Whispergen boiler thing?

africa_rock

Hi all

Does anybody know the actual gas usage (LPG calor as no mains)firing one of these bad boys up?his seems the answer to my prayers as I am buying a remote welsh farmhouse and the electricty hook up would be 20-30k (yikes) I can get a calor bottle installed as there is a track. This way I can get background heating, hot water, electricity and help the planet. I would probably run it with a battery bank as i guess you would not want it firing up in the evening everytime you turned on a light so how many hours a day would it need to be on to provide background heat (will get most from log fires) charge up a batterybank for pretty low electricty usage (only two people) and heat the hot water tank? I guess that this is the key to how expensive it really will be?

any help would be great.

cheers

stuart

aboard_epsilon

They only give out 1500 watts at most ...that wont even boil your kettle...or "start" your fridge....and that's only when running your heating at max

battery banks ..you would probably have to buy special batteries ...

leasure batteries would last a max of 3 years .....they are £30 - £50 each..you need a few of them maybe ten

the proper ones for the job are £500 - £800 each...you may need ten of these also

these mocrogenerators pay off, by selling electricity back to the electricty provider at a generous gov sub tariff of 4 times that what you would have to pay for it coming in.

youre best getting your own genny ..preferably an indian listeroid ..and running it on veg oil..as being secluded, no one will know.

THEY ALSO SO CRUDE AND FORGIVING THAT THEY MAY RUN ON OLD ENGINE OIL ...IF YOU PUT A FILTER SYSTEM IN PLACE

listeroids are water cooled ..the waste heat powers your heating ..and the the electricity they make will be upwards of 3kw

against the law ...but they way the gov are screwing us...with the taxes on fuel..there own scams amongst the mps ..the bankers crap the nhs..who cares ...and if you aRe in AFRICA ..IT WILL NOT BE AGAINST THE LAW


all the best.markj

africa_rock

Thanks mark

I did a load more reading about the whispergen and baxi model and realise that it would be no good kicking out only 1kw as in the summer when you dont want the heating on you would be producing nothing at all. It seems that there are other miniCHP units that do give out up to 3kw but I cant find out what they are called yet.

I also came up accross the price of LPG calor gas prices and the horrific way the few monopolies (no contradiction in terms there then...lol) treat their customers. People paying 3k-4k a year for their heating. Yikes. Baxi are doing one that works from wood pellets that are fed into a hopper but I cant find out much about what the wood pellets cost or expected usage rates for that cost.

I origionally looked at generators but it such a nice mountain location that my only issue would be noise. If I built a stone outside shed and sound insulated the hell out of it would it really be that invasive?

A wind turbine with enough juice to do the job would look at working out at 15k or so and solar just wont have the legs on its own so I guess my off grid options are pretty limited.

cheers

stuart

aboard_epsilon

Yes the wood pellet stoves are good ..but in order to to meet the conditions of the MCS tariff ,You have to have them installed by a government accredited installer £££££ and you have to have them serviced each year ..service can cost as much as £800

the wood pellet prices are good now ...but i hear damand is now starting to outstrip supply ..which means in the future prices will rise .
Government departments...council offices ..schools are using the wood pellets ..which means they will go up in price...as the suppliers know that they can and will try to charge more and get away with it ..with these organizations

the listeroid engines are quite running ..are low revving diesels that sound like old canal boat engines

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVT-dNWt3I8

most have crude silencers........put on a decent car type system ..and you have the makings of a quiet generator


all the best.markj

Ben84

As I understand it the electric to heat ratio of these boilers is largely towards heating (you get about 1 Kw of electric and the rest is in hot water, enough to heat a house so probably 15-20 kW hot water), so when there is a demand for space heating they're very efficient, but without heating demand they're very inefficient. I don't believe they're designed to turn on when there's electric demand either, they're boilers and turn on when the central heating is switched on by the programmer + thermostat and just make electric at a set rate when running. In the absence of heating demand and nowhere for the hot water heat to go I'm assuming the internal boiler thermostat would notice the water was returning to the boiler very hot and would shut the burner down, so without some kind of big heat exchanger to throw away the excess 15-20 kW of hot water energy, such as a big radiator in your garden, you'd not be able to get it to run as just an electric generator anyway.

They're basically boilers that happen to make about 1 kW of electric and the assumption is when you're using the heating you're at home and almost certainly using electrical appliances anyway, and that you'll have the boiler attached to the mains to export any unused electric to the grid for sale to your electric company. In this situation they do look attractive. They're not really ideal for off-grid use though as they're only economical to run when central heating is needed. The rest of the time you'd be wasting a lot of gas. Generators produce more electric and have a greater electric to heat ratio, plus if they're water cooled you can capture that heat for space heating and hot water heating.

aboard_epsilon

Another point ..when it goes wrong ..which they will ..youre going to have to pay a specialist to put it right ..you wont be able to ring around and find the cheapest RGS gas fitter ..cause probably most of them guys will know didly squat about these things.

All the best.markj

Fruit_and_Nut_Case

*bump*

E-ON seem to have started pushing this again:
http://www.eon-futurehome.com/whispergen/

I filled in the pre-registration form and received a message that I would be contacted "in the new year". I sat back and thought no more about it but today I had a phone call from them to chat about the system. Watch this space!

peejaylew

I just got an email from Eon saying that they are no longer going to be involved with the Whispergen in the UK !:santa2: