AmbergrisCaye.com Home Forums The Cayes Environment Go Green Wind Turbines on Ambergris Caye

Does anyone on here have any experience with using a wind turbine on AC? I wonder if BEL will purchase excess and if there is a height or noise restriction on wind turbines. I am exploring the feasibility of making a house I contemplate building up North self sufficient (and perhaps some excess) through the use of solar panels, wind turbine(s), and diesel generator.

Anybody with any experience with these kinds of systems? If so I would appreciate any information.

Thanks

Not one of those giant things, I hope! Lots of people have smaller ones though.

Actually, I know someone with a great deal of experience in using all those systems to power a resort. Not on AC though.

Giant is good................small is limited and problematic.......Wind Power Engineering is a responsible business.

There is a home up north near Rocky Point that has a large one.

I believe the giant ones in Europe are about 300ft high.

A few giant ones up north would be great IMO and could power a lot of the island!

Some of us in the Tres Cocos area looked into a shared one and found out you can not "legally" share power. Another monopoly controlling innovation?

There is a house North, I am sure you contacted, referred to as the windmill house (between Mata Chica and Xaman Ek). They have been on wind power for more than 10 years, but also have a BEL connection (I am not sure how they managed to do that).

Small systems usually come with battery back up. For bigger systems - depending on power demand - you need a back up generator because the wind is not constant and we have long periods with virtually no wind.

I am familier with the wind energy system, there is about 7 or 8 houses on the north A/C with wind energy and 1 on Caye Caulker.
I have'nt heard about any noise or height restrictions in the north or outside of town.
I am in contact with a German/British company that can supply single wind turbines and also a combination of wind turbine / solar and diesel systems for a competitive price.

I will send you an e-mail with more details.

Hi Martin, yes there are some small wind turbines on the island. From 2004 till 2007 there has been a resort 11 Miles North "Salamander Hideaway" and they've been self sufficient with power and they had solar panels and a wind turbine as well as a diesel generator. The resort has been sold and is under construction and the name is now "El Segreto". But still closed. The wind power part of this resort was very easy going. I think they had approximately 3kw turbine.
In 2008 I sold a big Bergey 10kw (7kw permanent) to someone much farer North and I heard that this wind mill is working and generating power.
BEL will never be interested to buy from you. I suppose they would not want to risk more people to generate cheaper power and avoid to buy the expensive one from BEL.
The guy on the island who knows about wind and solar power and who maintains several installations is Eddie Halliday. You'll find his phone numbers in the weekly advert in the San Pedro Sun or on their online pdf of the weekly classified ads. Eddy live right behind the San Pedro Smart office.
:-)

Thanks very much for the help. I am still exploring this whole issue as I am thinking of building a large house up north and although there is electricity at the site I would prefer to be as self sufficient as possible. Again, thanks to all that commented and especially Sunny Reef. Martin

A couple of years ago an engineer visited the island on holiday and did a study while he was here. He determined the breeze was more than sufficient and sized a single windwill to power the entire island including a factor for increase power requirements due to development.
If I recall it was 300 feet tall with the device being 200 feet in diamater. A 7 knot wind would power the island which is 90 percent of the time. If the breeze is over 7 knot (60% of the time) then sell it to B E L who have to buy it.
Cost 3 million usd plus the land and switchgear

Still the issue arises - what happens when the wind drops? Do we accept that the lights go out, or do we have a back-up system? What is that?

Also, whats the cost of yearly Repair and Maint.??

It would be in the Grid--the meter would just spin the other way when the wind drops below 7 mph.

What if the local sub-belize govt of A/C (SP city) were to propagate the idea as an alternative power supply to power up A/C as an independant co-op. AC as a whole would have more muscle than any sole owner types. Once the cost is absorbed, the island elec. cost would be more dependable and maybe less cost to the end users on the isle.

That was the purpose at the onset.
Hard to get any of the powers to be to get serious about it though. I am afraid it will have to be a private enterprise--then after it has proven itself the Government will nationalize it.
As far as cost savings--If the windmill was made of gold the power would be less expensive than it is now.

