Friends, Lurkers, Xenomorphs, Lend Me Your Ears!

[Doc]

I am pondering the solar option, or, alternative energy sources. Sort of living off of the grid. I, well, I don't know as much about this as I would like to know. And I am hoping that somebody here has had experience in this area. I live on a farm and my energy consumption is VERY low. I own my own backup gennies and already have a sizeable bank of batteries. I take no shame in confessing, Doc loves his creature comforts, and, damnit, I like my martinis COLD. And I become quite cranky when I don't get a perfect martini. I have infact, been accused of being infantile. But that person I think was over reacting. Er, anyhoo, on subject. I know I could go Googling, but I want some info from a horses mouth.

And not just solar panels. I have a slight hill on the property. A rise. And there is almost always a slight breeze that rustles the grass there. Would an air screw be a good investment? Or a few of them? Yes, I do plan to talk to actual people about this, but, before I do, I want some background my self so I don't sound like an idiot. So what works?

I have seen some solar panels that sit on the ground and rotate to follow the sun. Mechanized. Are these any good? Does it really make much of a difference? Or is it just an expensive gimmick? Panels on the roof? What sort of panels? Any brands I should look for or beware of?

Thanks in advance.

[bschultz]

hey funny you mention this. there was just an article about this place in my local news paper. heres their website.

http://www.sunlightsolar.com/


EDIT: oh yeah and martinis make me gag. But i decided to help you anyways :P

[Doc]

Then you have never ever had a good Martini then. A poorly made Martini is the nastiest thing on earth.

Thanks for the link!

[WarLocke]

Oh, stop being a baby!


Sorry, I couldn't resist. :lol: I wish I could help, but I don't know anything about this subject, either.

Although I am also curious...

[Occhidiangela]

Try Popular Mechanics and Scientific American from about 1980 to 1990. During that period, after the early 80's tax credit for adding certain solar accessories to the home, a considerable fount of 'good ideas' were spawned when people predicted that energy prices would keep going up. Local Library may be helpful.

OPEC's greed and the desire to feed economies and bank accounts made for lower prices, and some advances in technology made some reserves previously un economical more readily exploited. Coal got a political boost with some rather interesting decisions that I can only call hopeful.

That said, the solar power most frequently used in those days were roof top arrays of panels, costing in the thousands, that generally faced "south." Tied to them was the hot water heating system, in the shape of pipes that circulated water through the arrays to keep the hot water bill down. A few of my neighbors had them on the rooves of their town homes, and were pleased, though that does not solve your refrigeration problem.

Refrigerators require a cooling cycle, which hot water from solar panels did not in those days get much of a payoff per square foot of panel. Since you don't have zoning issues, in terms of local Home Owners' association tenets regarding how your property looks, I'd guess that you have available solutions that not all home owners have.

Wind mills? What is the average, peak and mean prevailing wind in our area, and how tall of a pole can you put up before you kick yourself for uglifying the landscape? Look at photos of the windmill farms out near Palm Desert California to get a sense of a windmill that gives you a pay off for the size of airfoil/fan. Small fans probably won't do it, and as you have already surmised, considerable reserve storage capacity is a necessity. A windless day in So Car in the summer may draw a lot of kWh while you wait for the next breeze. :)

I am pretty certain that the latest generations of solar panels can be easily found in either Scientific American or Popular Mechanics, but I noted when I looked into it that the best models were either out west, where humidity was low, or in the Northeast, where a combination of passive sloar heat (rocks that soak up the sun's heat in the day to release at night) and solar panels made for partially solar abodes.

The high heat high humidity environments did not seem to get as many write ups, and when I was in the market, that combination was NOT economicaly practical for most homeowners.

Natural Gas took care of the rest of the argument in the 90's.

However, I do not think that, if you are working on the premise of principle rather than cost effectiveness, that is an obstacle for you.

I'd say Google is your best be to find the latest Sq Foot kWh specs, as well as storage specs. The option is there for those with the dough.

For example, here are a few specs to whet your appetite: Some Solar Panels

For a few windmill ideas, this site asks the right questions.

Something for 21st Century Don Quixote to tilt at!

Look at your generator capacity and what it lets you do, then figure out how many panels you need ot replicate it, or how to replicate what % of it you want to draw from the sun, the wind, or both. Depending on your district and State laws, the local power companies may have to buy from you your excess capacity. Check So Car laws on that.

