[DCBBGB]

Hi all,

I live in a very windy location being on a hill top at 150m elevation in South Wales. In a mile radius from my house are 2 wind turbines spinning most days of the year. Does anyone know about smaller size wind turbines I could use to bring electricity to my house  (given the fact I am currently renting and do not own the farm) and your experience in setting them up and the returns you might have had on it (and costs of course  ).

[Creagan]

I was quoted £30K to have a 5kW turbine installed a couple of years ago.
You need to look up your location on the NOALB database which will give you an indication of the likely wind power available to you.
For our site, including the feed in tarrif payments, we would have been looking at around £2500/yr as well as essentially free eledtricit for ourselves.

[henchard]

A lot of farmers have had problems with the reliability (and not getting the promised returns) of wind turbines with some suppliers going into liquidation. Now that subsidies have been cut and the boom time seems to be over I'd say tread carefully and do a lot of research.

[steve_pr]

Agree entirely with Henchard.


We looked (briefly) at a turbine a couple of years ago, the first supplier went bust before we got beyond the initial survey stage. The second advised against a turbine in our location (at least he was honest) since the proposed site was too close to the cym and would get turbulent air (the death of turbines). Prices looked around £20K and upwards for a 5kw system (which would produce less than 2 most of the time) so the sums just didn't add up.  We finally went solar PV instead, just before the last FIT drop in April last year.


I have been told that the honeymoon is effectively over for wind power (small ones anyway) as the tariffs fall, it is now too late for PV which only leaves ground source heat, but the installation cost is high there and you need a fair amount of space (not a problem for us).


The final twist in the saga is my neighbour had a 50-60kw turbine installed (fortunately we cannot see it from the house).  Took almost 2 years to get installed, worked for about 3 months and then the overrun mechanism blew up in the gales and it has been stationary for the last couple of months waiting for replacement parts (which have now arrived, they are just waiting for a calm day to come and install - far chance here in West Wales this year!!!).  He is well cheesed off with no free electricity given all the wind we have had, and believe me, there are few things more useless than a windmill that doesn't turn!!!


On top of that, just put some more kerosene in the oil tank - less than 34p per litre (I was paying 63p 3 years ago)!. I know the price of oil will go up eventually, but it makes you wonder if the investment in renewables is quite so justifiable at present (at least from the financial point of view).

[Dav275]

FWIW  I thought I'd add our experience of  using a wind turbine.   We've built an energy efficient, off grid house on a relatively exposed hillside in SW Scotland.  We have solar PV panels, a diesel generator and a small (2kW) wind turbine. These all feed a large battery bank which powers the house.

The house is 4 bedrooms, and has the normal range of  electrical appliances etc., although we use LPG for cooking.

The solar panels are the most effective - in summer, we have plenty more power than we need. In winter, the generator is needed daily - roughly about 2-3 hrs each evening to top up the battery bank. It also starts up if using a washing machine or other 'heavy use' appliance.

Our wind turbine is often turning but needs a stiff wind (about 25mph + ) before it generates much power and mostly never does more than slow down the rate of discharge of our battery bank.  On the plus side, it is able to withstand the 60 /70 mph winds we have had recently. On those nights it is useful, but they are inconsistent.

My dream is to add a micro hydro system, using the river we have at the bottom of our site. that could provide a steady, reliable feed into our system, especially during the dark, wet winter months.

In summary, I'm glad we got the turbine as an addition, but we could not rely on it alone.

Hope this helps.