Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I have had a stand-alone Solar power system for all of this year (relocated from my previous place (was Grid tie).
I find that I am not able to provide more than half of our power needs during winter. (and that is before I add the pumps for my new hobby (BYAP)

I have just installed a 1KW wind generator, but I am limited by the trees on our block and adjacent properties (including thick forest). That said, I hope to be able to add a significant boost to my renewable power system capacity.

I located the wind generator in this location as the best of a number of bad locations, all suffering from tree induced wind turbulence. I will not be permitted to do ANY pruning, on our property, let-alone on neighbouring lands (esp. Forest)

Tony
Here are some photos of my systems:

Nice place Tony..... green as all hell with envy..... Jaymie will hate you when she sees that wind turbine

Will PM you later regarding running pumps on solar... trying to see how it might be done.

My biggest issue is that the trees and wind turbine are working against each other, but I want both!

I got the wind generator on eBay for $1800 plus $350 freight to WA. This included the regulator, mast, guys etc. I did buy new galvanised wire grips as the supplied Chinese zinc passivated ones looked like they could be a liability.

It is amazing how cheap things are when you go to specialist dealers. for example, the wire grips for 8mm wire rope sell at my local Mitre 10 for $3.50 for 2. I bought them at $0.35 each. Similar differences existed for the D shackles and thimbles for the wire rope. I spent $28 for hardware, which could have cost me over $200 at the hardware store, by buying at a rigging supply place.

Envy is good, it makes you work harder to get your own.
Hate is too strong a word here. Jealousy may be closer.

Tony

Could you mount the wind turbine higher up? If it is up higher, the trees would provide less turbulence.

yep, jealousy is the word

Looks like a great set-up Tony Are you also going to add more solar panels?

Yeah, you're not the only one that's jealous.

Is raising the turbine an option?

Is there room in the budget for adding another turbine? If you're currently not meeting your electrical demands.

Another option would be to add a propane or diesel generator. Although not the most sustainable approach. A diesel genny could be run on bio diesel or even straight veggie oil. just a thought.

A couple things:

1, like others mentioned, raise your windmill and add another if that's a possibility. As you go up in height you'll not only reduce tree interference, but you'll also increase the wind exposure of the mill even if there were no trees.

2, raise the tilt of your panels by 20 degrees. I don't know your latitude, so I can't tell if you've done this already or not. The year round averaging rule is tilt = latitude or winter tilt = latitude + 20. This is with respect to the ground plane.

3, there's a thread somewhere about drilling bore holes and using geothermal heat transfer

4, WVO diesel generators are one of my favorites, as rassd mentioned

5, get really good insulation to reduce loss

6, solar water heaters/sun rooms with thin films on your windows

7, rocket stoves with thermal batteries (new one I learned about a few days ago)

that's the first layer I can think of. Hope it helps!

It would be great to have that much space to play with

Looking at the height of those trees you`d have to go quite a lot higher.
It would be worth it to get to less turbulant wind though.
The angle of the guyes on the mast look very acute, so going higher safely may be difficult, perhaps its just the camera angle?

I did some checking on the difference in the annual average windspeed for my location, between 10m and 45m i`d gain an average of 3mph

On the solar panel topic, on the winter solstice the sun won`t get much higher than ~14 degrees above the horizon compared to ~60 degrees for the summer solstice.
Ideally mount them as close to due south as possible (or due north in the southern hemisphere) as the azimuth also drops from ~135 degrees summer to ~90 degrees in winter.

Is that a fergie tractor I see? you lucky devil!

And a "grey" one as well

A grey fergy when you get a real tractor then you can go oh ah

Yeh take your point F&F.
Awesome wheels!

and yours to Tony looks like you flogged my car!
Ooops hijacked for a tick!
C1

The sacrifices we make for AP F&F

reets thinks your pick looks like a postcard, pitty there wasn't a pic of a fish or veggies in it, you could have entered it into the photo comp!

Unfortunately, I would need to treble the 8 metres of mast to avoid the turbulence. Apart from the budget issues, the local council might just notice that I don't have their permission to put this here :O
As I said, this is the best of a number of bad locations. I just hope I am justified in my investment.
Yes it is a TEA20 Grey Fergie, in poor condition. I hope to spruce her up a bit - there is a list as long as my arm that needs doing.

My cars are all Mercedes W123 300Ds, but I have 2 complete parts cars which have 280E engines One is even drivable.

The solar panels are on pivots and are elevated for the winter period. There are 4 adjustment points, but I generally just use the up and down locations as the changes are rapid for the other 2 points during spring and autumn.
The house is rammed earth construction with 10' ceilings and an iron roof. It has 'perfect' solar orientation and was architect designed to maximise solar passive methods. This failed in a couple of areas: There was no ceiling insulation when we purchased it, but we rapidly had wool insulation installed. The previous owner roofed over most of the solar access for heating the quarry tiled floor. I have plans to replace the sheeting with clear roofing to restore the solar gains.
Heating is fuelled by fire wood, supplemented by my "fire bricks", made by mixing sawdust with the by-product of biodiesel production or veggie oil filtrates, then packing into the waxed cardboard 1 litre milk cartons. I pioneered this method around 7 years ago and told Keith Addison of JTF about it. He has had it on JTF website since then. They produce around twice the heat of a similar sized piece of hardwood.

The majority of our lighting is by Fluorescent or CFLs, we are vigilant about leaving unused appliances or 'wall warts' on and the hot water is solar with a hot back in the heating stove. Electrical backup heating is available when we get caught out.
I doubt that we could reduce our electrical loads much below our current consumption and thus may need to add another 300W of solar panels to the array. But ONLY if the Wind Gennie doesn't come to the party!

Thanks to everyone for your suggestions, I have now considered them all and will utilise them as far as possible in this system.