I would just like to say

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Stone56 said:
You can also get prosecuted for polluting ground water . Unless you are a water company you just pay the fine and carry on 💧💧
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As soon as you buy a piece of land in France you instantly have to take out two forms of insurance. One is in case somebody trespasses onto it and hurts themselves, :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: , the other is in case you accidentally pollute your neighbours land, and this would cover polluting the water table, which would be easy on our land as we has so many springs and underground streams running across it.
Do you have this where you live?
 
marjon said:
Our battery bank cost as much as the rest of the system, But we chose that route for a reason.
Friends of ours have been without leccy for 18hrs this week.
And even if you have solar panels and the grid goes down you DONT have electric to use. (is what I am led to believe)
We do.:p

So again its one of those where you pays your money and takes your choice.;)

J
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Don't get me wrong, I fully understand and I can see how much they cost. I just find it hard to believe how short their life is. Or maybe yours are different and will last longer.
We don't get as many powercuts as we used to but when we do we rely on gas for cooking, either on the hob or the barbie, the solar panel for hot water, (although we'd have to use the generator to power the pump, if the 300 litre HW tank, got cold), the log burner for heat, oil lamps for light and if it goes on a long time the generator. But as you know we don't need much in the summer months.
So I hope yours last a good long time.
 
Stanleysteamer said:
Don't get me wrong, I fully understand and I can see how much they cost. I just find it hard to believe how short their life is. Or maybe yours are different and will last longer.
We don't get as many powercuts as we used to but when we do we rely on gas for cooking, either on the hob or the barbie, the solar panel for hot water, (although we'd have to use the generator to power the pump, if the 300 litre HW tank, got cold), the log burner for heat, oil lamps for light and if it goes on a long time the generator. But as you know we don't need much in the summer months.
So I hope yours last a good long time.
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What is this short life you are hearing?
Summer without leccy doesn't pose the same problems as winter though and of course if we have them it is usually in the winter which has a lot of problems, Yes we have the fire but we cant pump the water round the system so we can only burn the fire at a very gentle level.
Its fine if you know its only going to be a couple of hours, but gets a bit difficult when that runs into days.

Battery and panel technology is getting better all the time. And soon there will be plenty of secondhand EV cars with batteries good enough to use for storage too.

When we have to replace the batteries they will have progressed and would probably then see us out , the other parts of the system should be ok🤞
We are hoping to get 12-15years out of our batts, we will see.

Plus all the time leccy cost increase our payback gets quicker.

Its all choices in life, we didnt do it to wave the "we are green " flag although it is classed as that, but we did it for US:).


J
 
marjon said:
What is this short life you are hearing?
Summer without leccy doesn't pose the same problems as winter though and of course if we have them it is usually in the winter which has a lot of problems, Yes we have the fire but we cant pump the water round the system so we can only burn the fire at a very gentle level.
Its fine if you know its only going to be a couple of hours, but gets a bit difficult when that runs into days.

Battery and panel technology is getting better all the time. And soon there will be plenty of secondhand EV cars with batteries good enough to use for storage too.

When we have to replace the batteries they will have progressed and would probably then see us out , the other parts of the system should be ok🤞
We are hoping to get 12-15years out of our batts, we will see.

Plus all the time leccy cost increase our payback gets quicker.

Its all choices in life, we didnt do it to wave the "we are green " flag although it is classed as that, but we did it for US:).


J
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I know very little about the use of solar panels but our dottir and s-i-l got them last year. This weekend was the first time we have seen them since. It was they who said that batteries would only last 6 or 7 years. I have no idea of the make or type, I do know that they said they would be very expensive. So I have to assume that your ones are better and probably still more expensive.
I am interested in why in a power cut you do not use an inverter to run the CH pump from your batts.
I agree about the use of green technology. We got the hot water solar panels and system because at the time the French govt paid 3/4 of the cost of it. We have never regretted it. We tend to only have to put the immersion heater on about 8 hours a year. So, like you, it saves us a load of dosh!
 
Stanleysteamer said:
I know very little about the use of solar panels but our dottir and s-i-l got them last year. This weekend was the first time we have seen them since. It was they who said that batteries would only last 6 or 7 years. I have no idea of the make or type, I do know that they said they would be very expensive. So I have to assume that your ones are better and probably still more expensive.
I am interested in why in a power cut you do not use an inverter to run the CH pump from your batts.
I agree about the use of green technology. We got the hot water solar panels and system because at the time the French govt paid 3/4 of the cost of it. We have never regretted it. We tend to only have to put the immersion heater on about 8 hours a year. So, like you, it saves us a load of dosh!
Click to expand...

We have LiPo batteries (i think) I do know they were more money but longer life.

No we have power when the grid goes off that was the whole reason for our setup although we do not pass back to the grid. those in the UK with panels wont though (normally).

J
 
marjon said:
We have LiPo batteries (i think) I do know they were more money but longer life.

No we have power when the grid goes off that was the whole reason for our setup although we do not pass back to the grid. those in the UK with panels wont though (normally).

J
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Yes, our relations use what they can and pass the rest of it back to the grid, I think. Though there was a lot of chat about the invertor and the use of 12 v electric and LEDs. I lost track more than once!
I'm not sure I'd ever trust the Brit national grid, or rather the companies that run bits of it, to treat any system of mine like that decently though.
 
