UK help for households generating alternative energy

At least there may be some light out there somewhere then. All the things I looked at seem like they are at least £7,000 to install. I was also how shocked at how little the solar can actually do ie with the water heating it said that it can only do 1/3 of your domestic hot water, seems liek such a lot to spend if it can only do 1/3 of a job!

If we end up going back to France I'll be looking into being as green and self-sufficient as possible, a little discouraging some of it though, I presumed if we got solar for our water it would heat all our water, perhaps very naive of me! Perhaps one of everything would get us there but then we would have no money to renovate a house so would be living in a barn (OK a warm barn with hot water )

Your job would have been so interesting and fulfilling even if frustrating at times!

Solar water heating should only be about £2k to install, but, yep, can only do about 1/3 of your water heating (so a saving of a few hundred quid a year). I wouldn't do it. Solar PV can usually do about 50% of your electricity (plus probably about the same again exporting via the feed-in tariff (but then only worth 3p rather than 10p avoided cost of buying it) and would cost more like £7,000. I wouldn't do that either - unless I was really rich!

The ones i think *are* worth doing at the moment are biomass boilers and ground/air source heat pumps.

Costs are coming down all the time though so hopefully some of the other technologies will be worthwhile in coming years.... MicroCHP will be the big thing in next couple of years (although is energy efficiency technology rather than renewable...)

[clothmama]

Solar water heating should only be about £2k to install, but, yep, can only do about 1/3 of your water heating (so a saving of a few hundred quid a year). I wouldn't do it. Solar PV can usually do about 50% of your electricity (plus probably about the same again exporting via the feed-in tariff (but then only worth 3p rather than 10p avoided cost of buying it) and would cost more like £7,000. I wouldn't do that either - unless I was really rich!

That's really good to know defiantly a false economy by the sound of it. Perhaps a DIY job of black pipe under the roof tiles to get the water up a bit before going to the boiler is still worth considering though. A couple of panels at the end of a swimming pool to get the heat up a couple of degrees at beginning / end of summer is a winner though from friends who have had it!

The ones i think *are* worth doing at the moment are biomass boilers and ground/air source heat pumps.

I think the ground / air source heat pumps are a great idea, I still dont' quite get how the ground at 11 degrees or what ever it is manages to heat your house though . Will certainly be something that we will look into, however if we do do the France thing it will be buying a big old renovation project adn from what I understand you need to have pretty super-duper insulation for it to really help and I'm not sure how achievable that is in the sort of house we'll be looking at.

My issue with the biomass boilers is that they are using wood (from sustainable forests - carbon neutral etc I get that) that has been processed to within an inch of its life - I can't get my head around that being hugely green What I am kicking myself about (been reading some green building forums and learning lots in the last few days) is that I spent the last 10 years in France living with wood burners as our only heating and WHY did we not have a back boiler so that we could have heated our water and had central heating I just can't believe how dumb we were . The wood burner we had was 14kw too so more than enough to have run radiators and water

Costs are coming down all the time though so hopefully some of the other technologies will be worthwhile in coming years.... MicroCHP will be the big thing in next couple of years (although is energy efficiency technology rather than renewable...)

I'll have to go and have a read about that - that was about the only tab I didnt' click on on that site!

That's really good to know defiantly a false economy by the sound of it. Perhaps a DIY job of black pipe under the roof tiles to get the water up a bit before going to the boiler is still worth considering though. A couple of panels at the end of a swimming pool to get the heat up a couple of degrees at beginning / end of summer is a winner though from friends who have had it!

Yes, DIY jobs are usually worthwhile doing... is actually pretty easy to do something like that. The difficulty/expensive part comes with electrical connection and legal requirements....

I think the ground / air source heat pumps are a great idea, I still dont' quite get how the ground at 11 degrees or what ever it is manages to heat your house though . Will certainly be something that we will look into, however if we do do the France thing it will be buying a big old renovation project adn from what I understand you need to have pretty super-duper insulation for it to really help and I'm not sure how achievable that is in the sort of house we'll be looking at.

It doesn't heat it directly - works like a fridge - heat from ground used to vaporise the refrigerant to drive the compressor.... Is reverse of air conditioning really.

My issue with the biomass boilers is that they are using wood (from sustainable forests - carbon neutral etc I get that) that has been processed to within an inch of its life - I can't get my head around that being hugely green

Yes, true, but remember you are comparing to hugely energy intensive oil and gas! Key environmental factor with biomass is distance travelled to get the wood....

