[Squinteye]

honestly the best thing for where i live would be a wind turbine, gets real gusty down in this here valley

[CaptainStoner]

What i'd like to see is a variation of UPS (uninterruptable power supply) technology that would take the power from any renewable source such as a PV panel on the roof, a wind turbine on say the side of a house or chimney, have things plugged into it, and store any energy not immediately used in a battery. The unit would use battery power when renewable sources were not available (no wind, night) and when the battery got to a safe level of discharge (say, 76% for a lead-acid) switch over to mains power. Or even a unit that could, for example, have a load of say 200w plugged into it, get say 100w from renewables, and take the remainder from the mains... or preferably both - shouldn't be too hard to make a machine that could do the latter, also do the former

Rather than the current sort of thing where people have grid-tied renewable sources or large banks of batteries, needing to swap the plugs on things when the batteries are flat.

E2A: on topic, danzig me ol chap, have you made any progress? am very interested in hearing about your project.. something I want to do myself eventually - i already have a 60w monocrystalline panel on a small caravan aux battery i use for various things like charging my mobile, running small 12vdc mood lighting, the odd little 12v fan etc.. Found my little (6 or 8w) cfl on a houseboat website, if that's a help to ya mate, I think i saw 20w 12vdc cfls, not cheap at 15 quid a pop but i'm sure with a determined google they could be found or improvised cheaper'n that. M*plins, IIRC, sell like 50-75w inverters pretty cheaply, meant to be plugged into a cigar lighter socket.. could be used for charging cordless power tools.. never really looked into really big wattage renewables for the home other than a WVO fuelled lister genset back in the day due to the cost.. only small stuff

This post has been edited by CaptainStoner: 16 January 2009 - 05:35 AM

[Culchi]

Methane? Check this out... http://www.green-trust.org/2000/biofuel/me...edigestion3.htm

[Randalizer]

hmm, bean eating humans riding bicycles with methane collectors.

[solarchild]

CaptainStoner, on Jan 16 2009, 05:49 AM, said:

What i'd like to see is a variation of UPS (uninterruptable power supply) technology that would take the power from any renewable source such as a PV panel on the roof, a wind turbine on say the side of a house or chimney, have things plugged into it, and store any energy not immediately used in a battery. The unit would use battery power when renewable sources were not available (no wind, night) and when the battery got to a safe level of discharge (say, 76% for a lead-acid) switch over to mains power. Or even a unit that could, for example, have a load of say 200w plugged into it, get say 100w from renewables, and take the remainder from the mains... or preferably both - shouldn't be too hard to make a machine that could do the latter, also do the former

Rather than the current sort of thing where people have grid-tied renewable sources or large banks of batteries, needing to swap the plugs on things when the batteries are flat.

E2A: on topic, danzig me ol chap, have you made any progress? am very interested in hearing about your project.. something I want to do myself eventually - i already have a 60w monocrystalline panel on a small caravan aux battery i use for various things like charging my mobile, running small 12vdc mood lighting, the odd little 12v fan etc.. Found my little (6 or 8w) cfl on a houseboat website, if that's a help to ya mate, I think i saw 20w 12vdc cfls, not cheap at 15 quid a pop but i'm sure with a determined google they could be found or improvised cheaper'n that. M*plins, IIRC, sell like 50-75w inverters pretty cheaply, meant to be plugged into a cigar lighter socket.. could be used for charging cordless power tools.. never really looked into really big wattage renewables for the home other than a WVO fuelled lister genset back in the day due to the cost.. only small stuff

Dont quite understand you but if you have renewable energy on your house it is uninteruptable anyway, If your panels stop producing power you take power from the mains, if you have too much it goes into the mains. there is no swapping of plugs or delay in switching over, you dont notice. If its off grid then it works the same, if you make more than you use it goes into the batteries and when you use more than you make you take from the batteries. If you have access to mains power then having batteries is a waste of power and money. If you have grid connected renewables it will have an Inverter as part of the system, this does everything for you, tells you how much power you produce, balances and transforms the juice you make into mains style electric and everything needed to keep everthing in your house going when you need it. Off grid you will have control gear that does the same. Only difference is that your limited to what your batteries can store.