DanClarke said:
Aye.
I noticed on Saturday when travelling locally past a National Grid installation that they have now installed row upon row of self-contained diesel generator sets over several acres of land. I couldn't stop to take a count of them but they are there all in rows, hundreds of them. I guess they are for when the wind doesn't blow at night, to put all that "Green-energy" into peoples Electric cars. ;)
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Have yer gorra rough location. Would be interesting to look them up to see whats going on. Might be battery backup containers.
 

DanClarke said:
Morning All. :D
Wet and miserable here. Well, I am. Woken @ 4:30 and 7:30 by disturbances in my house. :(
Have a good day. :D
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Pah, don't know you're born! :vb-nono: Woken by a warm tongue in my ear at one ayem by someone needing a wee and the same someone then threw up on the bed at three ayem. I get up at five ayem anyway.. Woke up Grumpy anorl, she had a bad night's sleep too :)
 
Brown said:
It's batteries that are the main problem. Storing the electricity that can be made when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing at any scale is still in its infancy. The UK has a handful of pumped storage facilities where water is pumped from a lower reservoir to a higher one when energy is plentiful and allowed to drain to generate electricity when it isn't but we'd need an awful lot more of them to make a dent in the energy needs of the UK. Similarly with individual domestic systems - the batteries are the main element (and represent a substantial environmental burden in their own right). Most fully grid tied systems need the mains to be on to give you any electricity. It is possible to do otherwise, but that's the way most off-the-shelf systems work. I'm the owner of as small solar system myself, but I'm not particularly proud of it from an environmental point of view. The silicon smelting process (to make the solar panels) is not exactly green, as the furnaces need to be run at about 2400 C. There's quite a bit of coal goes into the process (about one part coal to four parts gravel and wood chips), and a good deal of sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide and possibly arsenic comes out. So the panels will have to last a long, long time (probably over 20 years) to offset the environmental burden involved in creating them. So it's not exactly 'green' to have solar panels! The problems of batteries have been reasonably well rehearsed, but people seem to be keeping very quiet about the problems associated with the panels themselves.
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ours are 18yr old now output has drop to about 90% but they are German made before China got in on the act the remaining inverters and charge controllers are all outback and well made are first set off batteries were lead acid 1 volt and were great Barran then a Austrian company and lasted 14yrs the ones we have now are gell and Chinese and on their way out already
 
Hippo said:
Solar panels are not perfect. Nowt is. But peeps rarely compare to the damage building a power station causes. All that concrete and steal creates polution. Consider that v panels. Eye bet panels shed their pollution within a few years if they're generating reasonable free power.

We dun't need more pumpted storeage. We need to tap oft our reservoirs more. Many are too far from the grid to get cables laid. If the gov chipped in it would hapoen. The grid dun't see the value innit because of cost.
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This is the reason we are installing a wind turbine if are batteries are full we use the electric being produced in real-time so the aim is to be full in all weather better for the batterys better for us and the planet and are pockets
 
Stanleysteamer said:
As soon as you buy a piece of land in France you instantly have to take out two forms of insurance. One is in case somebody trespasses onto it and hurts themselves, :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: , the other is in case you accidentally pollute your neighbours land, and this would cover polluting the water table, which would be easy on our land as we has so many springs and underground streams running across it.
Do you have this where you live?
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Nothing like that by us trespasses get shot the only access is 1person 1 farm animal have the right to cross you land you even are obliged to despatch dogs without a coller to prevent feral pack's
 
The National Grid in the UK operates a system called 'STOR' or short term operating reserve. Despite the promising acronym, it's not exactly storage as it often relies on diesel generation. It's usually contracted in rather than belonging to National Grid itself, sometimes by customers that are heavy users like factories and steelworks (if there are any left) who can start their own generators at times of peak demand and sometimes by contracting in companies who supply diesel generated electricity directly to the grid https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/dec/06/diesel-farms-national-grid-tax-breaks. National Grid has some of its own diesel generators to supply power to electricity stations and substations to keep them operational when the grid is down, but is running trials of hydrogen powered units to do this instead. The advantage of this is that it's quick, because a gas powered power station (the other major source of dispatchable baseload) takes a number of hours to come on stream and even a gas turbine takes a few minutes.
 
marjon said:
What is this short life you are hearing?
Summer without leccy doesn't pose the same problems as winter though and of course if we have them it is usually in the winter which has a lot of problems, Yes we have the fire but we cant pump the water round the system so we can only burn the fire at a very gentle level.
Its fine if you know its only going to be a couple of hours, but gets a bit difficult when that runs into days.

Battery and panel technology is getting better all the time. And soon there will be plenty of secondhand EV cars with batteries good enough to use for storage too.

When we have to replace the batteries they will have progressed and would probably then see us out , the other parts of the system should be ok🤞
We are hoping to get 12-15years out of our batts, we will see.

Plus all the time leccy cost increase our payback gets quicker.

Its all choices in life, we didnt do it to wave the "we are green " flag although it is classed as that, but we did it for US:).


J
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👍👍
 
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