Thinking of getting a small scale wind turbine (10-15kW) to power the farm and hopefully sell some surplus to the grid. Does anyone else on here have a turbine and what do they think of them? Any help appreciated.

hi i am thinking about the same source of energy can you give me any advice and costs etc

hi we have a little 9metre 5kw turbine it cost us around 20k  all in .We are hoping to recoup are investment in about 8 years giving a 12% return.I beleive a 15kw turbine costs in the region of 45k. For every 1000 units generated the government will give you between 8and 10p a unit.through their renewable  obligations certificates(ROC's) Planning apprears to be becoming much easier our's went through on reg's it never made it to a full planning meeting.  I beleive form the 1st of April there maybe a grant available upto10K through business link.(if i could do it again i would have gone for the 15kw straight off) 

much luck - sounds silly but am very proud of ours!

Lazy farmer. Your experience is interesting. I looked at this a few years ago but our average wind speed was less than the level that makes the thing viable. (I seem to recall it was about 6.4 knots)

Is the cost of £20k a recent figure and how do you 'store' you electricity. How far is the turbine from your home or buildings and is your useage mainly for something like a dairy?

Is the cost of feeding back into the mains included in the £20k and, in your view, is it viable to erect a turbine and simply sell all the resultant output back to the Grid?

Your experiences might get a lot of us thinking!

We to are/were thinking of going this route.  We have had a survey (cost of survey £350).  done for a 5 kw turbine .  We then put in the planning application (cost of application £350) and have now been told we have to submit an ecological survey in case our small wind turbine worries the neighbourhood bats.  This survey cant start until end of march as bats are hibernating and may well take most of the summer.  We then have to await planning approval or disapproval, by which time it will be too wet on the land to erect the turbine, and of course the cost will have gone up anway.  We were quoted £20,000.  We dont know the cost of the ecological survey yet.  Beginning to think its not worth the bother.

hi peter,

          this is only our experience so please don't take it as red that i've got everything right.  your average wind was that taken as an average for your post code or did you do tests? only reason i ask is the average for our post code is far less than the actual for our site.

we don't store the electric it goes straight back into the metre reducing our requirement when the parlour/dairy equipment is running or going to our soon to be installed export metre(elecy company pays for that)

the turbine is about 300 metres from the parlour/metre cost per metre for cable is  around £4.20.Yes costs are all inclusive. The only way to find out wether a export only turbine would pay  is to find out the wind speed  then work out resultant potential output and divide it by the cost of the turbine and work out the return and decided wether or not this meets your investment criteria.hope this helps.

As for bats why did you tell them!!  Our planning process took less than 2 months from start to finish so there may still be time.As for planning costs i have been informed that somerset are the only ones charging£350 most are charing £175

lazy farmer:

 your average wind was that taken as an average for your post code or did you do tests? only reason i ask is the average for our post code is far less than the actual for our site.

You are right. The average wind speed was for my postcode. The first three digits of which cover an area of about 100 square miles. However the second three digits are just 1mile and higher ground than most of the rest.

I might have to look at this again, however, not having a dairy I'm not sure if just 5k watts (5 kettles) is worth it.

Thanks anyway.

Peter Wells:

 I'm not sure if just 5k watts (5 kettles) is worth it.

 Any home made electricity is "worth it", and, no, I'm not being a rampant green. Just imagine...

The ridicule you would get (in an urban situation), you install your £200  500W special turbine from B&Q. The laughter of your neighbours, the finger pointing, the mirth. But then... there is a black out and you are the only one on the street watching tv.

Then we shall see about green.

We didnt tell them about the bats, we are not that stupid but  we live near an SSI and Taunton Deane are particularly environmentally sensistive.  Dormice managed to stop construction work for a year on an important town project and dont talk about greater crested newts!!!!.

 Our first quote back is for £350 and that does not include any bat route surveys. 

