OxBowBusiness

Wind Power for the Home

My mind wanders from time to time to the day when I will generate some or all of my own electricity for my home. I was brought up in a town where there was a house, one house, that was powered entirely by a DIY hydro electric system. This takes us back a few decades and was really revolutionary then. Even now, very few of us have the sense to do it!

I'm convinced that solar and wind power are feasible additions to our personal power armoury but I'm still finding the costs prohibitive: payback periods of a minimum of 10 years seem normal. This is the aspect of renewable energy that I'd like to overcome.

Wind power interests me most since it will just take the erection of a small wind fan that will be driven as much as one quarter to one third of the time on average, I think.

I have just spent half an hour or so on the internet looking at home based solutions and I think it's fair to say that the basic kit can be put together at a relatively minimal cost but the eletronic gubbins that go with it add significant costs to say nothing of the labour costs and profit of the experts fitting the entire thing. No problem with people earning a living and making a profit.

A simple pole mounted wind turbine attached to my house would cost, it seems, around £1,500 and they tell me it would save me around £100 per year. I could have it attached to my existinelectricityty system by means of some fancy switching gear and then use it to power my DVD player, computer, fridge and freezer and several lights. That would do me on average, to be fair, I think, since my family is small and shrinking.

I am not selling any systems and my interest is genuine as I really would like to do this. However, the turbines on offer are larger than I thought they would need to be (again no judgement since I cannot assess these things from anything other than on a simple level) so the impact on the aesthetics of the house and neighbourhood are important.

Take a look at this page for some of the information that I have come across. Please note this page gives arguments both for and against home wind farms.

As a matter of interest I was in a friend's garden the other day and he's got some solar power evening lights in the garden ... I've got a few of them now. Cheap to buy ospecialal offer from a well known DIY chain and they charge during the day and switch on automatically at dusk. They are rechargeable battery driven from the sun and are said to stay on for around 6 - 8 hours a night. Since I always leave a patio light on at night, I am now about to save the costs of that. Not sure about the payback since I already use a highly efficient energy saving bulb in the patio light. So there's the convenience factor allied to the solar powered lights as well as the aesthetics: they are relatively discreet.


Duncan Williamson

posted by Duncan Williamson @ 9:01 AM