Renewable energy?

[Quiet Man]

Has anyone got any experience installing renewable energy? Solar panels/Wind generators/geothermal. Are they really an alternative for heating, lighting or hot water? Is it worth installing in a domestic situation?

[Toureman]

Installing any of these energy sources would be expensive and would take many years to recoup the cost, Solar is the only viable one, Wind generaters would be to big and noisy, I don't know how you would get geothermal in this country, or do you live in Iceland?

[stanleyman]

You can use geothermal, it takes the heat out of the ground with buried pipes in long shallow trenches or bored vertically and it's converted in the same way refridgeration works to provide heating. The problem is although the gain is three or four times every kilowatt used in pumping, you still need very cheap electricity to compare in cost to existing fuels.

[timsharpe]

There are a number of possible renewables that could (and should) be used in domestic situations. The right one will depend a lot on what type of house you have, where you are, and what your existing heating system is. Domestic renewables include: Wind (no its NOT noisy, especially for small turbines that dont have gears), solar - these include solar hot water heating (reliable and widely used), photovoltaics (emergy technology used to produce electricity), and solar space heating (e.g. a correctly orientated conservatory); Combined heat and power (CHP - a small unit about the size of a fridge that produces both heat and electricty, may use gas, can also be used with wood pellets and other fuels); heat pumps (referred to in the previous answer, popular on the continent will gte more popular here as it becomes apparent that we can make electricity in the UK, but have to import gas); heat recover ventilation (recovers heat that would otherwise be lost through extract ventilation). Many of these can attract grant aid (see est.co.uk)

[Catso]

I think I've read somewhere that a rough rule-of-thumb is that it'll take 10 years to get your investment back