New solar project from England needs your friendly advice

[Archer Toad]

My first post here, so please be gentle with me , if you need more info to make a more informed answer just let me know

This is my first move into solar power, I am a retired mechanical electrical engineer but I have never worked with solar so for this I do have knowledge gap

Input will be from 4 x 410W quality solar panels spec of :-

Rated (Peak) Power (Wp): 410W in Standard 1000w/m2 solar light

Open Circuit Voltage: 37.2V (Vmp =31.2V)

Short Circuit Current: 14.01A (Imp = 13.15A)

Efficiency: 21.0 %

Cell Type: Monocrystalline Silicon

I am also adding 2 x 600W wind generators

The panels will be south facing but they will be mounted on my garage roof as my roof currently has a solar water heating system installed there limiting space for solar panels

Having been keeping an eye on the garage roof for many days I estimate on a nice day I will get about 6 -7 hours of uninteruped daylight on the panels, slightly more in summer less in winter (maybe down to 1 hour) as is usual with UK weather so would it be a good or bad idea that I have added 1200 watts of wind generator power

I already have a 12 volt 960 amp hour lead acid battery bank, (was being used in a hospital UPS set up and all are as new) or I can configure the batteries to supply 24 volt 480 amp hour if anyone recomends that would be better

Output will be to my house to power the usual 3 bedroom semi detached, central heating is mains gas, I haven't worked out the total consumption of electricity by units but looking at the bills we are using about 7,000 units a year

I am working that my fridge and freezer and central heating boiler and pump will remain on mains power throughout, at least until I am sure they wouldn't fail if my batteries die

I do not want the system to feed back into the mains excess power

So my questions are:
Will I have enough solar panels / wind generators watts to charge the batteries ?

What size solar controller will I need ?

What size invertor will I need ?

I have seen hybrid inverters which will automatically switch from solar to battery to mains as power fluctuates, also some of these have mains battery charging when the solar / wind cannot charge the batteries enough, are they any good or what would be a better suggestion

Thanks everyone I look forward to your replies

[Mike90250]

Unless you have to tie your hat on every time you go outside, or your wind generators are on 90 foot poles, you do not have suitable wind power.

Solar panels are very reliable and will be a lot less problem then lowering the wind generators 2x a year for grease & repairs.

[Archer Toad]

I have 4 of the big solar panels but just looking at wind for dark nights and days so at least some top up of the batteries can happen

[J.P.M.]

I have 4 of the big solar panels but just looking at wind for dark nights and days so at least some top up of the batteries can happen

What mike wrote.

The maintenance, tower height, insurance premiums and time spent on a wind turbine will be about the same regardless of duty.

Unless you have a passion for WECS it'll soon turn into a PITA, but suit yourself.

[SunEagle]

I have 4 of the big solar panels but just looking at wind for dark nights and days so at least some top up of the batteries can happen

As Mike stated unless you really have a high steady wind most of those wind turbines will never produce what they say they could and all of them require a lot of mechanical maintenance. So before you invest in a turbine you really need to do the homework to understand what you are getting into.

[Archer Toad]

Thanks for the info folks I am getting the idea rather quickly that no one likes wind turbines, as I said above I am a novice at solar / wind / off grid power and do appreciate the advice, from reading around the forum I can see that my limiting factors are space for solar panels where they will get good sun for a reasonable time and the lovely English weather, which at the moment is pretty good, what I was hoping to achieve with the wind gens was at least some battery top up during the dark times

I understand that wind generators never produce what they say they will except in the rare time when conditions are ideal, but I was hoping that at least it would be something when the solar isn't operating, I live near the coast and we do get a reasonable amount of wind here without having to go to mega high

Just for the hell of it I think I will give them a go and see what happens and if they are rubbish or need so much work to keep running they will either end up in my woodlands, on eBay or in he scrap pile

Forgetting wind for a minute what advice can you give me on invertors ? hybrid ? I am not going to be feeding back to the grid, thanks all

[reader2580]

How will you avoid feeding to the grid? Is your mains power and your solar going to be separated? Are you using an inverter with zero export?