Free Solar Panels to try out

I received an email today from Martin's Money Tips [MartinsMoneyTips@moneysavingexpert.com], It is well worth subscribing to this site as so often Martin comes up with amazing tips and financial wisdom.


Free solar panels or new 'try free then buy'
Solar panels can make you £10,000s, as you get paid to generate electricity, but should you buy?

Solar panels aren't just about group hugs and going green, they can save you £10,000s. As the industry's rapidly changing, we've fully re-written our Free Solar Panels guide (this is a brief summary). You roughly need a south-facing roof to put the panels on and thankfully they don't need sunshine to work, just daylight. You financially gain in two ways:

Electricity savings: typically c. £70/year. The Energy Saving Trust has cut its estimate of a typical home's annual savings to £70/year, as its research shows more electricity goes back to the grid than previously thought.
Feed-in tariff: typically c. £1,030/year. This is the doozy: sign up now and for the next 25 years the Govt promises to pay a high feed-in tariff rate. In other words, it pays you to generate energy at more than treble what you normally pay to buy it from the grid.
Consider these gains over 25 years, and you'll see it can be extremely lucrative. There are now three routes to gain:

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Buy panels for £8,000-£14,000. If you have cash, on top of electricity savings the Govt's feed-in tariff scheme could pay back double your spend. Eg, a £12,000 system could net £25,750 over 25 years (see How To Buy Solar Panels).

Free panels, but you don't keep 'feed-in' tariff. If you're in England, Wales or, in a few cases, Scotland, some companies fit panels for free, but they then keep the big-money feed-in gain. You just keep the £70 electricity saving, though prices are predicted to rise massively over 20 years, so the saving could jump.

Try free then buy. An interesting new option from E.on. You get free panels, but it lets you buy 'em out, you can do it at a reasonable price to gain the feed-in tariff.

Climate Sceptics, listen up!

28 June 2011: It's unlikely that any of the current Transition West Bridgford members are climate change sceptics, but we are constantly coming up against people who are sceptics, and think of us as sentimental tree huggers. The American Meteorological Society (AMS) have published their report on 2010, and the story, summarised in the Huffington Post article makes alarming reading.
"The indicators show unequivocally that the world continues to warm," Thomas R. Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center, said in releasing the annual State of the Climate report for 2010.
"There is a clear and unmistakable signal from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans," added Peter Thorne of the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites, North Carolina State University.
Carbon dioxide increased by 2.60 parts per million in the atmosphere in 2010, which is more than the average annual increase seen from 1980-2010, Karl added. Carbon dioxide is the major greenhouse gas accumulating in the air that atmospheric scientists blame for warming the climate.
I find this article helpful (although the original is not yet on the AMS website), with some useful facts if you get into an argument with a climate change denier.

Fish farming in West Bridgford!

20 June 2011: One of DNC's students in the Tall Building design module at Nottingham University  has been doing a project on Vertical Farming. For his project he has developed a miniature ecosystem that can be repeated on a grand scale in his building. 

  Now that the University term is over, we have brought this system back and have parked it with Mark and Karina Wells, who live in West Bridgford, and who seem keen to have a working model of an ecosystem in their conservatory.

  Currently there are 4 goldfish in the tank which is the right number for that size of tank and for that amount of hydroponic pebbles in a planting tray.

  This miniature fish farm would be enough for growing bean sprouts or lettuces.

   

The principles are explained in several websites, eg WikiHow . and in Backyard Aquaponics. In his building (designed for Singapore), fishfarms would alternate vertically with hydroponic vegetable farming (see here), through about 45 stories.

    Fish inhabit the water, and produce a certain amount of poo. Some of the water is trickled (with its rich nutrient from the fish) and feeds plants and fresh vegetables above or below in a base of volcanic pebbles. The water is thus purified and trickles on through to the next fish farm below. Algae is trapped in filters can can also be used productively.

    PV panels provide enough electrical power for the small amount of pumping required (a one minute trickle of water every few hours, and some aeration of the water) . The only external input is fishfood - which could be obtained from organic sources, or processed human food waste from supermarkets and the vast restaurant industry of Singapore.
  This method can produce a way of producing edible fish and edible vegetables in one ecosystem! There are other by-products if it's done on a large scale, such as algae farming. Rainwater harvesting in a rainy place like Singapore means that it never requires imported fresh water. Land in Singapore is very limited and very expensive, so everything that gets built now has to be considered vertically! An eco-designed fish farm in West Bridgford would not need to be 45 stories! :)
  As the Singapore building would be productive enough on a small footprint, the remainder of the building is high quality residential apartments, enough to finance the initial construction cost of the tower.

Waste heat utilisation for tropical Greenhouse and fishery

A few years ago I came across this project in Switzerland that I would love to find some willing and able local businesses, engineers, financiers etc to undertake as a feasibility study and if possible implement. Just as Switzerland is land locked, so is Nottingham. We are far from the sea so fish has to come from quite a long way and tropical fruit is imported by plane.

Ruswil, like us happens to have a good train station adjacent to the power station, this could be good for tourism, getting employees to work, getting the produce into Nottingham without need of any more infrastructure.

The background for the project is a legislation that requires that 60% of the industrial waste heat must be reused to minimise environmental impacts. In 1997 the idea was born to use the waste heat from a gas compressing station in a greenhouse with tropical climate. The main reasons to choose a tropical climate are:

substitution of tropical fruit import to Switzerland
such greenhouses needs less space than conventional ones.
An aquaculture is also integrated.

