Renew-Reuse-Recycle | Site Planning Tool Trial

Site Planning Tool Trial

by Nicholas Cross at 2010-02-25 15:52:55 (Forum::Public::General)

We are currently trialling a site planning tool for Solar PV and Wind Turbine installations. We would appreciate any feedback.

The tool looks up resources for your location and compares estimated generation with estimated consumption and combines this with the Clean Energy Cash Back scheme tariffs to give a financial projection.

We would really like feedback from as many people as possible to help us improve and develop the service.

The tool is available on line with a couple of feedback forms here
http://www.rensmart.com/Tools/SitePlanner/Notes/Testing

If you don't want to give feed back, but just want to play try here

http://www.rensmart.com/Tools/SitePlanner

Thanks

nikcross - RenSMART Ltd.

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Site Planning Tool Trial	Nicholas Cross - 2010-02-25 15:52:55
Re: Site Planning Tool Trial	Bryan Rendall - 2010-03-04 21:14:12
Nice start, but needs to tune up a bit in the accuracy department! I have tried it for my own location, and its only suggesting 14,125 kWh a year. Actual projections (based on production to date and original estimates) are over 20,000 kWh, potentially 24,000 (though not if we get as little wind as this month!). Production in 4 months is just over 7,000 kWh, so more than 14,125 is still estimated. I guess one problem is that it either takes a generic 6 kW turbine or a basic specification, and makes it hard for end users to get a true indication of what their chosen machine will produce. The generic wind turbine model seems to fall quite a bit short of what will be achieved with a high efficiency machine. The other problem, is that Orkney Islands Council is not listed in the available Planning Authorities, although I am not sure what odds that would make! Cheers Bryan -- Bryan Rendall
Re: Site Planning Tool Trial	Nicholas Cross - 2010-03-05 09:49:44
Hi Byan, Thanks for sparing some time to look at our new tool. I looked at the specification of the Scirocco turbine here http://www.eoltec.com/English/scirocco_en.htm and came up with an approximation using our page here http://www.rensmart.com/Information/Betz%27Law to find the efficiency of the turbine. It works out at about 45% efficient which is pretty good. I also looked at the wind data recorded at your nearest Metar station here http://www.rensmart.com/Weather/Metar The latest full archive data we have near you is Kirkwall Airport in 2008. It shows that the wind measured wind speeds were close to the NOABL prediction. When I adjusted the turbine hub height to 15m, the turbine diameter to 5.6m and the efficiency to 45% I get 16,600 kWh/year which is a bit closer to your value. However, the current live version has inverter losses of 30%. We are about to revise that figure to 15% based on better data. This makes the value 20,100 kWh/year which is a pretty good match to your estimate and measurements. Two questions: Is your turbine the ROC project named Kirkwall Squash Club which we display here ? http://www.rensmart.com/Projects/ExistingProjects . We would like to combine the data entered on the Google spreadsheet with the location. Any photos would be nice as well :-) Would you be interested in giving quotes through our service when it goes live in the next couple of weeks ? -- nikcross

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