Living on an island lot of sun and sometimes good wind

[Kevin Vlies]

Hello I live on an island called Curacao next to South America. The electricity bill is very high because the island uses big generators to produce electricity. We have a lot of sun and almost never claudy or rainy i would like to get some ideas on making electricity using solar power or wind power. My budget is not that big so i can't afford something to expensive i thank you very much i am new in here and hope to get nice friendship with all the members bye. :)

[Greg Eckard]

Kevin ;

Welcome to the group. I've found that this group is one of the best for learning the basics.

If you've got some wind, check out Mark Parson's thread in the Do-it-Yourself area about " Savonius Picoturbines". Great place to start on a budget.

Greg

[Kevin Vlies]

Thank you :)

[Paul Bailey]

Hi Kevin: In what area do most of your energy needs lie,?? What have you done so far re; conservation. Killowatt energy usages Etc ??? Paul:)

[Kevin Vlies]

Well i have not done nothing yet because i am moving in a new house this end of the month. We have a system on the island that we have to buy like a phone card but instead it's a card you put in the meter in the house so you can have electricity better said we don't get a bill only a water bill. By next month i will know exactly how much electricity i use because this new house is a little bigger than the one i'm living in right now. Here we use more 110 volts only the airconditioner is 220 volts. I will have to find out how much kilowatts i use per month. I don't have to cover the whole house with energy but the more i can cover the better because electricity is very expensive here it's about $6 for 20 kilowatts. The money here is very low also the minimum wage is about $ 600 so you know how dificult it is down here. But i earn more than that so i can afford something nice. I would like to build my own wind turbine but the parts are so difficult to get down here I think a wind turbine will cost me cheaper than a solar panel anyway please let me know what you think :( thanks Paul. :)

[Paul Bailey]

do your homework on finding out what available wind you do in fact have(wind maps) ,Talk to others that are doing wind and or solar. Wind in particular tends to be very site specific unless your on the water. Based on your location the SOLAR has got to be excellent. Paul:)

[Kevin Vlies]

On the island i live i have about 9 knots wind about 10 miles an hour.
I need information how to make a wind turbine from start to finish with all the information. How to make, how to connect etc.. please help me with this and where i can buy the parts or what parts do i need. Here sometimes it is difficult to find the right parts so i will need a website where i can buy the parts. Thank you very much guys !!:) I don't want to make a big one just enough to give me some good electricity.

[Mark Parsons]

Greetings Kevin,

I have to agree with Paul that likely Solar is a better option for you. 10MPH wind does not provide much power unless the turbine is big. A challenging project.

Solar PV panels is also a less daunting DIY project. With a couple of solar panels and a grid tie inverter you are making electricity. You can scale this up as you get more money and add panels.

Your info indicates $6 for 20kWh = $0.30 per kWH. This is US$?

Can you find the solar resource for your location? Normally indicated as peak-sun hours per day. Multiply this peak sun hours per day by the watts of your solar panels and get the watt-hours per day of solar electricity available to you. Does your electric utility supplier allow for grid-tie net metering options?

Google - "solar panels" to get a ton of info, prices and options. You may pursue making your own solar panels using individual inexpensive solar cells. Mike Gibson has a thread called 'Air Space or Liquid' under the DIY section on this forum that talks about his experience with this option.

My $0.02 worth. :)

Regards,
Mark

[Rob Beckers]

Welcome to GPT Kevin!
A bit late, but I'm currently visiting family in The Netherlands and have limited Internet access. Being Dutch myself I know of course about Curacao! If you have a moment, please feel free to update the account picture with something that has your face in it (as per forum picture rules). We like to know whom we're talking to here at Green Power Talk. In fact, I believe it's one of the reasons why it's the friendly place that it is.

To get back to the business at hand: A little search shows you have 5.3 sun hours per day on average. That's 5.3 kWh/m^2/day. More in summer, less in winter, this is the yearly average. For solar electricity that is a lot of sun! At first glance it would seem that with your high electricity price a few solar panels would pay for themselves in short order.

Give us a bit more info (along the lines of Mark's questions), electricity price in USD, your average electricity use, availability of net-metering, and if you have it the local prices of solar panels. With that we can do a better cost analysis.

-Rob-

[Kevin Vlies]

Ok here in Curacao each kilowatt costs about $ 0.29 us
I am using about 400 kilowatt per month but that is including 2 airconditioners of 16.000 btu each. The rest is light and refrigerator etc..
The airconditioners are 220 V the rest is 110 v.
There is no law that you can't produce your own energy. I think it is legal but only if it is for personal use. I hope this is enough info for you my friend.

Tot ziens (Later) Kevin.

[Rob Beckers]

Well, let's see how this pans out:

Assuming you can do net-metering (or just hook up solar power to your grid, so any excess is automatically 'sold' back to the utility by turning the meter backwards), you need around 400 / 30.5 = 13.1 kWh/day on average. There's on average 5.3 solar hours a day to produce this, so that means 13.1 / 5.3 = 2.5 kW needs to be produced during that time. A reasonable assumption of panels, inverter, and other losses is 70% efficiency (from name-plate rating), so that means you'd need 2.5 / 0.7 = 3.6 kW in solar panels to cover your full electricity use.

Now to the cost side, how much of an investment does this take? It ain't cheap... Evergreen 190 Watt panels can be had in the US for $4.39 per Watt, so that's $15,804 in panels (yes, auch!). An inverter would cost $2,350 for a 3.8kW SunnyBoy. Then there's AC/DC disconnect/breaker, wiring, and miscellaneous other hardware, say, $700 worth. Now, I'm going to assume you are handy, and do the work yourself (assuming it's allowed over there), and that you somehow figure out your own way to mount the panels rather than buying (expensive) solar mounting rails. That makes for a total of $18,854 in cost.

The last part is to see how long it'll take to earn back this rather large investment. You'll be producing about 400 * 12 = 4800 kWh of electricity per year, worth 4800 * 0.29 = $1,392 per year. That makes for 18854 / 1392 = 14 years to earn back the invested money. Not great, but certainly better than Canada where we're currently looking at around 21 years for Ontario (OK, the Ontario cost assumes you hire someone to do the work, so DIY would be a few years less).

There are a few comments I should make. First of all, don't quote me on the above. This is a back-of-the-envelope calculation (literally, since I don't have a calculator with me here). There are lots of assumptions, especially on cost, and what I showed above is rather minimal. Who knows, supplies may be a whole lot more expensive over there. There's no labor quoted either. I've not looked at matching panels and inverter either. Nothing in there about the cost of borrowing money, tax effects of installing panels etc. In short, lots of hand-waving going on. Still, it gives some idea on how to go about figuring these things out. Of course, nobody says you have to install enough panels to fully displace one's electricity use. The same still goes for smaller setups, though things tend to get more expensive per Watt for smaller installs. Finally, economic payback hinges completely on the price of electricity. When electricity prices go up, payback is faster!

All this probably wasn't all that helpful, but now you know... :)

-Rob-

[Kevin Vlies]

Hmmmm... interesting i think i will be building my own solar panels, it will cost me less than buying them. Everything here is imported so it will be cheaper to import only the parts i can't get on the island like solar cells (and if it's a wind generator magnets are difficult to find here) to build it myself. But i thank you very much for the information.

Kevin.