I'd love to see what you finally settle on.

[Doc]

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. And, Ugh!

So much that I just don't know. This is not like going out and buying a new fridge or a freezer or even a heat pump. This is complicated. I have no earthly idea what most of those web sites are talking about. I am not even sure what to look for. And I see so many ways I could probably be taken to the cleaners. Taken advantage of. Getting bent over and screwed.

I don't think a couple of silvery white air screws would look to bad. I might take the rise in question and cover it with tulips. With the air screws, would have sort of a Neo-Holland look or something. Might look sort of artsy fartsy. The breeze is very noticeable in the summer, as the hot air rising off of the ground and the woods on both sides of the clearing creates sort of a wind channel of sorts. Hard to explain, but there is a corridor of breeze and it spills out on the hill and blows upward over the rise.

I have a grand total of 300 acres now. A large part of it is woods. Some pasture. I don't need to stick the solar panel garden where everybody has to see them. I don't think I would even need to stick then next to the house would I? Just run for lack of better words, a powerline to the power plant. Right? Or would I loose juice over distance... What's that word I am looking for? I dunno.

I have a couple of creeks on the property. All of them are fairly fast flowing. What if I wanted to try something really dumb, like build a mini hydro-electric damn for electricity? Would it even work? Is it something I am allowed to do? Is it even a good idea? The water is always running. It even over runs, floods, and I get thousands upon thousands of all manner of snakes washed onto my land. So I have lots of water. Would a personal hydro-electric plant be a reality? A better idea perhaps, then solar paneling and air screws? Would it be cost effective? Or for that matter, would solar even pay for it self? Any ideas on cost? If I am paying, say, 50 bucks a month average on the power bill, could I even justify the cost of such a project? Or do I just go for the cool factor? When I die, I have plans to turn this place into a bird sanctuary / wildlife reserve. Having it's own power source could be a good future investment. Hmm? If I did build a hydro plant, would it be legal if I say, sold my extra electricity to neighbors or people wanting power? I mean, if this is a good idea and it produces more juice then I use, what should I do with the extra? Hook my self to the city grid and send somebody a bill? I have heard of people doing just that.

I guess I am overly curious about alternative energy sources. I am an eccentric nut and I really don't like having to pay somebody for something as simple as electricity. Call me crazy, but it seems that electricity is rather easy to generate, and, with a little bit of conservation, easy to manage. People with large plots of land and seemingly easy to tap resources should take advantage of those resources if only to pioneer future use. For folks living in the city, it's different. I have my own water supply. I think I can get my own power supply. Now if only I can get rid of these damn phone lines and still have some way of connecting to the net :D I am sure there is a way around that too... But I want DSL again. Someday. Unless something better comes along.

[ShadowHM]

I don't think a couple of silvery white air screws would look to bad. I might take the rise in question and cover it with tulips.

There is a very large wind generator not far from my cottage. Consensus is that it looks attractive. :D Some photographs of it are here:
http://www.brucepeninsula.org/feature/feat...re19/page03.htm

I have also seen a private wind generator on a (fairly large) private property on Georgian Bay. It has the same design but is considerably smaller. The way it works here is that you can build your own alternate energy generator and set up a deal with Ontario Hydro where you can feed the system (and get paid for it) or pull from it.

The family expert on solar panels is my step-dad, who is incommunicado for the next month and a half while he and my mother are wilderness camping (with benefit of solar energy) in Florida. Not much help for you there, I am sorry to say.

I have a couple of creeks on the property. All of them are fairly fast flowing. What if I wanted to try something really dumb, like build a mini hydro-electric damn for electricity? Would it even work? Is it something I am allowed to do? Is it even a good idea?

Tricky stuff to engineer. You have to have the 'right spot' to build up a height from which the falling water can drop to generate the energy. This means making a pond behind the dam, which will alter your property considerably, even if you have an ideal place for it. Then you likely will run into County/State legislation about the alteration of water flows. At least, here you certainly would. I noted last summer (in my compulsive review of council minutes) that the township at my cottage required one fellow to dismantle the dam he built, because it affected the folks downstream.