[clothmama]

Yes, DIY jobs are usually worthwhile doing... is actually pretty easy to do something like that. The difficulty/expensive part comes with electrical connection and legal requirements....

Well that cheers me up a bit about it - I was really quite gutted when I read how bad it was! I think we'll definitely do something along those lines, we do all our renovations ourselves so would be worth it. Unless of course there are applicable French grants, I know they exist but havent' looked into it. Actually didnt' Rachel (rhead) say she got a great grant to install solar on her property?

It doesn't heat it directly - works like a fridge - heat from ground used to vaporise the refrigerant to drive the compressor.... Is reverse of air conditioning really.

So you are still having to run an 'airconditioner' (thinking wattage wise) in order for this to work?

My issue with the biomass boilers is that they are using wood (from sustainable forests - carbon neutral etc I get that) that has been processed to within an inch of its life - I can't get my head around that being hugely green

Yes, true, but remember you are comparing to hugely energy intensive oil and gas! Key environmental factor with biomass is distance travelled to get the wood...

Yes I suppose it is no where near as intensive as oil and gas. So in order to fit the 'key' you would have to have a pellet producer/forest near you for this to be a good 'green' option? We always heated with wood sourced from our friends organic farm which was only a few kms away, before we found them we still bought local, but we had plenty of choice and a lot of forests nearby, I can see that for a lot of people in the UK this is not always going to be feasible to have local woods.

We bought two huge used solar panels off ebay for £500 with all the required magic boxes all we need is cabling.. which is pennies, and a couple more magic boxes.. ebay again!!!!! We are getting our eco mad mates to put them up for us and do the necessaries.. all in figure is less than a grand. They have a watermill, which provides all the energy they need and 5 free standing solar water heaters outside in the gardens. They make soooo much energy with the wheel and another couple of panels on the side of the hosue they sell it back to the grip for a ridiuculous amount of money! Perfect ppl to emplpy to fill our roof top for us!

Note: the bunnies were the first to have a solar panels on their summer house! It powers a ceiling fan for them in the summer, a small water pump and the chicken fence

Ems, sounds great

It doesn't heat it directly - works like a fridge - heat from ground used to vaporise the refrigerant to drive the compressor.... Is reverse of air conditioning really.

So you are still having to run an 'airconditioner' (thinking wattage wise) in order for this to work?

Yes, you still use mains electricity, but you use about 1 unit for every 4 generated...

Yes I suppose it is no where near as intensive as oil and gas. So in order to fit the 'key' you would have to have a pellet producer/forest near you for this to be a good 'green' option? We always heated with wood sourced from our friends organic farm which was only a few kms away, before we found them we still bought local, but we had plenty of choice and a lot of forests nearby, I can see that for a lot of people in the UK this is not always going to be feasible to have local woods.

Exactly. I read a report some time ago, can't remember who by, but it suggested a cut-off of about 50 kms or miles (can't remember which ) for the environmental benefits to be positive/negative. (Of course that will be an average as a lot will depend on how it is processed etc... but you get the idea....)

While the feed in tarriffs are a positive move from the government, you will be able to gain more by using what you generate instead of shipping it into the grid. The payback times have been hugely reduced by the feed in tarriffs (aka Clean Energy Cash Back ) to make solar PV a viable option, dependent on position and available roof space.

(Shameless plug)
My dp has developed a service where you can enter details of the installation you'd be interested in and the planner will calculate a financial projection. It will also send details of the project to installers for them to provide quotes. It's here: http://www.rensmart.com/ It's UK only and free to look at

To qualify for the cashback, the system must be installed by a registered installer and, I think, that systems installed before the start of the scheme can qualify in certain circumstances.
(end shameless plug)

fab site! I'm playing with it now!

While the feed in tarriffs are a positive move from the government, you will be able to gain more by using what you generate instead of shipping it into the grid.

That always used to be the case, but not strictly true any more. I've just been reading about this and the feed-in tariffs are a lot more generous than I first thought. I saw the 3p/kWh figure but that is for existing schemes (who benefited from capital grants).... New ones can actually get 30-40p/kWh depending on technology..... So it actually makes more sense to export as much as possible as you can buy in normal electricity at around 10p/kWh.... (Although from an environmental point of view you should use as much as possible at the point it is generated to avoid transportation losses... )