OFF-GRID Wind Turbine & Solar PV combo

[kdmnx]

A really good read Biff. I like the idea of a propane fired homemade genny feeding a battery bank. That's a good idea and cleaner than a diesel engine.

Biomass gas, veg oil, other alternatives, the dream would be to have a usable stream on one's land.

Propane is good for standby applications because it lasts forever. You don't have to worry about the dregs of a tank of diesel sitting there all summer going bad...

[Photosolo]

Thanks for all the voices or reason.
It's always good to hear people are making it work somehow.
The turbine thing I had been advised years ago against as although our 5 acres sits on a nice breezy hillside it is surrounded by a managed Pine forest.
The 2 things that have changed though is that pine forest is at maturity in fact its over due felling. I'm guessing that could possibly give us 10 years of pretty clean air in the right spot. Also I was chatting to someone recently about wind turbines & he pointed out there is a new advancement in turbines, called Variable Pitch Turbines. Apparently these are far more efficient & better at capturing the wind. The 3rd most relevant & slightly controversial change is the idea of (in theory) importing directly from China.
Thanks Heatherhopper for finding my old posts, I'll give them a fresh read, I know there was definitely some great stuff in there. My memory is sadly mush these days. I find I go all in on researching something for a while & then a different job takes my attention for a while & then all information I though I had retained disappears into the ether !
With regards to wear we are on the project, the house is built & weather tight. It still needs the external cladding & I've started the 1st fix electrics & plaster boarding upstairs. We have given ourselves around 6 - 12 months to sort it to a liveable standard from now.
Ive been deliberately putting off buying the renewables till last as I didn't want to just have it all sitting there. especially as the prices seem to have been on a steady decline for the last few years.
I'll try and attach a pic of the house

[TT]

If you are plasterboarding upstairs and haven’t decided on which renewable route you are going
It’s worth adding some ducts out the building to where your boiler, consumer unit, potential roof PV to allow for cabling.
Nothing worse than seeing surface cabling

[Photosolo]

Don’t worry, im leaving certain areas free still.
I’m not roof mounting anything though.

[nowty]

If you've got 5 acres, I suspect there is room for the odd ground mount or two.

[camillitech]

Some lovely blue panels would complement that roof just lovely 

[offthegridandy]

Another consideration.  Demand WILL grow to exceed generation.  When we had just had the old Lister and every KWhr was directly related to diesel spend we were mighty frugal.  As I added more RE our consumption rose .  We used to (2002) use about 3KwHr per day and now use in excess of 10Kwhr.

So if you have a growing family assume your calculations for demand will be exceeded by at least 200%

Andy

[todthedog]

With plenty of space and no fan of clambering on roofs I would ground mount as much as I could afford.