The project(s) that get you free of the grid could also turn into a PITA for a guy that likes his privacy, because you are likely to require trained hired help to maintain them. Of the three, the wind generator seems to the the one that requires the least in maintenance, albeit possibly the most expensive in capital outlay.

Good luck Doc. As that saying I used to have as my signature goes: "Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by fighting back." (Piet Hein)

[Occhidiangela]

1. Unless you have a significant drop in elevation, hydroelectric aint gonna work, but a water wheen set up might provide a constant trickle charge to your battery bank 24/7.

2. While you are looking at the generation side, look at the consumption side. What kind of light bulbs do you use? Halogen lamps give more light for less watts. There are also those screw in Flourescents that take 15-20 watts to drive 75 watt like illumination.

3. For health reasons and for martinis, your fridge is a must. I assume you use natural gas to cook with? If not, convert, it is easier to cook with (IMO) cheaper cleaner and not electric. Dump the microwave and consider a convection oven. Uses less watts.

To look at your capacity, take your last to electric bills and look at your KiloWatt Hour usage. That's your daily average. Multiply by either two or three to figure your surge requirement, and you will have a sense for how much you need to be able to pump in, and for how long, to ensure you don't curse yourself with brownouts. Supplementing the surge is of course what the generators can do in a pinch, but I think you are looking for a steady state source.

Your geographical set up sounds good for a windmill.

I can only say that your complaint about being taken to the cleaners falls on deaf ears. At present, it is still out of reach of the average family to be able to invest in the solar and wind tech, and a water wheel I suppose, to even have the option. We are all slaves to the Power Company!

To get your rig to work right, I strongly recommend serious research, and even hiring a consultant from the local University: engineering or Physics Department. Or, see if you can convince a prof to send a couple of students to your place to create a solution for their senior project or a masters project. :)

Cheers, I'll have my Martini made with Tanqueray 10. And about three drops of vermouth.

[Doc]

I uh, mostly use wood of all things for cooking. I have a wood burning stove, oven, and water heater. Also have wood burning vault stoves for heat. I have electric ovens. I use them occasionally. I have a microwave. It's small. I am finally starting to like the dad blasted thing. I have a kitchen full of electric doodads that I barely use. I like mixing stuff with spoons I guess. I have an electric heat pump and ac on both the house and the barn. And yes, the barn needs it. I have several freezers and a couple of fridges. Those are prolly the worst in terms of drain.

As far as I know there is nothing stopping me from doing what I like to my creeks. If I were to damn one of them, I think it would be just fine, as several of them end on my property dumping into a large pond, which trickles off as another creek.

Hydro does not seem that complicated. It's that whatsitcalled, archimedes screw or something like that right? Water makes it spin, causes friction, which causes sparking. Something like that. Seems that if I were to channel and funnel the water, where a large mass of water was forced into a small space, I could increase the pressure. I forget what that's called. Turgur pressure or something I think. I could be wrong and probably am. I know just enough about science to give me some very dangerous and misguided ideas :P

The solar panels and wind screws seem like a logical compliment to one another. It's either sunny and burning hot here, or, it's cloudy, raining, and near tornado like conditions in the summer, which is about 8 or 9 months out of the year. Thunderstorms blow over constantly. So, with the solar, the moment the suns out, the wind picks up, storms a bit, blows like hell and would feed the air screws.

If I wanted to manipulate nature to make more wind, does anybody think it's possible? This morning as I milked the goats, I thought about Wind Alley. It's a flat area between two trees. Pond at one end, hill at the other. If I wanted more hot air rising, thus, causing more breeze, could I make it so? What if I was to cover the ground with dark black or just dark coloured rocks. Dark gravel. Sun would shine, they would collect more heat then just dirt and grass wouldn't they? That energy would rise in the form of hot air and get channeled down the alley and up the hill. Would it be a substantial enough boost I wonder to make a noticeable difference? Same sort of prinicipal as the hydro electric idea. Create a steady moving wind river, refine and channel it for the most effect. The rocks could perhaps serve a second function as well, maybe forming some sort of Zen Garden. Toss in a couple of white rocks here and there. For art's sake. None of this is any good if it makes the land ugly.