This post has been edited by solarchild: 16 January 2009 - 12:26 PM

[solarchild]

On the subject of generating your own, the govt hass decided that its going to adopt a feed in tarif for homeowners. This is pretty good news for anyone who fancies going down the route of having a renewable technology. Basically it will mean that electicity that you make will be bought from you at a good enough price to make it cost effective to install eco systems. Britain started with grants which went well for a bit but then the govt pretty much got rid of em (people who had stuff put in a few years ago will be laughing now) This has pretty much buggered the whole small scale renewables industry in britain before it really got started.
Anyway, in Germany, the power companies buy back your green electricty at four times what they buy normally generated power for. this drastically cuts payback time, devleops an industry and brings prices down quickly- solar generated power is now about the same price per watt to generate than standard powerstation stuff in Germany. People have been trying to get this system adopted in britain for a while, or even something like the french who provide tax breaks instead. It now looks like they are going to do something, its very late, compared with the rest of the world and its not going to begin untill 2010 but better late than never i suppose. I'll post some details when i get em.

[Abe Froman]

if you want a source of 12v batteries to store your power , befriend your local electric scooter dealership/repair centre. (if they're friendly enough)
and ask 'em for their 50%-ish batts .
I worked on scooters & elec chairs for 3+ years and the batteries got changed when they got down to 55/60% capacity.
i rescued the best ones (sonnenschein ,usually)but most types would do..
Not enough to power a chair / scoot, but plenty for some 12v lighting.
Mine get charged by a 1''x1'' pv panel , but these days only really power the bedroom lights.

[CaptainStoner]

Obviously there are control panels I have not seen, solarchild.. mine isnt like that, i have to control what power i use myself.

[solarchild]

CaptainStoner, on Jan 16 2009, 02:39 PM, said:

Obviously there are control panels I have not seen, solarchild.. mine isnt like that, i have to control what power i use myself.

Aye mate, for stuff that go on a house, nearly all systems will come with control gear. lots of it is required by law, the power produced by solar panels for instance cannot be turned off unless it is dark and can be very dangerous, same with other generators such as wind, theres a lot of health and safety stuff. Obviously this stuff is normally for things that are 1kw and above.

Tbh I'm a bit in the dark about the smaller stuff myself Captain, Notinstalled or used any thing i've only really come across the bigger stuff. Might have to do a bit of reading up.

[Tasty]

I'm pretty sure (about 90% sure) that the Irish power supplier, ESB, does not buy back any electricity from the public. If you produce more than you use then the surplus is just "sucked back" for nowt. But that's nothing unusual for the bunch of crooks that run this country.
Just my 2 cents worth.

Peace

Tasty

[highgrower]

Give it a few years for fuel cells to be about 2000 quid for a 1kw one - currently about 20,000 - also u can generate hydrogen with solar/wind/etc which is far less costly to store electricity in lead acid batteries. If they do sort it out for cars then ull be able to by refills all over the place - ok i know the hydrogen economy doesnt stack up (neither does methanol/biodiesel etc) on the large scale but for off grid setups it has its merits.

Im a huge believer that the whole energy issue needs to be tackled on a very local level.

[solarchild]

highgrower, on Jan 19 2009, 09:02 PM, said:

Im a huge believer that the whole energy issue needs to be tackled on a very local level.

Even on a smaller scale would be a start. Your spot on though, but it dont seem to be the way things are going in blighty. Build big new power stations is the way to go. building smaller, less centralized and specialist generators, I think would need alterations to the infrastucture though. Better just to chuck money at nuclear.

[Jammyd0dger]

AKPOG, on Jun 6 2008, 07:49 PM, said:

I'm looking into this myself, so I'll pull up a chair if you don't mind Danzig

I dream of moving abroad to Spain, buying an area of land near the mountains & building an eco-house with solar panels, water butts & other green ways of saving money & using the natural power of the environment while growing weed under the immense power of the sun

Did you just pinch my dream? B) Yeah living within and working with nature is the way forward IMO.

Good luck