in LPG to heat the apartment - not much of a return when they pay £175 a week in winter - !! Add the cost of electricity - I'm probably giving them a present of some power ...

I'm off to research Janes turbines - think one of them will go very well here...

Pete

It would seem that a slot meter is next on the list of items to install!

 

[yoofookinwah]

Lordy, how the other halves live.

I have just bought a sleeping bag.

 

[NT]

If the turbine is able to handle it, but the rest of the system cant, it would not be too hard to add an extra dummy load that loads the turbine when it sees high enough rpm, and thus makes use of the extra power.
NT

It might not be too hard for you but it's way beyond me!

We do have four dump-loads (three storage heaters and a convector heater) installed all ready, and have provision for a fifth one which we've not yet got around to installing: they come on when the batteries are full and we're not drawing sufficent load from the system to absorb the incoming power. Do you mean we could add more of those, or am I barking up the wrong tree again/as usual? I do like the idea of getting too much power out of our turbine. You should have seen it belting round again today. Lovely!

If I understand you correctly, and if you understand the technicalities correctly, neither of which I could guarantee, then you have a windgen that may or may not be able to produce 9kW, but a charge controller only rated to 6kW. And your dump loads are all on the battery side, not the windgen output side.

If this is the case (probably down to about 1% chance of that by now) then when the windgen produces 9kW you cant use that extra 3kW, regardless of what dump loads you have. The solution is then to add another dump load but put it on the windgen's output, independantly from the charge controller.

Since you have several dump loads, they will either all turn on together or turn on in sequence. If the latter, each one getgs power progressively less often, and the very last dump load, the one being proposed, would only ever see power when windgen output exceeded 6kW, which would not be very often. Thus to make it workable it would need to be a minimum cost load. The logical answer to that is an electrode heater, they dont come any cheaper than that. What this means is sticking a bit of metal into the water tank and feeding the power through the water to heat it. Yes theyre quite safe, as long as wired in ssensibly. And with a bit of electronics they can be made variable loads.

Another possilbe dump load is a basic resistance wire UFH system.

However, whether its worth your time reading if you're not already upto speed on all that is another question.


PS its not often one sees a tumble dryer run on home made leccy. Something much more energy efficient:
http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?title=Clothes_Dryer


NT

 

[Jane Smith]

"If I understand you correctly, and if you understand the technicalities correctly, neither of which I could guarantee, then you have a windgen that may or may not be able to produce 9kW, but a charge controller only rated to 6kW. And your dump loads are all on the battery side, not the windgen output side.

"If this is the case (probably down to about 1% chance of that by now) then when the windgen produces 9kW you cant use that extra 3kW, regardless of what dump loads you have. The solution is then to add another dump load but put it on the windgen's output, independantly from the charge controller."

At present (and as I understand it!) the wind turbine controller feeds power to the inverter, which controls the power supply to the house, manages battery charging, and switches on the diesel gen-set when there's no wind (which is hardly ever, although it is a bit slow today). When the batteries are full and the inverter is not taking so much power from the system, the wind turbine's controller sends power to the dump loads via a series of relays in the control box. They come on one at a time, so we judge the amount of extra power we're generating by the number of dump loads which are on. It's a happy day here when we're quad-dumping but I still like it when we're only single-dumping.

"Since you have several dump loads, they will either all turn on together or turn on in sequence. If the latter, each one getgs power progressively less often, and the very last dump load, the one being proposed, would only ever see power when windgen output exceeded 6kW, which would not be very often. Thus to make it workable it would need to be a minimum cost load. The logical answer to that is an electrode heater, they dont come any cheaper than that. What this means is sticking a bit of metal into the water tank and feeding the power through the water to heat it. Yes theyre quite safe, as long as wired in ssensibly. And with a bit of electronics they can be made variable loads."

The dump loads come on in sequence and are (in this order and remember I have a hopeless memory and haven't checked), a 0.7kW storage heater, two 1.5kW storage heaters, and finally a 3kW convector. The convector heater comes on most days when it's properly windy but only if I've run out of dirty clothes to wash (two young boys, two dogs, poultry, part-derelict house and acres of mud means this hardly ever happens) or have not plugged in extra electric heaters.

The usual way to use dump loads is to use immersion heaters installed in the central heating system, inside a bit of drainpipe, with a heat-sensitive pump attached. So that as the dump load comes on the water heats up and is pumped round the system. Great, except that if we used that system a lot of the dumped heat would disperse into the unused bit of the house, whereas with our storage heaters we get the benefit of it straight away. And if we used the fat pipe idea and there was only one dump load operating, the difference in temp would be negligible when spread around the house whereas at present it's concentrated in the room we use the most.

The problem with adding further dump loads and keeping the turbine producing the whole 9kW is that the controller, which is the first interface between the house and the turbine, might be damaged. Ask me how I know. Go on, ask.

 

[Jane Smith]

OK, don't ask. I'm going to show you anyway.

This is inside the wind turbine controller box, and demonstrates quite nicely why it had to be toned down a little bit.



