Inspector
Nyuck, Nyuck, Nyuck!
Okay I missed the part where we went from wind power to water power. 
Pete
Pete
DIY wind turbine....
- Thread starter Jameshow
- Start date
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sploo
Somewhat extinguished member
It's just another fluid. Only a bit wetterOkay I missed the part where we went from wind power to water power.
Pete
Terry - Somerset
Established Member
Turbines operate best offshore where they are relatively unaffected by turbulence from hills, building etc. The larger they are they better the chance of them being in an uninterrupted airflow.
Small land based turbines suffer from turbulence and ground effects. If taller to minimise this, the cost of the tower relative to output becomes uneconomic. They may be useful for very remotes locations but noise and vibration makes them unsuited to urban settings.
Contrast with solar - roof mounted panels are easily absorbed into an urban environment, although output ceases at sunset.
Governments may be very happy that people are encouraged to install their own generation but I seriously wonder whether is makes real sense - is it better to adorn 250 rooftops to generate 1MW each year, or fill a single large field with several thousand PVs.
In aggregate the output may be the same, but I would intuitively expect the investment and running cost to be very different with economies of scale on PV procurement, installation and maintenance.
Small land based turbines suffer from turbulence and ground effects. If taller to minimise this, the cost of the tower relative to output becomes uneconomic. They may be useful for very remotes locations but noise and vibration makes them unsuited to urban settings.
Contrast with solar - roof mounted panels are easily absorbed into an urban environment, although output ceases at sunset.
Governments may be very happy that people are encouraged to install their own generation but I seriously wonder whether is makes real sense - is it better to adorn 250 rooftops to generate 1MW each year, or fill a single large field with several thousand PVs.
In aggregate the output may be the same, but I would intuitively expect the investment and running cost to be very different with economies of scale on PV procurement, installation and maintenance.
The levelized cost for freestanding commercial installation of solar in the US is 1/2 the levelized cost for rooftop. Put differently, if you could buy into a co-op that managed open ground installation and maintenance of solar arrays, you could afford to buy generation power at half the cost or buy twice as much at the same cost.
This begs the question of why do people put them on their roof tops, and I think the answer is three ways:
1) at least here, you have the right to put them on your roof and it's simple to do without coop agreements, etc, bad agents
2) People want their stuff on their roof - like "it's not safe unless I have it"
3) in a lot of semi-rural spaces here, there is opposition to solar farms because of the way they look, but not on roofs.
We (family) sold 270 acres a couple of years ago in an area that was being considered for solar farms. It's an area where there's a moratorium on anything other than residential development. In the end, the township zoning board was playing to the people on small patches and not the folks on big ones - as in, when it came to getting a variance for solar, the complaints of "I could see it looking out of my window and I don't want to" won, and we ended up selling the farm (family again, my parents generation owns it. Not sure why I"m using the word we!!) to a couple of amish farmers.
A couple of farmers also voiced objection to the loss of rentable ground to grow corn (which gets wasted about 50% on ethanol fuel here that nobody wants and makes far less sense from an energy perspective) and soybeans. "you'll take good farm ground out of circulation if you start putting solar on it" with claims that we'll have some kind of risk.
The reality is that when I calculated the energy output of an acre of solar, it was 327 times more energy dense than ethanol on a gross basis (without considering the energy used on inputs for ethanol). If 1% of the ethanol acres of corn were placed into freestanding solar, the net increase in energy production would be more than 4 times that of leaving all 100% in corn. Our ground wasn't great ground, either, but I guess the amish farmers will amend it - given a generation or two, they are able to take naturally poor areas and make the soil better than it would ever be in nature.
Common to see the Mennonites nearby put up a freestanding array in their yard away from trees and roofs (<$1000 a kw), but they're a little more practical than the average person.
(lest anyone think that's a bash on farmers - the land was in the family for more than 125 years....for farming. Or half of it was, and the rest was added...for farming. The reality in the US is that it's marginal enough ground that it shouldn't be used to grow waste food, but the sun wouldn't know that it's marginal ground).
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But that figure is important to bring up if you're ever somewhere and zoning is discussed. Freestanding solar is economically viable on its own and cheaper as a per kw/hr energy source than almost anything else. Rooftop residential costs twice as much.
Wait till you get further along the thread were on to solar next weeks installment Wave Power.Okay I missed the part where we went from wind power to water power.
Pete
johna.clements
Established Member
You have to factor in the cost of building something into the economics. Also as I noted before we have a far greater capacity to build onshore wind as opposed to offshore. The reason we build offshore is there are few people there to object.
Wind Europe
"Wind energy is the cheapest source of electricity generation
[Published 29 March, 2019]
Wind energy is today the cheapest source of electricity generation in majority of places in the world. Unsubsidized onshore wind energy is cheaper than any other energy source, including conventional power generation sources such as coal and gas."
https://windeurope.org/policy/topics/economics/
From Pablo Hevia-Koch & Henrik Klinge Jacobsen* Preprint of Energy Policy 125 (2019), p. 9–19. doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2018.10.019
""This paper shows three different approaches for calculating acceptance costs for onshore wind energy in
Denmark and using these levels to create a cost curve for the expansion of wind energy capacity.
