Domestic application of micro wind turbines in Ireland: Investigation of their economic viability

Zhe Li, Fergal Boyle and Anthony Reynolds

Renewable Energy, 2012, vol. 41, issue C, 64-74

Abstract: Electricity generation from renewable sources of energy will be a key part in the development of future strategies for many countries globally. This renewable electricity generation will be hugely important for Ireland, due to its lack of fossil fuel resources. The extremely good wind resource available provides Ireland with the opportunity of generating vast amount of electricity from wind energy. Large-scale wind electricity generation reached 1264 MW installed capacity by January 2010 in Ireland. However, micro scale wind electricity generation has not been very popular in Ireland to-date. The unclear economics of micro wind turbines, under Irish conditions, is considered the biggest obstacle for expanding micro wind turbine installation in Ireland. This paper presents a methodology to accurately evaluate the economic viability of a micro wind turbine on a case-by-case basis. The methodology utilises the software programmes HOMER and Microsoft Excel 2007 for the energy and economic analyses. This paper also presents a realistic economic analysis of a number of micro wind turbines available in Ireland.

Keywords: Renewable energy; Wind energy; Micro wind turbine; Economic viability; Sustainable living; Ireland (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148111005660
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:41:y:2012:i:c:p:64-74

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2011.10.001

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().