So, you are saying that for (probably) less than 4 million US we could pretty much make the island self sufficient and probably pay a dividend to the investors while lowering the cost of electricity on the island? If this is right then I think this would very doable from a financial perspective. The real question of course are the politics but with BEL now being an arm of the government would that make it easier or more difficult?

BEL is not "an arm of the government"

Sorry, I guess I was thinking of the telephone company BTL which I think was just nationalized. So, who does own BEL? Is it Fortis?

Yes

I am just reading 2 interesting article about an Irish proposal to back up wind energy by storing access energy as hydro energy:
How Wind and Hydro Energy Storage will save Ireland Billions in fuel Imports and Tens of Millions of Tons of Pollutant Emissions:
http://www.spiritofireland.org/content/repository/how_hydro_energy_storage.doc
Energy from Hydro Storage Reservoirs and from Wind:
http://www.spiritofireland.org/cont...on_energy_from_hydro_and_wind_110609.pdf

short, we have been doing something similar in New England. Bear Swamp and others I believe for a long time. The only thing is we use night time fossil and nuclear generation which is lower in price (most of the time) to pump up the storage. In the daytime when rates go higher we used to sell the hydro generation at a profit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_Swamp_Generating_Station

I don't know a lot about hydro or wind but worked in the fossil stations that ran higher loads at night for storage.

In thinking a little more about the above post I don't see how wind to storage will work unless there is really more wind than is needed as far as capacity is concerned. When you convert from one form of energy to another there are losses and if wind is zero cost for fuel where is the savings?....I'm tired tonight, I'll have to think about that and read the articles.

I think this whole thread is hilarious if you ever thought BEL would ever allow this to exist. On paper, in theory.. sure. Reality?

wasntme: It isn't up to BEL but to the PUC: http://www.puc.bz/ but BEL will not want hook up and be to be responsible for peaks and down time as that affects their own energy household. That is the expensive part of producing (consistent) electricity.

ragman: Interesting article on Bear Swamp Generating Station. While reading it I realize that hydro storage is not an option for Ambergris Caye, because it is flat. Gas turbines are usually used as back up for wind energy, but it is very costly and with prices in Belize I fear the cost will be exorbitant.

The back up (or storage) system will determine the cost of wind energy...

Of course this whole discussion on hydro has very little to do with AC. I still haven't read the article short but I suppose they are talking about building hydro to use for back up?? Do you realize the costs involved especially when it is only going to make money when there is no wind and then for a relatively short period of time before they run out of water and have to pump again. It will cost 100's of millions if not billions of dollars for the redundant systems.

Everyone on this board who knows me can anticipate what I'm going to say next. OK, I'll say it�.why not just build a nuclear plant or better yet, several. Gets them off oil, coal, & gas and it is proven economical. The companies that run these plants actually make money today without subsidies. I'll end here because this is getting way off topic. Ireland will not be able to afford this plan in my opinion. Wind doesn't make money yet without gov. help and it has other problems.

Martin if you want a wind turbine at your place good on you because I myself like the independence that it affords but is it going to be both practical and economical??? The maintenance issues with wind are getting better and modern systems can furl their blades to prevent damage but it is still a young industry and has a ways to go. The AC units are fairly expensive I believe, so most small uses go with DC. Good luck.

It seems to me that a combination of solar and wind would be ideal for AC. I think the problem, as others have stated, is storing energy for when it is needed and the other sources are not producing.

There has been some interesting research on wave and tidal energy which probably wouldn't be as useful here as other places. When I lived in England many, many years ago there was an old tide mill near me that still worked and that was designed before electricity to do just what the name says - mill.

I am not exploring any of this for any "green" reasons, though that is a nice side benefit, but rather for independence of these increasingly arrogant and expensive monopolies.

Practical and economic? Probably not but we will see.

I'm going to make some assumptions based on my experiences. Peak load on AC is probably 15MW I'm trying to remember, I don't sell or engineer these plants, but I'm thinking $3 million US per MW to build wind. Therefore for about $45 million AC could be powered by wind when the wind is blowing. To do this I estimate it would take at least 6 but maybe 8 wind turbines which would be about 300'+ in height. In other words they would be visible from practically any where on the Island. You would still need 15MW of back up available.