Afterwards, we compare these cost curves for onshore wind energy to cost levels for offshore wind
energy in Denmark.
We find that method (A), utilising data from the compensation scheme, green fund allocations, offering of
20% of the project locally, and required property purchases; indicates that for most of the available
expansion capacity, onshore wind is cheaper than offshore wind even when considering acceptance costs.
With a sharp increase of onshore costs at high levels of capacity, associated with the necessity of buying
more, and more expensive, properties. These acceptance costs are only local, thus largely restricted to the
population living in the specific areas (less than 10 km2) where wind turbines will be installed. When
considering the large nation-wide expansion of onshore wind, there will be significant amounts of people
affected, but only a few people for each turbine.
Also from a local acceptance costs perspective, method (B), based on a revealed preference study (Jensen
et al., 2014), presents similar local acceptance cost estimates to method (A), when applied to an
equivalent amount of households, although slightly lower. From this estimated curve, similar conclusions
are drawn: onshore wind has an economic advantage over offshore wind for most of the wind capacity
expansion range studied.
Utilising method (C), we obtain estimates for acceptance costs both at a local scope and a national scope, to be used as bounds for acceptance costs that will vary depending on the level of aggregation of the measure. The lower estimate (local perspective as defined by method (A)), has cost estimates that are slightly lower, but similar to the costs obtained by methods (A) and (B); and with similar conclusions. The higher estimate, on the other hand, is a cost curve at an extremely high level, much higher than the adjusted offshore cost curve utilised in this study, which was expected due to the overestimating nature of the aggregation done. Based on the dimension of the range obtained, the fact that methods (A) and (B) are, while more accurate, ignoring the willingness to pay of the broader population to avoid turbines onshore; and the recent downwards development of offshore cost, it is much harder to conclude with certainty the absolute cost advantage of onshore wind versus offshore wind, as well as the specific crossover point. The main part of the onshore capacity available will be cheaper considering only thelocal acceptance costs but depending on how much of the estimated willingness to pay from the larger Danish population is included, larger parts of the onshore potential will be at cost levels that are matched by offshore potential""
https://www.researchgate.net/public...wind_development_considering_acceptance_costs
Inspector
Nyuck, Nyuck, Nyuck!
Ollie78
Established Member
I saw a thing a few years ago where they had designed small vertical turbines (about the size of a 55 gallon drum) which were placed next to motorways using the wash from the lorrys and cars to generate electricity. Seemed like a good idea to me given how many miles of road we have, not seen any yet, probably not enough profit in it. Just thinking those turbines were quite home makeable in design.
Ollie
Ollie
https://www.lazard.com/perspective/...st-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/
Here is an updated list (well, already near a year old) of sources in the US. Gas combined cycle and coal may be cheaper here, but solar shouldn't be too much different, as well as wind.
Solar commercial installation and wind are close to each other - not sure what the waste stream will be for wind as that's getting some publicity here. Dealing with huge out of commission composite parts.
Interesting stat in the middle of the chart showing the ongoing cost of nuclear and combined cycle gas vs. levelized new construction. Basically, gas and nuclear are cheap if the plant is already there. Not so much if they're new or someone tries to make them green (some initiative to include 20% hydrogen in gas generation? Drastically increases the costs 2-3x).
Gas generation cost will probably be going up here a little as gas contracts have doubled to quadrupled over the last several years depending on what time period they're compared.
The interesting challenge here, calculate levelized cost of self installed wind or solar - I haven't tried this. Just relayed earlier that a 10kw generator for a relative (wind turbine) on a 90 foot tower was no bueno.
Here is an updated list (well, already near a year old) of sources in the US. Gas combined cycle and coal may be cheaper here, but solar shouldn't be too much different, as well as wind.
Solar commercial installation and wind are close to each other - not sure what the waste stream will be for wind as that's getting some publicity here. Dealing with huge out of commission composite parts.
Interesting stat in the middle of the chart showing the ongoing cost of nuclear and combined cycle gas vs. levelized new construction. Basically, gas and nuclear are cheap if the plant is already there. Not so much if they're new or someone tries to make them green (some initiative to include 20% hydrogen in gas generation? Drastically increases the costs 2-3x).
Gas generation cost will probably be going up here a little as gas contracts have doubled to quadrupled over the last several years depending on what time period they're compared.
The interesting challenge here, calculate levelized cost of self installed wind or solar - I haven't tried this. Just relayed earlier that a 10kw generator for a relative (wind turbine) on a 90 foot tower was no bueno.
johna.clements
Established Member
Sweden seems to be in the lead with installed wave energy.
johna.clements
Established Member
Hydrogen can be added to natural gas, and if it is a low proportion existing cookers and boilers (furnaces) can be used without modification. I think it is quite a bit less than 20%, If I recall correctly less than 10%. They are selling boilers now that can use a higher portion of hydrogen.
