I was intrigued by Tesup, but having read some reviews from TrustPilot and other forums, I'd be very wary of ordering anything from them I'm afraid. 

It's a shame as they looked potentially quite affordable!

some very weird text here

Home Wind Turbines: Pros, Cons, and How Much They Cost | OVO Energy

You wont need planning permission if "You don’t already have an air source heat pump installed"

So are they protecting their mates at the energy company by not allowing wind energy to power ASHPs???!   Wind is the obvious generator in the UK winters to power ASHPs but they are putting this blocker in the way.

@saf1973 I expect they've used a copy of the ASHP page and just not modified that section properly when customising it for turbines.

@swalker, what was negative about the reviews? Was the quality of the product, support, delivery or all of the above?

Posted by: @saf1973

some very weird text here

Home Wind Turbines: Pros, Cons, and How Much They Cost | OVO Energy

You wont need planning permission if "You don’t already have an air source heat pump installed"

So are they protecting their mates at the energy company by not allowing wind energy to power ASHPs???!   Wind is the obvious generator in the UK winters to power ASHPs but they are putting this blocker in the way.

I’ve seen that on several sites. My guess is that the planning authorities are concerned the combined noise of two outside fans may be intrusive to neighbours.

Bear in mind, though, that needing planning permission doesn’t mean the answer’ll be “no”. It just means you can’t go ahead without consultation. From what I’ve read, the authorities are still likely to want to give the nod if they possibly can.

Hey @editor, https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/tesup.co.uk - in some cases it sounds like you'd be quite lucky to even have a product delivered!

Windy Pete

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10422843/Retired-engineer-person-England-supply-households-cheaper-green-energy.html

Now that's really interesting @Jeff, not just because of someone making a bit of money from renewable energy but because of the bit in the article that talks about making use of smart meters to switch between suppliers.

Come the summer, I'm expecting - as, I suspect, are plenty of others with solar PV arrays - that my electricty generation will exceed my daytime consumption and battery capacity. The story you quoted gets me wondering if a simple bit of joined-up thinking and technology could allow me to "supply" to my neighbours in a similar mutually beneficial way when our panels are exceeding our own capacity. Hmm, food for thought. Thanks for sharing.

@majordennisbloodnok there is also an article about windy pete in The Times.

Be interesting to see how the market for community owned small scale wind/solar/hydro/battery storage/heat networks evolves. @Transparent i would have thought would have some good input on this about what is possible and how things might evolve. 

I would hope cost effective metering, grid connection options etc. continue to evolve to encourage this sort of setup.

Interesting that Windy Pete was planning to get rid of his wind turbine due to the low energy price offered by the energy networks. That isn't good.

I have invested in small scale solar and wind turbine setups in the past, both failed but luckily the Financial Ombudsman stepped in due to miss selling in both cases. A lucky escape. Costs can quickly spiral and finding reliable companies for this sort of thing can't be easy. 

Yes @Jeff ... Transparent has lots of views. Most of them picturesque 😉

My off-grid wind turbine was a self-build. The tower was made from a couple of aluminium stage-lighting gantries, obtained from a Westcountry nightclub that closed down!

I bought a pole-top 1.1kW PMG (Permanent Magnet Generator) from a Scottish company on the understanding that they'd fitted high-quality German bearings.

They hadn't. The Chinese bearings disintegrated after three years, and just a couple of months after the supplier had ceased trading!

Apart from the financials, I've learned a lot from this experience.

A. You must have sufficient electricity storage (or a grid-tied inverter) to take all the output produced by the turbine. Unlike PV panels, if your storage system fills up and decouples itself from the generator, the blades will turn ever faster and the windings will over-heat. The same is true if the bearings start failing; the residual energy left in the turbine head will melt the insulation on the windings which then short-circuit in dramatic fashion. That event brought my first wind-powered venture to a close.

B: The average output from a domestic wind-turbine is pretty low... about 10% of the maximum rating. For this reason it isn't a good contender to take up your G98 allocation of 3.6kW for grid-export. Far better to use the energy "off-grid".

C: I agree with the previous comments about a pre-installation site survey using an anemometer. I had a defunct electricity pole in the garden, which had a cheap anemometer on top for about 6-months whilst I recorded daily readings from a meter in the chicken coop below!

D: I have subsequently read "A Wind Turbine Recipe Book" by Hugh Piggott. He builds wooden turbines (incl the PMG) on the Scottish island of Scoraig. I wish I'd known of Hugh's exploits earlier. Even if you intend buying a pre-built turbine, you need to have an understanding of the basics to know what constitutes a good choice for your site.

E: I've now bought myself a handsome TIG-welder and will eventually rebuild my turbine. It will still be 'off-grid' but configured as one of several inputs to my forthcoming hybrid LiFePO4 storage-battery. Thanks to Hugh's book it will also incorporate a furling mechanism to take it out of the wind when it's too strong.

F: I will probably buy-in a new PMG. Their operation is very similar to the motor used for electric bikes, but in reverse. So that's where I will be looking for possible contender once time permits.

G: Beware that it's extremely difficult to predict what the peak output of a PMG will be. My original unit rated at 1.1Kw was actually putting out 1.8kW on windy days. That quickly filled my six hefty lead-acid batteries. The 'dump-load' was a 24v immersion-heater in my thermal store. However, that too was insufficient so I had to build three 200w air-blown dump-loads and position them around the house!

H: I don't recommend a wall mounted turbine at the top of your house. Even if the air-flow is undisturbed by the adjacent building (unlikely), the vibrations through the wall anchors can do serious structural damage.

I'm unsure if the above is truly helpful, or whether I've just opened up a whole load more questions. 😕 

Read some reviews of Tesup yesterday. Opinion was they are a box shifter in Turkey, delivery times were bad or the equipment ordered didn't turn up.

If the equipment did turn up it was substandard and poorly made... 

They might be fake reviews but given there isn't much competition in the small to midsized grid tied turbine market I can't see why...

I don't have any personal experience of them and the reviews put me of getting any... sadly, as I love the idea of supplemental power from wind over winter.

@transparent, how tall is your structure?