Turbines and Birds

I agree about micro-generation, much better than the farms.

Elen Sentier wrote:I agree about micro-generation, much better than the farms.

Is it? In lifecycle analysis terms is it better to manufacture several thousand small turbines and panels etc than to have one large efficient one? How much microgeneration does a household need to become offgrid? How much unnecessary duplication does that involve?

What we should be looking at is CHP for estates and so on.

Wilhelm Von Rhomboid wrote:What we should be looking at is CHP for estates and so on.

And ground source.
Mostly before a new estate is built, they dig up the whole site. Why not lay a ground source loop while they are down there?

Wilhelm Von Rhomboid wrote:

Elen Sentier wrote:I agree about micro-generation, much better than the farms.

Is it? In lifecycle analysis terms is it better to manufacture several thousand small turbines and panels etc than to have one large efficient one?

Except that turbines can be relatively easily made from recycled components.

Turbines sufficient to take a domestic property offgrid?

Wilhelm Von Rhomboid wrote:Turbines sufficient to take a domestic property offgrid?

As long as they cook on gas.

Wilhelm Von Rhomboid wrote:Unfortunately not all newbuilds are suitable for microgeneration. If you have a North facing mid terrace midfloor flat for example.

Curious how you'd do one of those as a new-build. :?

How you would build a new midfloor midterrace flat? Build a block of flats of three storeys or more. The one in the middle will be midfloor, mid terrace. If it is on the North side of the building, it is North facing.

I am doing calculations of a block of 90 flats at the moment. A great number of them are midfloor midterrace, and half of those face North.

Yes, but it is the whole building that is a new build. It will presumably have a roof, and if they've any sense, then they'll point it south.

Micro-generation for individual parts of a single building is going a bit far don't you think?

That's why I said CHP is the way forward. If you are installing systems on a community level rather than per individual dwelling, be they flats in a block or houses on an estate, a lot of systems make sense, greywater harvesting for example, which are less efficient on an individual scale.

And a central composting facility...or at least a communal collection point witrh decent storage and access.

How are we supposed to have a decent row if we're all singing from the same page? :?

Some of us don't actually want a row, just an exchange of infomation would be good.

So what is the word on waste disposal units?
Strike me as an easy way of shifting compostables to a centralised collection.

Spawn of the devil IMO.

UNLESS there is no other way of collecting compostables.

All they do, otherwise, is divert potential compostables into the sewerage system. I have seen it happen!

Councils will promote them as being environmentally friendly because ( they say) the ground up stuff is used on fields ( when in sewerage) but why not actually go directly to composting it, rather than waste electricity grinding up the waste and then transporting it around, to use on ( mainly) non food crops in fields...?

Back to reduction of energy and (another form of) microgeneration again...but this time it is microgeneration of compost and fertility in one's own backyard. rather than doing it somewhere else using a waste disposal unit, using fossil fuels to do it and then getting a less good return from it.

As you can see , I don't like them at all.

I was thinking that if you're designing an integrated system, then you don't have to vent the waste disposal to the sewage. You could have a dedicated compost pipeline.
And put the sewage into methanogenesis to help fuel the CHP

IF that is what they did with it, it would be a good idea!

Compostwoman wrote:IF that is what they did with it, it would be a good idea!

If I was designing a block of flats, then that is what I'd do.

Forgetting new builds, how many terraced roads & streets are there in existing cities & towns are there that could benefit from free solar power...

If it were made "free" & remeadial works were done to the roofs, surely there would be an energy efficiency saving too...

In terms of job creation, technology development & export potential, to me it seems a no brainer.

There may be difficulties to overcome along the way, but, would it compare to the billions that it is going to cost to build the new nuclear power generators & don't get me wrong I am not nesecarily against nuclear power but only if there are no better avenues to pursue...

But with new builds & communal compost systems especially with flats, couldn't a system be developed where "hot composting" is used, even if only partially to heat water, or to provide something like under floor heating, perhaps it could be called something like "hypercaust", I don't know if that term is popular...