[kandrathe]

http://www.autobahn.mb.ca/~het/energy/pv_faq.html

http://www.autobahn.mb.ca/~het/energy/energy.html

I am a bigger fan of passive heating and cooling. I think the energy consumption used in building the components of active systems (turbines, batteries and photovoltaics, motors to follow the sun) are usually not repaid within the life of the systems. The PV cells themselves will payback in about 4 years, but once you start needing to store your energy (for say after dark, or winter, or long periods of very cloudy weather) then the equations go south. For heating you can do nearly as much good by putting in some really nifty insulated southern facing windows shining on a large heat absorbing slab, or by using low energy pumps to move solar heated water in the summer into large subterranean "heat vats" for reclaimation in the winter.

[kandrathe]

I found this micro hydro link.

http://www.re-energy.ca/t_waterpower.shtml

[Occhidiangela]

Thanks for the link. A project for my son, who just called to tell me he won the Sixth Grads Spelling Bee. :) Wheeeeeeeee.

[kandrathe]

:D I saw that jug project with the plastic spoons! I was thinking Doc's might be just a little larger -- enough to run a modest workstation while he surfs the web.

[Doc]

Hrm. I like that with the spoons. That was spiffy and gave me ideas.

What if somebody created an artificial drop. Not to large, but, large enough to have say, concrete funnels or something like that. Water would tip off the water fall, into the funnels, and become pressurized as it was forced into a smaller space. At the bottom of the funnel, have the screw. Let gravity do all the work. In a ten foot wide creek (Used only for example) you could have three funnels, each three feet wide to collect water. Materials could be anything, but concrete I think would be best. (Also for example) Say you had 3 creeks of varying sizes, you could spread some of the funnels out, having 3 on one creek, 2 on another, and a solitary funnel on another.

I have a lot of ideas all of a sudden. But I lack the knowledge of making most of them work or even knowing if they are practical, like my idea for creating a river of wind using black rocks to creature escapable surface heat to create more wind to move the air screws.

I even have something of an idea in my head involving steam. I was thumbing through a book of Greek inventions (A good source of inspiration) and I saw one of the early steam engines / cartoon. A large hollow discus would be mounted over a water tank mounted over a fire. Out f the sides of the discus, there were two arms, with nozzles pointing in different directions. Steam would cause the discus to spin animating the picture in a very crude two frame animation. Anyhoo... What if I was to use solar power to heat water into steam somehow. Have the steam cause something to spin, like the Greek animation discus, and the spinning generated electricity. Hrm. That also involves jet power in a away... How to get the most bang from your buck with steam exhaust causing the spinning thingamajigs to do their thing. This could be dangerous with hot steam spraying out. Same idea as a water wheel, only using water in a different form to get it to spin. But could solar panels get enough juice to boil water? Not a practical system, for when the sun goes out. But it's an interesting idea. Might be a practical idea for somebody that lives in a place with a lot of natural steam vents from the earth.

My last idea was taken from a pogo stick. Say you have a large running body of water. Now, imagine, two tubes, on inside the other, filled with magnets and all that junk you need to create juice when the rub back and forth over one another. Have one end anchored to a large solid object, and, the other end down stream, where it would collect with water and pull pull pull till the spring and perhaps some sort of water release mechanism caused it to snap back, with the two tubes, one inside the other, creating much needed magnetic friction. Enough of those might generate a decent source of power. And none of this prolly made sense. I don't have a diagram :(

[Occhidiangela]

And the more changes in medium that you introduce into your system, the greater the thermal inefficiency and the greater the lost energy that you don't end up with at the far end.

The spinning discuss will lose more energy than your screw. What you want to achieve is the most amout of energy converted with the least loss of potential or latent energy from your source. (Been about 25 years since my energy conversion course) Your other problem with the spinning disc is mass flow rate of heat in from the solar source to kWh out to your electrical system.

The windmills are a good low loss choice, with a variable input.

The screw in the stream is as direct an energy transfer method as I can think of.

Except, of course, for your solar panels that use the direct change from solar to electric energy.

Sound like a combination of all three might put you in a good spot, however, cost effectively, depending on the vertical drop and hence potential energy content of the water source, I'd hazard a guess at the screw being your most cost effective solution . . . if it provides the power level you need. If you are running multiple refrigeration units, I'd have a good hard look at an optimization of fewest units and best insulation of each to keep your energy demand down.