PowerSwitch

Hi ,

I am interested in setting up a wind turbine and possibly PV panels to power an off grid farm building.
I want to include some lighting (LED lamps I guess!), possibly some water heating and electrical sockets for a milking machine or water pump.

Can anyone suggest a reasonably priced wind turbine/pv panel combo with ancilliary equipment that I could investiagte please?

I have been surfing the net researching this and I cant sift through the information overload. I would like a suggestion from a person who has done this before.....

Benedict.

Welcome, I'm sure somebody will be along shortly to help you out. You should mention what sort of budget you have.

You also need to tell us:

1. The power demand of the milking machine and the pump.
2. The average wind speed for the site. There are databases that can tell you this, but their data is unreliable, so you'd be better off putting a anometer up a pole and recording your own data.

Milking machines often use very considerable power and may be beyond the capacity of a reasonbly sized wind power system.
Some milking machines are three phase, which adds to costs and complications.
Also, having milked the cows, it is almost allways a requirement to refrigerate the milk to reduce spoilage. This requires significant power, unless the outside air is reliably below freezing.

Electric heating is certainly possible from wind power, but battery storeage is impractical for heating. Thermal storeage is possible for a few calm days, but beyond that some other heat source will needed such as oil, LPG, coal or wood.

adam2 wrote:Also, having milked the cows, it is almost allways a requirement to refrigerate the milk to reduce spoilage.

Back in the good old days when I where a lad, and I helped my cousin do the milking, we poured the fresh milk into churns immersed in cold water. When full, the lid was put on the churn, we put them on a hand truck, and pulled them down to the platform at the end of the lane for the milk lorry to collect. None of these newfangled tankers and refrigeration, and I don't think anyone died!

Even if a system such as this could be set up, what would be the subsequent cost of a pint of milk from it?

My advice: take your coffee black. But I'd recommend that anyway, wouldn't I?

Milkmaids.

Simples.

If you have livestock, have you considered using the anaerobic digestion of manure to generate biogas for either/both a generator and/or heating? There is a farm down the road from me that has done this with the intention of powering their dairy. They won't be off-grid though.

Someone else more qualified than I will have to comment on whether this is more likely than wind to achieve the kind of power output you would need (as per Adam2's comment) but it should help avoid some of the problems of having to store electricity for when you need to use it. I presume that it is possible to have a system that can store the biogas for when you need to burn it?