Self powered heated greenhouse

Hi All,
I am completely new to gardening and was curious to find out more about greenhouses. I have an idea of creating a self powered heated greenhouse. It would be powered by solar panels and wind. It would also have variable temperature control.

So my questions are:
1) Does something like this already exist?
2) Would people be interested in something like this?

Any feedback would be much appreciated, thanks.

 

I don't have a definitive answer to (1) but I would guess that it already does exist as the idea is not particularly unique.

Low cost and utilising simply technologies is the way I would approach the problem of heating the greenhouse.

Instead of just using electricity generated by wind and solar panels, consider:

(a) tapping into the heat generated by your compost pile;
(b) tapping into solar heat absorber panels (like a radiator in reverse, painted matte black and enclosed inside a plastic casing);
(c) the idea of solar cookers that track the movement of the sun (make an array of them if you don't want to expend energy in making them move);
(d) creating a microclimate by planting trees and bushes around the perimeter of your garden;
(e) tapping into wave energy if there is a stream or river nearby (use it to pump water, do other mechanical work or generate electricity);

Of course, insulation will be very important so look into that first.

 

Hi there hello and welcome, solo panels yes but wind power u can forget that, how I know. We have a caravan we solo power because there is no electricity on site..we tried wind power and you can't generate your requirements. Solo power all the way..

 

Can I ask what type of wind turbine it was as I've seen some decent vertical axis ones that operate on very low wind speeds.

 

It does exist but most greenhouse growers in the uk prefer to use electric/gas heaters and bubble wrap The only issue i see with your idea is noise (if a residential area) and it wont provide any kind of cooling option for the summer months, not that we get much of a summer these days

 

Consider building it over a large water tank or tanks, this will provide a thermal ballast to maintain temperatures. Insulate base/sides of tank with polystyrene or similar. Heat could come from a ground source heat pump or as suggested earlier solar heat absorber panels. Solar panels could easily provide sufficient power for pumping, cooling fans and possibly even LED grow lights.
If possible double glaze and I think that the bigger the better, (Surface area to volume ratio).
Depends on how much you want to spend.
Interestingly the Alpine House at Kew is built on a pile of rocks through which cooler air is circulated at night, then in the day time the rocks cool the circulating air to help keep temperatures down.

 

Building a greenhouse over a water tank would be challenging and expensive considering its just going to be sitting there A ground source heat pump needs a fair bit of electrical power, you could use solar panels but they dont work in the dark so you`d also need a battery bank and invertor to use it at night.

 

My greenhouses (hobby sized) are powered by solar panels. Fans, lights. So far it has worked well. The excess power generated goes into the basement to batteries that then power things at night. And the cycle goes on. Some fans are direct generated - they operate when the sun shines which is the time they are most needed during the summer.

 

If one can run something on solar energy in Canada there is hope for us all... I should probably set up some solar farm...

 

I only need power to run a 170w fan, it rarely runs much above half speed. I could use solar to power it but i think i`d be pushing up the daisies long before it paid me back

 

There are many fans that run on DC and use a fraction of the power your fan does. They do move air very efficiently too.

yes, that is snow on the outside, I did manage to brush some off near the front but still...

and yes @miraflores we do occasionally get sunshine in Canada too....

 

Thanks for the detailed response. It seems like there are many ways to recover heat during the day. To have an efficient system that uses a minimal amount of electricity, they are all very good ideas. However, I'm not sure how practical this would be in the real world.

 

Thanks for your post. Out of curiosity, do u know the specification of the wind generator you had?