It was also an aim to create and close nutrient and water cycles as much as possible within the greenhouse as well as on local level. Experiences show that the water need can be covered with rainwater which is collected from the greenhouse roof, except for some special few cases where tap water containing lime stone was needed. On the nutrient level, the only input into the greenhouse system is fish fodder. The fish water containing surplus nutrients from the fish basins is used to irrigate and fertilise the plants of the greenhouse.

Studies shows that the fruits produced in the greenhouse are more ecologically sound and better in taste then imported fruits. The business experiences shows that profitability is as high as with comparable farm products.

Project benefits

The project creates a win-win situation. For the gas compressing station it is a way to reuse the waste heat. The greenhouse generates income possibilities for the nearby farmers by producing ecologically beneficial tropical fruits and fishes (Tilapia) which have a great demand on the local market. The greenhouse also is a platform for public awareness on Ecological Engineering

Can you imagine that we could grow our own bananas, papaya, mango's guava's, lychee's, etc and breeding our own sturgeon all with waste heat from our powerstation in Radcliffe on Soar?






Another Swiss project is situated on the north side of the Lötschberg Base Tunnel which provides around 100 litres of warm mountain water at around 20° Celsius every second. It originates from the limestone layers of the Doldenhorn Decke, which is crossed by the tunnel below the Kander and the Gastern valleys. This amount of warm water cannot be simply diverted into the mountain streams such as the Kander, which require particular protection, as this would damage the ascent water and spawning grounds of the native lake trout. For this reason, an alternative option for cooling the mountain water was sought.

The innovative idea of using the mountain water for a sturgeon fish farm and for the production of tropical fruit originated from Dr. Peter Hufschmied, former engineer of the senior construction management of the Lötschberg Base Tunnel. It solved all the water cooling objectives in an ideal manner. In effect, with the fish farming, the fruit production and the expected visitors, the project will create major added value for the region. Thanks to the project, 10 to 20 workplaces have been created in Frutigen, and are also an alternative to the traditional agriculture. In addition, the project gives a major impulse to the regional economy, in that it adds a new attraction to the range of tourist activities.

For more information visit their website

Solar Day 18 June

18 June.... well in the Northern Hemisphere anyway. http://www.solarday.com/ See the page to read more about the mission of Solar Day. (it is 18 November in the Southern Hemisphere). DNC writes:

Face it....

• we have perhaps 50 yrs of declining oil and gas....

• if it wasnt for the smoky emission and the destruction of open cast mining we also have a lot of coal remaining below - enough for perhaps a couple of hundred years...

• but shouldn't we consider that the life of the Sun is measured in billions of years? Enough sunshine lands on the earth every day to cover our entire needs many times over if only we can develop the technology to capture and distribute it.

All energy sources cost something to exploit, I would prefer to see the money spent on a field full of Solar panels than a field converted into an open cast coal mine. (yes, people of Castle Donington!)

   Coming back to our own houses, what can we do? The upfront cost of a 4 kW PV array is only a fraction of the value of the house it goes onto, but will give a lifetime of cheap energy without emitting carbon, and an income for the first 25 years at least, more than enough to pay off the first cost.

   If the German government can project that the growth of renewable energy may be enough to decommission their nuclear power stations in 20 years, then that's an encouragement to us to try harder!

Eco Houses Under Construction

Saturday 16th July is Zero Carbon Britain Day and Transition West Bridgford’s Eco House Group is celebrating it with the launch of an exciting new project called Eco Houses Under Construction.
The project has been set up so that interested professionals and members of the public can learn about and visit 2 new local eco houses at key stages of development as they are being created. Experts in different aspects of each project will be brought in to show and discuss the products and methods involved as the work progresses.
The new build – a super-insulated timber frame house – is nearing the end of the groundworks. There is a block-work retaining wall already visible, and the timber frame will arrive in early July.
The refurbishment is now receiving the finishing touches to the detailed design – which we hope will come very close to the Passive House standard for existing buildings (known as EnerPHit).
The first event in a series of at least 8 free events will be:
Saturday 16th July, 12.30pm
West Bridgford, Nottingham
Talk by Steve Day, Fabric Architects
Steve is in charge of the eco-refurbishment design and will give an overview of the key aspects of this ultra-low energy refurbishment. His talk will include the “fabric first” approach and an introduction to the kind of work needed to achieve or move towards Passive House standard. From 1.30pm onwards there will be the opportunity to visit the house in its “pre-refurbishment” state for those who wish to do so. Email info@wbecohouses.co.uk to reserve your place and receive further details.
The second free event will be held the following weekend. Architect Mike Siebert of Ecologic Homes Ltd. will talk about achieving this low cost, high code new build using timber frame. The frame arrives in early July and should be up by the date of the event! To receive full details of this or any future event, email info@wbecohouses.co.uk.
For general information, see www.wbecohouses.co.uk. To see what other projects Transition West Bridgford has to offer, go to www.transitionwb.co.uk.
The Eco Houses Under Construction project is funded by Climate East Midlands, East Midlands Improvement and Efficiency Partnership and Communities and Local Government with a Growing Climate Friendly Communities grant. It is delivered by the charity Groundwork East Midlands.