In this photo you can see the 2.5kW wind turbine on the left. The turbine was made by Proven. Next to that you see a Photo Voltaic array made up of 28x BP275 75Wp modules, giving a total of 2.1kWp. To the right of the PV array is a shed containing the batteries and power inverter. These three were all installed by Wind & Sun.
This is how the system works. The power generated by the wind and sun is stored in batteries in the shed. This goes through an inverter to convert it into an AC current before going into the house. If the batteries lose too much energy, the mains electricity automatically cuts in and tops them up, before cutting out again. In my best year in the house I went for 11 months just living off the wind and sun. When the house was built in 1998 the local electricity supplier was very wary about solar and wind generated electricity being sold back to the grid. They were going to pay me very little for the electricity and demand that I put a test system in place to monitor my system. This was going to cost a few thousand pounds. Beacuse of this we chose to go down the route of installing batteries. These days it would be much simpler just to sell back to the grid, running off solar and wind during the day and mains electricity during the night - but being a net supplier of electricity. A photo of the electrical monitors in the shed can be seen here.
The blank space to the immediate right of the panels was for thermomax tubes, used for heating the water from solar input.