Out of interest - what does happend when the power goes off as we were told that the wind turbine shut down as well.

a tao:

Any home made electricity is "worth it"

I'm not sure you are right on this one tao. You have to take the costs of installation of the generator, wiring, switches and meters into consideration, after all, the costs also represent the choices you cannot make because you have chosen to spend your money on the wind turbine. As to the payback of the outlay, I wouldn't be making my choices on neigbourly one-up-man-ship but on the basis of financial payback, convenience and an assessment of the risks of power cuts.

As a matter of interest, I have a 4.8 kw generator used to power freezers, water borehole and a bit of lighting in the event of power cuts which used to be pretty frequent in these parts. (Not so much now) Incidentally I was under the impression that roof mounted turbines cost £1200 are they really £200?

As to being 'Green.' If I were a serious Green, I wouldn't even have a TV as I would regard that medium as an expensive luxury, and a time and electricity waster. However, as I regard myself, not as a Green but, as a Steward over the earth's resources I regard the installation of a £1200 500w housetop turbines as  expensive posturing or, simply an error of judgement by the purchaser. If however, you managed to B&Q it and install it for £200; good on yer!

We have a wind turbine of about 75cm across fully (sorry about the metric value, this is what they teach me at the hellhol- school) we utterly depend on it for all our electricity.

On windy days it keeps our electric fencing at about 4000-5000 volts and all the lights are powered by it too.

It has allready paid itself off (we've had it about 5-6 years) but we don't sell it back to the grid, we just store it in batteries for those rare days when there has been no wind for a while.

FREE electricity is GOOD electricity!

~Meggiewes~

Wind turbines can pay for themselves as quickly as five years.

companies will now pay up to 15p kwh generated.

some turbines will last for 10 years and some up to 25 years.

the cost floating about are correct .

you can save a bit by trenching the cables and concrete base yourself.

avoid cheap imports though .there have been some disasters.

visit www.tech2000ltd.co.uk

for more help details

always happy to offer advice.

Looks dangerously close to an advert windyboy! But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt as you look to be answering some of the questions people have too (and I am sure people will appreciate your expertise). 

Just a gentle reminded that ads for good and services are against the Terms and Conditions of the website.

Kind regards,

Isabel

Hi everyone, I am in the process of researching getting a renewable energy system on my farm. We are an arable farm (about 200ha) in the south east, not far from Luton. I think that the best way of using our assets would be to get a wind turbine, with out average annual windspeed apparently being above 5 m/s. Has anybody else done this? It would be great to hear from anybody who has any experience. Could anybody recommend any companies to use? The ones I've looked at so far that seem half decent are: Segen, Ventus and Green power solutions. The next step seems to be to get an on site survey from one of these companies, but these seem to cost a minimum of £230, and I thought I'd just ask to see if I could get some opinions. Thanks in advance, SamR

 

Hi.  How small scale are you talking about?  If you're thinking of spending a lot of money a survey and other opinions would be money well spent.  Have you any other turbines within sight or on similiar positions as your proposed site.  If so it could be worth seeing how they are doing. 

I put up a turbine without any survey and it does very well.

I presume you have checked your windspeeds on the DECC site? Try http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/windspeed/default.aspx 5ms is a bit low so you need a Class 2 turbine if possible. Go for as high a tower height as you can 15, 20 or 25M for small turbines 55m for slightly larger and 70 to 80M for large turbines. Try Enercon they do a nice 330kw little machine for around £750k Bank loans are easily available to fund that amount.

Hi SamR,

We work with farmers developing small to medium on farm wind, hydro and large scale PV projects, single turbines at the 330-800kW scale.