It is a good way of making use of unwanted solar and wind, turn it into hydrogen, which stores the electricity, and burn it latter. Better to just use the electricity if it is need there and then but if not its seems like a good idea. Germany has been injecting hydrogen into there natural gas in some cities for a few years, I assume as test projects.
Ahh...makes sense. Thanks. I hadn't thought about that and haven't looked at the LCOE stats in a while. As you mentioned above, several years ago, onshore wind was ahead of everything.
Just noticed that LCOE for rooftop solar as I mentioned earlier - I was off. I think I read that in an article, that residential installation is double the cost. It's potentially 2-6 times as costly.
johna.clements
Established Member
Retro fitting solar panels on small roofs is bound to be expensive. No economies of scale in the installation and less chance to fine tune the components.
It should get slightly better for residential when solar is fitted as buildings are built.
It should get slightly better for residential when solar is fitted as buildings are built.
Jameshow
Established Member
But it's mine so I can tell all the neighbours I'm GREEN!!!
My opinion, the process here is cumbersome, technically and following regulations. That leads to people paying installers to do everything for them from start to finish, which probably doesn't need to be. The cost of the installed array ends up being several multiples of the materials used because the installers prefer to have the customer lease the system so that they can compare the "lease payment" to electric rates instead of talking about the cost of the system at all.
The lease agreement is then sold on the secondary market to investors and the installer who already charged a huge price for installation is also keeping a margin from selling the lease to a pooler.
All of that is avoided on an engineered site - aside from doing all of the planning once. More than a decade ago when a 3kw array (on the house) was about $25k, a freestanding simple array with grid tie-in 3 times the size was about $10k if self-installed.
I don't know what one loses doing self-installation, it may cancel tax breaks here. The last salesperson who passed here told me that I would not be allowed in my suburban township to install the panels myself, which is probably true in an urban county - you can't just do non-permitted alterations to dwellings other than reconditioning and refitting what's already there. Lot isn't big enough to self-install a freestanding array, and zoning makes it hard on 1/4 to 1/2 acre lots to have enough relief from property lines. Antiquated rules (building, separate garage and two small maintenance sheds allows with a lot of latitude. Anything else, not so much).
johna.clements
Established Member
@D_W We do not have zoning in the UK. Local government make a development plan but it is not set in stone (somebody can correct me if I am wrong).
Every development is decided on its own merits, which does mean that you can not be sure what will be accepted but anything reasonable could in theory. You could build an office building (maybe a small factory) in a residential area if it blended in and would not disturb the neigbours with traffic, parking issues, noise and fumes. If the building is in a historic area it will be a lot harder and more expensive to comply with the requirements but you could build an office building next to a four hundred year one if the outside matched.
You would be able to install your own panels if you got the required permissions and inspections. Things like electrics require a qualifications to make the conections and final inspections. But you could pull all the cable, fix cabinets etc (all the labour jobs) and the qualified electrician does all the connections.
Every development is decided on its own merits, which does mean that you can not be sure what will be accepted but anything reasonable could in theory. You could build an office building (maybe a small factory) in a residential area if it blended in and would not disturb the neigbours with traffic, parking issues, noise and fumes. If the building is in a historic area it will be a lot harder and more expensive to comply with the requirements but you could build an office building next to a four hundred year one if the outside matched.
You would be able to install your own panels if you got the required permissions and inspections. Things like electrics require a qualifications to make the conections and final inspections. But you could pull all the cable, fix cabinets etc (all the labour jobs) and the qualified electrician does all the connections.
Zoning pretty much works the same way, except it starts with a list of permissions. If zoning allows it, you can just do it. If zoning doesn't allow it, then you go through a permitting process (requesting a waiver) and you may be able to do it, anyway. The considerations will be similar to what you say and the zoning board holds a hearing for waiver applications.
If you request a waiver, then your neighbors and others can come in and express their concerns, you express yours and the board makes a decision. Depending on where you are, they are pretty reasonable. In my township, they are reasonable. The neighbor who just moved in two years ago is retiring as a massage therapist (a real one, not some shady kind of thing ..you know what i mean) and wanted to stop her commercial practice but treat patients in her basement. This would not be allowable in a housing development because it's commercial and it involves considerations like traffic and parking.
they let us know they were going to apply for a waiver, and since they are across from us, we told them we wouldn't object as long as the clients parked in their driveway off street. They agreed, and it's been no issue -I've noticed it even less than I'd have considered.
Historical areas can be much more difficult, as you say. I grew up in one - and by now, most of the people who live in them are on board with the local restoration board, but it can cause some friction when a "big supporter" suddenly has something that will cost them money and they feel entitled to an exception.
Can't speak for california or NY. It may not be so easy.
Where the local codes come in with things like panels or installing your own heating system or electrical is preventing people from doing unpermitted work on their own leaving problems for the next buyer. I can't say I mind that. I took the salesperson at their word but doubt that it's completely impossible for me to install panels or do much of the work, I'd just have to read the rules and get another contractor involved. Attempting to ignore the rules and just do it without inspection or qualified sign-off would be a bad idea at sale of the house, though.
