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QrizB

The question would be better asked in "Green and Ethical" where you'll get a wider range of replies but in general they're not suitable for residential property.

Back in 2006 you could buy one from B&Q, fully fitted for £1500. The turbine was OK but hardly anyone had a suitable site and outputs were terrible - many of them used more electricity in parasitic loads than they generated. There's a long thread from that period here:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/273400/b-q-wind-turbines-merged-thread/p1

Even the UK's biggest manufacturer of small-scale wind turbines doesn't market them to home users:
https://www.marlec.co.uk/wind-power/

BUFF

it's not the easiest to come across https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/categories/green-ethical-moneysaving

Reed_Richards

QrizB said:

Even the UK's biggest manufacturer of small-scale wind turbines doesn't market them to home users:
https://www.marlec.co.uk/wind-power/

That's not entirely true:

Rutland FM910-4 Furlmatic – Generates wind power for caravans (Static), Off Grid Homes or permanently mounted locations

What Marlec don't do is market their products to on-grid homes.

Until recently a small domestic wind turbine has not been an economic means of generating electricity if you are connected to the grid; I don't know if recent price increases have changed that.  And the OP is looking to go off-grid.     

tacpot12

The annual maintenance is something that you can do yourself, if you are handy and have some basic tools. Although the more expensive the turbine, the more likely that you would invalidate any warranty if you didn't use the manufacturer or an accredited agent to do the maintenance. However, warranty periods tend to be short, so you could look over theshoulder of the engineer doing the annual maintenance while it is inside its warranty. 

If you were to buy a wind turbine, I would definitely recommend taking on the annual maintenance yourself. You will get to know the machine, and which parts need servicing, it will be worthwhile buying any specialist tools you might need, e.g. bearing pullers, and you will be able to keep good records to show that it has been serviced, and what parts have been replaced. This might allow you to sell it on if your needs change.

If you have the time, building your own turbine is entirely feasible. Hugh Piggott (www.scoraigwind.co.uk) sells plans for them. I would recommend his 2F designs as being most suitable for your requirements. 

Mounting the turbine to your roof is not a good idea due to noise, vibration, performance and the risk of damage to your property in the event of any failure. You should check with your insurer if they have any issue with you attaching a turbine to your property. Performance can be affected by roof-mounting as the air over the  roof is more turbulent, and it is harder to get the turbine as high when it is attached to your house.     

Qyburn

Check for the planning requirements, within limits they now can fall under Permitted Developments.  Otherwise you're into a world of noise calculations, shadow flicker etc etc.

https://www.planningportal.co.uk/permission/common-projects/wind-turbines/planning-permission-introduction

mnbvcxz

Short answer - solar is dramatically more bang for your buck. It has fallen vastly in price in last fifteen years. Small wind has not.

Longer answer - An evance/britwind r9000 is £30,000 5kw 10-12,000kwh a year. You will need a windy spot several hundred meters from any dwelling (they are a bit noisy at times) with a cable back to your house. There are about three companies left that will service it in the country, blackpool, wales and devon. Pay around £750 a year for the first few years to keep the warranty and then perhaps every other year as the bearings do go every few years. There is no guarantee you will be able to get parts and support in the future. There is no guarantee it will even last its 20 year lifespan. Many of the small wind turbine companies went bust or vanished. The industry died ten years ago with the end of subsidies and never really recovered.

Compare how much solar, batteries and heatpumps etc you can get for £30,000 with abundant support, parts and not much maintenance needed. Wind does not come out well in comparison. If electricity stays at 30p a kwh you can almost make an argument for wind but with the risk its still a poor one and a much weaker argument than solar. 

Spend a million pounds on a wind turbine and you make a fortune but you will never get planning permission. 

Maybe Honda will one day produce a cheap reliable turbine with ample parts and support that you can service yourself. I wouldn't hold you breath though. A 300w solar panel bought second hand for £100 and propped against a garden wall will easily outperform most of the low end chinese junk turbines and carry on doing so for a decade...

Unless its an enjoyable hobby for you making your own turbines I would stay away. 

Prove me wrong though, good luck

 

Reed_Richards

It's not really fair to compare solar panels with wind turbines, a wind turbine has the potential to provide power for 24 hours of the day; solar panels can only do this in conjunction with battery storage.  Batteries are expensive and shift the economics more in favour of wind turbines (although probably not enough).  Wind turbines also tend to produce more power in winter whereas solar panels in the UK produce a lot less.  Ideally, and economics permitting, you would have both; solar panels because they give you very cheap electricity and wind turbines because they give you electricity when solar panels don't.  

sevenhills

I recall 20+ years ago driving past a house every week that had a small turbine in their garden.
If you just had a un-metered turbine generating electricity wired into your electric, would it work?

Reed_Richards

Deleted_User said:

I have solar generators. Our solar isn't wired into the mains. We have cables that plug into the generator and we've run them though to the loft into the rooms - then they're wired into a socket in the wall. So we have a solar socket in every room. When we want to switch to the mains we just unplug the cable from the generator and plug it into the wall. It's more complicated than that - but essentially it's entirely separate from grid electricity but in practice you'd never know whether you're on mains or solar without looking at the generator.

I'm struggling to understand this.  I've done a search on "solar generator" and it seems these can be anything from hand-held to trailer-mounted.  You get a few solar panels, a battery system and an inverter so the end result is AC at mains voltage.  Compared to the typical domestic installation you get fewer solar panels but probably more battery capacity in the trailer-mounted version?

Then every room has a socket that is wired to the generator rather than the mains so if you want to switch from mains power to generator power you have to go around every appliance in every room, unplug it from the mains socket and plug it into the socket wired to the generator?    

Reed_Richards

I'm no expert but I would have thought that if your "solar generator" can cope with DC input over a wide range of voltages (as I think the specs indicate) then I don't see why you can't charge it from a wind turbine.  You're not likely to get a lot of watts from a domestic wind turbine but your watt hours might mount up.