Some key advice from me would be:

1. If you can stretch to it go for a 330-800kW machine as suggested by HeHimself, although slightly trickier planning in England than in Scotland these can be located with 400m of offsite residential
2. Total project costs including planning, environmental surveys, grid connection, FIT registration, access track, foundations, installation & the turbine and cabling will be somewhere nearer £850-950k depending on site
3. Upfront costs to get to a bankable scheme i.e. planning, legal, and comply with manufacturers minimum warranty information e.g. for wind and geotechnical requirements in England will cost you £90-120k (10-12% total costs).
4. For loan finance the banks require the developer puts in the At Risk costs equating to a minimum of 10-15% equity to the project i.e. they will only loan typically max of 85-90% for capital costs.
5. Raising the £90-120k for the At Risk Development costs is beyond most farmers means, a 50:50 Joint Venture approach is one good alternative where the up front At Risk costs for planning and project development are shared 50:50 with a developer over a 12-18 month period in exchange for 50% of the project onwership plus free electricity for the farm.
6. Contact me if anyone wants to know more aclarke at theresiliencecentre dot co dot uk or 01594 529688

Cheers,

 Andrew

Thanks for your messages guys. The size I had in mind for the turbine was around the 10-20kw range, something like the Gaia 133, or the Evoco 10. My wind speed at 10m is 5.1m/s, and rises to 5.9m/s at 25m according to the DECC. The size of the turbine I can have is limited because I am quite close to Luton Airport, but up to about 25m I think will be fine. I think I shall go to the farm energy event to get some more information, but if anyone else has any experience or information please do tell me. Thanks

Hi my name is David and i know about turbines as to what type of turbine you need may i suggest you find out what type of wind you are in ie high wind area or low wind area this is easy to find out by looking up your wind speed also you might want to consider changing the way you use the energy so using a air heat pump for your house heating and you can use one for a chiller but i believe you might be beef in that case look at these points wind speed what type of power cable is on your land single or three phase access what is it like how much power can you put through the grid do you want one with or with out a inverter how do you finance there are good options out there so let the turbine pay for the payments small deposit its tax free if you put it through the house or capex if you put it through the farm

Hi Borderman

Air source heating ,

If you have an oil based central heating system how well or  can an air source heat pump work   if you use the radiators of the present central heating system ?

I know under floor pipes works well

 

 

Hi everyone. Just a little heads up - I'm going to move this thread into the dedicated "Biofuels and renewable energy" section on FWispace.

The thread is located in the the "specialist forums" section (whereas Talking Point is in the "general forums" area)

The idea is to keep all the discussion around renewables in one place, so it's easier for users to navigate and find content.

 

I have a windyboy

 It's great!!

In our village we are looking to put up two Gaia 133 which are 18 m to hub,producing 15 Kw with the intention of generating electricity back into the grid and the monies earned will be used for other projects in the community to reduce our carbon footprint. We are looking at two turbines at £50K each and looking for 100 % grant as it is a community project. http://www.energyaction.org.uk/ 

The turbines need to be at two different sites and we may be one of the proposed sites. We have had a anemoneter up since November 2010 and will shortly be downloading the information as Decc says that we have a wind speed of 5.5 m/s.

One think to bear in mine is that most turbines need to connected to 3 phase, not single 230 volts.

I am also looking at PV possibly 50 Kw on a grainstore roof.

Hi all, We are new to this forum and are looking to learn what the general opinion of wind energy/solar PV is amongst the farming community. We are a renewable installer ourselves and have considerable experience in this sector. We have installed all over the UK and as far away as Hong Kong. Should anybody be looking in to purchasing a wind turbine or PV array we would be delighted to assist and in special cases in locations deemed to be windy/open enough, we can provide our free turbine offer. In response to the above comment which mentions the Gaia 133 turbines, we may be able to beat your quote on the same turbine or provide a more efficient turbine should you be interested in having a look into it. Just let us know. We'd obviously be happy to assist. With regards to the free turbine offer, the land owner would benefit from free electricity for the life of the turbine and Embrace Energy would receive 100% of the Feed in Tariff income. We would also take care of all maintenance/insurance/site survey work/planning. If any of the above interests you, please take a look at our website and get in touch. Regards, Jordan Boynton E. Jordan@embrace-energy.co.uk

I have been researching this technoligy for over a year, it is new and still developing, most turbines are bought in (imported), there is a new turbine just being launched that is aparently built in the UK for the UK by a company called arventis, I am trying to find who has one installed.

Their website is www.arventis.com