These wind turbines would change the scenery drastically, kill a few birds and cost a lot of money. These are the trade offs for a commercial venture. They also require highly qualified engineers to work on them and their circuitry.

I would say that it might be better to operate the way they are now and get the generation from the mainland and Mexico. Concentrate on these sources being green, economical, and practical would be much better. You need scale. For example all of Belize uses about 250MW (my est.) for peak load. Maybe less. Most of the power plants that I have run generate about 1000MW+ and in Eastern part of MA, USA there are about 5 or 6 of them plus many 100-150MW smaller plants.

Disclaimer, I'm making a few assumptions in my figures and if I was home it would be easy for me to check the numbers with a small amount of research and/or a call to one of the many engineers I know in this field to get the numbers closer. If anyone reading this wants to go in the business they better check these figures. Of course again this has very little to do with Martin's request for information.

Pretty sure we have a 15 or 20 MW feed at the moment and peak runs around 8 MW.

Probably correct. In the USA a rough rule of thumb is 100MW = 100,000 population and that is what I based my numbers on.

There are all sort of issues about these machines, to do with initial cost, expected life, maintenance costs, infrastructure costs, backup for down time or reduced output, etc. Some of these have been touched on by others. Has anyone stopped to wonder what happens to these things when they've reached the end of their (quite short) lives? Is anyone going to pay to remove them?

A major issue is the sight of the damned things - 300ft is VERY high and as has been said will be visible - and audible - from just about everywhere on the island. I don't have any objection to the small domestic ones, and I know lots of places that have them, but I believe we nee these giants like a hole in the head. When the subsidies die out and sanity prevails, I'm pretty sure that'll be the attitude in Europe as well. But by then it'll be too late.

For the past 20 years i have run a solar/wind only development on South Caye Caulker. We have 20 homes.I work in Maui installing solar carports to charge your electric car and power your house.
At this point in time solar is the most expensive power on earth and wind is the least reliable. Wind turbines turn on a single central bearing. The loads can be huge when it gusts up to 60 around here even if the blades stop.All our turbines were wiped out about ten years ago by big but not hurricane winds one winter.The replacements have better tech.
Fortis buys power in Canada from alt sources because of LOCAL laws that require it.Same with Maui Electric, though at this point they do not buy excess until a new set of statewide rules kicks in next year.You spin your meter back in the day and forward at night. If you reach zero or more you pay only a USD$12 fee for billing etc, This is called net metering.The present network replaces the battery storage systems you may find unaffordable.
As to Fortis, they suggested to me that they would allow us to operate a power station with any fuel including wind and sell power in the south of Caye Caulker to clients BEL does not serve. The Mennonites and others do this already. Bel is requred to power the people as part of its monopoly and this fills that requirement without BEL having to pay for lines to unprofitable areas. They must sell power to everyone at the same price so they would rather drop the villages and sell only in the city.
The chinese are selling inferior cells at very cheap prices such that solar sells in Maui for USD$2.69 a watt.This is a 50%drop in 5 years.
I am a windsurfer and prefer wind but you will find solar a lot easier set up to keep alive in your hybrid system.I urge you to start with cells and add wind later. Don't give any thought to having the tower in any way attached to your house.
Your biggest cost and problems will be batteries. Most types last only 2-5 years. You must buy them all at once and replace them all at once.Don't kid yourself on this point. Those who did at my place were unhappy with the results.
Any alt energy expert will tell to design your home to save power as the cheapest way to be more self sufficient.My home needs no air. Vistors are often pleased at how cool it is on warm days.Our power bill in Caye Caulker village and in Maui is about USD$45/mo in both places.This is about 6KW a day when the US average is closer to 15KW.In my CC development they average about 1KW. Power costs the same in Hawaii as it does in Belize.

Thanks - this is the most intelligent, informed information I have seen on the subject.

Thanks! I agree that is very helpful information and especially when it is combined with personal experience gives it great weight. Thank you again, Dane. Martin

There are some solar electrical folks coming to town next week who plan to set up shop. I'll give you their contact info. Will you be here around the 16 of January Martin?