Click on it and it should enlarge. Those pale blue little boxes in the top right are the dump load relays, along with their nice orange cables.

 

[NT]

"If I understand you correctly, and if you understand the technicalities correctly, neither of which I could guarantee, then you have a windgen that may or may not be able to produce 9kW, but a charge controller only rated to 6kW. And your dump loads are all on the battery side, not the windgen output side.

"If this is the case (probably down to about 1% chance of that by now) then when the windgen produces 9kW you cant use that extra 3kW, regardless of what dump loads you have. The solution is then to add another dump load but put it on the windgen's output, independantly from the charge controller."

Well remarkably it looks like I was guessing right at each step there.

At present (and as I understand it!) the wind turbine controller feeds power to the inverter, which controls the power supply to the house, manages battery charging, and switches on the diesel gen-set when there's no wind (which is hardly ever, although it is a bit slow today). When the batteries are full and the inverter is not taking so much power from the system, the wind turbine's controller sends power to the dump loads via a series of relays in the control box. They come on one at a time, so we judge the amount of extra power we're generating by the number of dump loads which are on. It's a happy day here when we're quad-dumping but I still like it when we're only single-dumping.

Right. What you're calling the invertor is a multi function item doing the job of charge controller, invertor, and for want of a better phrase, system supervisor or load controller.

The problem with adding further dump loads and keeping the turbine producing the whole 9kW is that the controller, which is the first interface between the house and the turbine, might be damaged. Ask me how I know. Go on, ask.

Hehe, I was about to ask but now I know. Looks like you log in here a lot more often than I do.

The solution I proposed would solve this, as your power limitation bottleneck is with the controller aka miltufunction-invertor-thing. What I propose(d) is to connect another dummy load with its own independant ontroller to the output of the windgen. Your present controller/invertor wont see this at all, wont even know it exists.

But this is only workable if the windgen can happily produce 9kW, or at least >6kW. Its no good doing it and ending up letting the magic smoke out of a windgen that cant handle >6kW, so its reasonably likely you couldnt safely do it anyway.


However, having said all that, getting your appliances more energy efficient is generally much cheaper than increasing system output. And the tumble dryer is an easy target, being replaceable with a closet dryer that takes less electricity and less physical energy to operate. Not that you want to I'm sure.

http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?title=Clothes_Dryer


NT

 

[Jane Smith]

Yep, the inverter is a multi-function thingy which controls all sorts of things.

The wind turbine didn't suffer at all from producing 9kW: it was all the other bits that had trouble with it! I'll speak with Bob, who installed ours, and see what he thinks about putting in a dummy load (as you call it) prior to the controller: without being too technical, though, would it be possible to take that extra energy out of the system without draining power off before the house and battery are serviced?

As far as the closet dryer goes, it looks like a brilliant way to save even more power but here, the weak link is me. I have Reynaud's disease, which is really just excessively bad circulation in my hands and feet. I can't handle wet clothes for long enough to hang them up: I can barely get them into the dryer. The wet makes my fingers get really cold, and if they go too far I start to get little ulcers which are the precursors to gangrene. Lovely! However: if we do move on with our stables renovation (big, scary project) we'll include one there, as it sounds ideal.

 

[Moo]

That's a very good argument for getting one (or two?) of those washer-dryer machines. A few subtle hints round about birthday/anniversary/xmas ...?

 

[skier-hughes]

That's a very good argument for getting one (or two?) of those washer-dryer machines. A few subtle hints round about birthday/anniversary/xmas ...?

Or just around the time Hubby says why isn't my dinner on the table and you show him your fingers and say... as soon as a washer dryer is in the utility!!

 

[Jane Smith]

"That's a very good argument for getting one (or two?) of those washer-dryer machines. A few subtle hints round about birthday/anniversary/xmas ...?"

"Or just around the time Hubby says why isn't my dinner on the table and you show him your fingers and say... as soon as a washer dryer is in the utility!!"

Good grief. Here was I thinking I lived in the 21st century yet it would appear that we live in the Dark Ages.

1) If I want something I don't drop hints to my husband, hoping he'll think me a wife good enough to reward with a washer/dryer... I wouldn't have married him if he had been the sort of man to consider a washer/dryer an appropriate gift for a birthday or anniversary. I prefer to earn money myself so that I can buy what I need, when I need it, without reference to anyone else.

2) On the single occasion that my husband has demanded to know why his dinner wasn't on the table, the answer was that the dog had eaten it while my husband was calling me downstairs to eat the food that he has cooked. Bless his heart.

Any questions? No? Good.

 

[Nemesis]

I've just had to help myself to a large single malt to get over the shock... they were joking - weren't they?

Good grief.

 

[Nimster]

Jane, is your house on a little back road near Hathersage? I think I recognise it from the picture - if it's the one I think, I'm very jealous!

 

[skier-hughes]

I certainly was joking!!

Though it seemed to have served one good purpose if Evelyn managed a nice malt.....

Graham