Inside the Wind Turbine....

In 2009, after we returned from a spell of working overseas, I started designing and building an experimental wind turbine.

However, what with work, moving home and other commitments etc, it actually took well over two years to complete and erect the 'finished' operational unit, and during that time the basic design had also evolved significantly.

the turbine as currently configured...

  

The turbine has been up and running in its present location for most of this year, and so I thought we'd give you a brief description of the machine.....

Thermal Solar Experiment – Solar Air Heater (Solar Furnace)

With the experimental photovoltaic (PV) solar panels in place and operating, I started to wonder about the feasibility of getting useful benefits from thermal solar panels.

PV solar is not particularly efficient, converting only around 12-14% of the 'insolation' into electricity for polycrystalline cells, and maybe up to 18% for monocrystalline cells. 

Insolation is just a word abbreviated from 'incident solar radiation', i.e. the amount of energy from the sun received at a particular location, and is usually expressed in terms of watts per square metre.  As a rough guide the insolation is generally around 1,000 W/m2 at the earth's surface, although it does vary by location.   The 1,000 W/m2 value is also the basis on which the rated Watt-peak outputs of commercial PV solar panels are determined.

Thermal solar panels can be much more efficient, when the intention is to convert the sun's energy to heat and not directly to electricity.

I watched a few YouTube videos on making solar air heaters (or solar furnaces, as they're called across the pond), and reasonable results seemed achievable from home-made versions mostly using aluminium drinks cans.

However, the techniques used all seemed a little fiddly and time-consuming, in that the cans required cutting of both their ends and then sticking together to form a stack, although undoubtedly it's a cheap way to try it.

The local wildlife...

As I've mentioned before, we live in a semi-rural location adjacent to farmland and a local woodland nature reserve, and we're lucky enough to see some of the local wildlife. 

So I thought I'd share some of our photos from the past year...

Hedgehogs
We've a family of hedgehogs nearby, that we used to think might live in a pile of old tree-cuttings just the other side of our hedge, but when we cleared the land (very carefully !) they were nowhere to be found.  They can be seen out and about quite often at dusk and beyond, and one night in August we were fortunate to see a pair of them together in our garden.

Maybe it's some strange mating ritual but, although I know nothing about hedgehogs, it seemed rather late in the year for them to be breeding.   They didn't seem to mind our presence or the flash photography at all, although we were very close.  

# ..... ISA ISA baby.....#

In praise of the ISA.....(that's the 'Individual Savings Account' in the UK, which allows you shield capital growth and distributions from capital gains and income tax respectively).

I've been fully ISA'd-up for the last two years (£10,200 limit in 2010-2011, and £10,680 in 2011-2012), and I've also retained holdings in an earlier ISA from contributions I made around four and five years ago. 

I haven't yet added to my ISA pot in the current tax year, but I definitely expect to again be invested to the current annual limit (£11,280) before 5 April 2013, and also every subsequent year in the future assuming I can find the funds. 

I also recently closed my regular trading account with TD Direct and so the ISA account and my SIPP are the only trading vehicles I currently possess.

Considering that I run my own company, and have very limited personal pension provisions, I stumbled upon the benefits of ISAs very late in life – too late, many might say.

Home-made Solar Panels – Part 1 – Construction ...

Earlier this year, we decided to have a go at making our own solar panels.   It's very much a small and experimental array to check out the construction techniques, the costs and the economics of solar generation at our particular location. 

We have a shallow low-level south-facing roof over the kitchen and garage, with an open aspect to the west, so this seemed an ideal location.

We bought a 1kW kit of 6"x3" polycrystalline cells which came complete with rolls of tabbing and busbar wires and also with the flux-pens needed for soldering of the tabs.

I also spotted a job-lot of ex static-caravan windows on eBay and bought 12 for £10 each.  These were single-glazed windows removed from old caravans during refurbishment.  It was a couple of hundred miles round-trip to collect them, but well worth it for ready-glazed aluminium frames.  The sizes I bought were all around 42"x32".

Five cleaned frames trial-fitted into our roof mounting structure

When you're working out how many cells can fit into your frame, bear in mind that the cells are not exactly 6"x3" – in fact, they're usually 150 x 80 mm and 80 mm is almost 4 mm larger than 3", so we know from experience that this can screw up your layouts if you're drawing up the panels when waiting for the cells to be delivered !  Our frames each allowed a maximum of 60 cells, laid in 5 rows of 12.

Camping in Europe...holiday on the cheap ?

It was time for a holiday, the first real one we'd had since a package to Turkey in 2008, although admittedly we did spend around a week very early this year driving to a few cities in Northern Europe.  

Although I get  to travel around the world occasionally with work assignments, and even take my wife on some of them, they don't usually allow too much time for sightseeing and just general chilling-out.

It's many years since I'd been to the warmer parts of Europe, and my wife had never been at all.  A timely lull in foreseeable work commitments coincided with the end of the mad August rush on the French Riviera, and so two or three weeks away in September was the plan. 

The initial intention was to just drive around and stop wherever we fancied, generally in the cheaper hotels and B&Bs, but if the weather was fine then we'd fit in a bit of camping instead. 

Effective tax avoidance – start the homemade Christmas wine now...

Making your own wine is a great pastime on many levels....

Firstly, it's very cheap and the taxman doesn't get to surreptitiously steal a huge chunk of your hard-earned readies.   How big is the chunk ?  Read on...

Just think of the 'Three for £10' wine offer at ASDA that's been running for years; that's a bottle of wine for £3.33.  Now this wine has been made in Chile, California, Australia, South Africa or wherever.  Grapes have been planted, lovingly tended, harvested and pressed, the liquid collected, filtered and then fermented, cleared, put in a glass bottle, sealed, labelled and despatched half-way round the world and it's still only £3.33. 

However, consider that sum even further.  The UK excise duty payable on any standard 75cl bottle of wine of that strength is £1.90*  – yes, a staggering amount on any bottle of wine but a very high proportion of £3.33.  To add insult to injury, the £3.33 selling price also includes UK VAT (sales tax) at 20%, on the whole amount including the £1.90 duty, i.e. there's a tax upon a tax, and therefore the exchequer has just grabbed a further £0.56. 

So of the £10 you handed over at the ASDA checkout for your three bottles, £7.38 has immediately been snaffled by the government.

(* UK Duty rates from 26 March 2012 on still wine of 5.5% to 15% ABV = £253.39 per 100 litres)

The bottle of wine has therefore gone through all the stages described above, plus being distributed to the supermarkets, for only 87p.  In the supply chain everyone, the makers, shippers, distributors and the supermarkets has made a profit from just that 87p.