Amanda, thanks for thinking of me. Unfortunately, I will be in Mexico for a week or so around that time. I probably won't be back until February. I would be interested in where these folks source their equipment especially the solar cells if you happen to find out.
Again, thanks. Martin

I'll proceed in this discussion even though it may not be directly tired to AC it is tied to the economies of the world which effect the Island.
Dane, Your experience is right on. Here is a little more info. Solar is very expensive to generate electricity and won't be viable for many many years, probably not in my life time. Heating water it is better at when used with a supplement. OK to charge batteries on a boat or some small project like that. A company in Massachusetts after receiving many millions of dollars from the State & Federal governments just announced it is moving to China. It managed to lose $150 mil. So far. http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2009/...-production-from-massachusetts-to-china/ The loss was noted on the financial news a few days ago. Politicians are heading for cover on this one.

The force of higher winds is tremendous but they have lessened that with furling blades which I mentioned earlier. Of course these blades are complicated and require a lot of maintenance. Another problem is that there must always be a load while the blades are turning or the unit could over speed so it requires other protection besides furling. If the unit is tied into a grid the grid will limit the speed (frequency of 60 cycles) as long as the unit stays tired into the grid. If the breaker opens other devices must protect it from flying apart. Vibration can not be completely eliminated so you should never mount on a roof. Must have a good solid base and be designed to absorb some of the vibration. All of this adds to much more maintenance than normal and I can't comment of the life span of a wind unit but a normal fossil plant is good for up to 50 years. That would require at least one life extension project.

Cost of wind is much more, presently, than conventional generation. From this mornings Cape Cod Times: http://www.bostonherald.com/busines..._millions_extra/srvc=home&position=5 It looks to me that they estimated about $2.4 Mil/MW but this is on a very large scale 420MW project and will probably come in higher. For now I'll stick by my $3 Mil/MW number. The deal above calls for a whole sale price of $.24/kw which is about 3 times higher than the now present rate from other sources.

In the final analysis the cost of fossil fuels will have to really get pretty expensive to make wind or solar pay at present. This is why I always have to go back to Nuclear for the good of the world to get off oil. I met with some people at a Nuclear Plant a few weeks ago and I asked them quite a few questions about the problems with Nuclear and they reinforced what I already understood. They also demonstrated their simulator to me that they use for training. It costs approx. $30 mil. and is an exact replica of the actual control room with computer generated events which must be handled by the trainees. I've been trained years ago on a simulator for fossil plants but this was really impressive.

I forgot to address noise on Wind Turbines. I frequently park my car under a wind turbine. I think it is 2.5MW. There is noise but it isn't bad and you kind of get used to it. More like a wosh, wosh. I don't ever remember hearing it more than a few hundred feet away but I'll pay more attention the next time I'm there.

Noise transmission a few hundred feet away would be a serious negative-impact issue in a residential area.

Diane, I'm probably the last person in the world who should comment on noise, now that I think about it. From years of working in noisy power plants I can barely hear some one across the table talking to me, especially if there is any back ground noise.

What did you say Ragman, I can't hear you?

I would rather see wind turbines than billboards

what is the connection?

Just stating a preference of which one would be nicer to see as there was a billboard complaint thread recently as so many are going up all over the place.

A hijack!!!!

So what! They are both big and ugly.

It is a hijack but since it is over---I wonder how many walk-ins Ramons will get to justify the hundreds of thousands of $$ Headrick spent on all the signs?

at least wind turbines serve a purpose..those Ramon's are UGLY!

Like you've never done it

But shocking to see Miss Pura Vida do it!!!

only if one would consider that a jack. BIG stretch........my bet is that 95 out of 100 posters would not consider that a jacking.

Besdies,many ppl know you have a "thing" for her. Just looking for something to pick at, are ya Jesse?

Oh yes..I am just vicious with Taco Girl!!!!!

I like jack fish

I saw "Franks" place way up north , last place before the rocky point, and he has a real good set up with the wind mill, and battery storage, all well designed, has reverse osmosis water system with ultraviolet water filtering/disinfection process , care giver was friendly and showed it all to me, my pictures did not come out though , not sure how much he spent, but sure looks impressive, and no need for the generater unless things break down.