I don’t yet know how much electricity our turbine will generate. I have structured the budget around an annual generation of 100,000 kWh. If we do 120,000 kWh we will make money, if we only do 80,000, we will not pay off the loan in the 10 year period agreed with the bank. But it is clear that the less electricity we sell at 3p, and the more we use, replacing purchased electricity at say 10p, the better off we will be.
Like many similar farmhouses, we have an oil fired Aga, and oil burning central heating. I understand that some more modern Agas can now be converted to run on a 13 amp electricity supply. For heating, we could install a ground source heat pump, as of course we are not short of land to bury the pipes. Ground (and air) source heating systems use quite a lot of electricity to drive the heat exchanger compressor, but you do get about 2 kWh of heat out for every 1 kWh of electricity put in.
Then there is the car. Most journeys are 40 miles or less, so a plug-in hybrid would enable most of my day-to-day motoring to be electrically driven.
Another unknown is, when will the wind blow? Sod’s law would suggest that it will blow like crazy in the middle of the night when we are not using anything, and be completely still during the day when use is at its maximum. But our very limited experience to date suggests that the wind tends to drop as it goes dark. If this pattern is repeated throughout the year, this will minimise our export and maximise our usage.
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