On Sun, 6 Jan 2008 10:37:18 -0000, john wrote:

Wind turbines are a joke, so are solar panels. They never produce
enough power to run the average house for a day, even with minimal use.

Solar panels as in photo-voltaic or thermal?

Show me some wind turbines or solar panels for domestic use that can
power an electric shower, kettle, TV and radio, maybe even a computer.

Plenty of wind turbines about, you could pick up a 400kW jobbie from the
side of the road at the end of last month, bit bent mind... Smaller ones
say 5kW rated to be useful are also easily available.

But using wind and or thermal solar panels is not about replacing mains
power or fuels but reducing ones consumption of them. If I had the spare
cash, I'd be installing a large heat bank with wind (5kW or so), thermal
solar, wood burner and oil boiler as energy sources. If the heat bank was
up to temperature and the wind was blowing I'd be wanting o sell the
excess power to the grid, that still seems to be rather hard to set up.

OK at current fuel prices it would take a long time to pay back but with
kero now at 40p+/l when it was 30p+/l only 2 years ago and 17p/l 7 years
ago using todays energy prices in the pay back calculation is not entirely
accurate...

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail