Off Grid power in Woodland House with Ben Law

[Ashley Cawley]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2FObksO8jA



Ben Law has been living in the Woods for 20 years. He explains how he generates and uses power via wind and solar panels.

[Wrighty28]

its brilliant - unfortunately, what will put people off is the start up costs involved. he's got real Gucci equipment there, quite expensive to buy. however of course the argument will be it pays itself off after X amount of years. i personally would switch to this system tomorrow if there was perhaps a government incentive.

[LandRoverMatt]

Looks amazing mate :D

[cuppa joe]

carefully does it ...the solar panels pay for themselves in 30 years ...if they last that long.

[Ben Casey]

Wasnt he on TV a bit back he works with wood making Charcoal I think and it was Dream House or something like that? He built the house himself using a wierd way of erecting the main frame for the house :)

[Realearner]

Ben law built his house on grand designs, and all the stuff cost £25000 even back then he had solar panels and wind turbines. All going into a set of old submarine batteries.
Lucky for Ben he has his own 100 acre wood.
Also been on with Hugh Fernley and writes for various magazines etc etc.

[jus_young]

Ben Law has been living in the Woods for 20 years. He explains how he generates and uses power via wind and solar panels.

I would love to meet the spark that wired this lot up, what a mess!


its brilliant - unfortunately, what will put people off is the start up costs involved. he's got real Gucci equipment there, quite expensive to buy. however of course the argument will be it pays itself off after X amount of years. i personally would switch to this system tomorrow if there was perhaps a government incentive.

The FIT is the incentive, but they have just cut that of course. Look for something called Green Deal, that may help if your serious.


carefully does it ...the solar panels pay for themselves in 30 years ...if they last that long.

Well designed and installed systems in energy efficient houses were giving payback periods of five years until the FIT was cut. But this only means that it is now going to take twice as long to get your money back which is what was originally intended anyhow. The problem is that there are so many variables involved along with poor installs that just give it all a bad name.


Ben law built his house on grand designs, and all the stuff cost £25000 even back then he had solar panels and wind turbines. All going into a set of old submarine batteries.
Lucky for Ben he has his own 100 acre wood.
Also been on with Hugh Fernley and writes for various magazines etc etc.

Didn't he have some panels of the Big Brother House aswell? I know a lot of his equipment was second hand which kept the costs down.

I'm not selling PV by the way, I just train people to install it :)

[happybonzo]

Ben Law did get his panels off the BB House.

Macsalvors in Camborne had some sub batteries at one time

I don't know how many people have lost their jobs due to the alteration of the FIT must it must be quite a few - very sad

[jus_young]

Time will tell. I know in the South West the number of companies went from a few tens into the hundreds with the boom but that is often the cause of sub standard installs. Speaking to a few companies around hear the work is still there but not the mad rush that has been present. I don't think that the lull will last too long as the cost of installs has dropped drastically anyway, and energy costs still keep going up so demand will increase again. At the end of the day its still a viable money making scheme for those that are primarily in it for the money side of it. The tree huggers amongst us don't care about the money and just have it installed for the greener side of things.

[happybonzo]

I would have thought that most of the installations were for the FIT. I would like to believe that I'm wrong but I doubt it.

[jus_young]

I would have thought that most of the installations were for the FIT. I would like to believe that I'm wrong but I doubt it.

T^