Options for Domestic Electricity Generation
Wednesday saw an announcement by Eamon Ryan that they are working on allowing houses in Ireland to export Electricity (not here yet… but working on it). This has been resisted by the ESB forever, and for not crazy reasons… but anyway… here a quick one on options for generating electricity in your home.
Domestic Wind Power: Wind power is a good option for Ireland. Payback (time when savings pay back the cost) is in the region of 10 years or so, which isn’t really great… considering they don’t last forever… Issues with them are safety of installation. So them actually falling down… And the electrical side… them killing you or an electrician…
Solar Photovoltaic: PV is the great white hope of electricity generation. They convert light from the sun to electricity… and if the sun stops shinning… we’ve got bigger problems… Payback in Ireland is worse than Wind… more like 20 years, but otherwise… they are just so great!!!
Hydro power: Water from rivers. These are great, but you need the perfect fall of water, and at moment damning any river is sooo against the rules, that it is unlikely that anyone will manage make use of them.
Micro CHP: Combined Heat and Power Units are pieces of equipment that combine an electrical generator and a boiler. They are really efficient and good and stuff, but the problem is that you need to require heating and electricity at the same time. People generally need heating and hot water in the morning, before they get up, so the only way they will work here is thanks to the new announcement by Eamo . As for payback, well we’ll see. SEI have a trial going on at the moment.
And that’s it… nothing better than a 10 year payback. Even Tony will agree that the heating systems beat the socks off them. So my advice.. go for a wood chip boiler…
greennav
martinfaulkner
micallc
thenewoil
April 20, 2008 at 7:21 pm
But what is the 10 year payback on a wind turbine based on Pat? Is that for average electricity usage in a household? What if you’re in a situation where you can share the output between two households, including a number of outhouses, both of which have a much higher than average usage?
April 20, 2008 at 7:28 pm
BTW, thanks for bringing that announcement by Eamon Ryan to my attention, that’s big news. My brother would love to be one of the trial group. Any tips on how to get picked?
April 21, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Hi James,
OK, I’ve done some maths, and its probably a bit better than 10 years. If you take a 1kW unit, costing €2500, giving 25% efficiency displacing 15c electricity, you’ll work out at 7.6 years. Only problem is that 1kW is a fairly large base load for a domestic house… so you’ll probably not make use of all that electricity.
You could be optimistic and hope for better than 25%. you could also hope to get one cheaper. Expect electricity prices to go up, all that and you might get to 5 years.
As for sharing the output. Well the short answer… you can’t. It is illegal in Irland to connect up two houses, or business with a “private wire”. If you go back onto the grid, well then all electricity is the same, so you have to sell electricity to the grid, and then buy it back. On average you would get 7c for the electricity you sell, and pay 15/16 to buy it back.
Truth is it would be very dangerous to link up two houses… so if you’re going to break the rules… careful. Probably worth a chat in person to discuss it more.
Second thing. How to get included… nope I haven’t got a clue. I suggest a letter to Eamo, and to David Taylor, CEO of SEI.
Thanks for the comment
P