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Solar Energy, Windmills, and other stuff.

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05.07.2012 4:21am

Thread Creator

LB
Necromancer of Winning

This Wednesday we are buying a house.

Then moving into it, within 30 days I hope. I then plan on spending several thousand dollars making it self sufficient. I have heard so many different things. What have you heard? I have heard that for 4000$ you can run your big screen, fridge, and more indefinitely. Using just solar panels too.

Any crazy ideas? What would you do if you had 2000 dollars to spend on something like this? 5000$ ? 20,000? 100,000? 250,000?

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05.07.2012 6:39am

Megz
Capital M before egz

Given my current location I think wind or tidal energy would be a damn good idea. I would need to move closer to the coast for the latter but I also like the look of wind turbines. Pity is a bunch of ass backward glue sniffers that live in the nearby farmland areas keep protesting about how much "noise" they make.

I have stood 200m from them on an average day out on the Makara coast and heard not a sound (yes they were moving). Which is a fuckton closer than the resource consent allows the councils and power companies are allowed to put them up. In addition my brother was in charge of erecting three wind turbines at Scott Base - while they did freeze from time to time he said they made little to no noise and there were some mighty storms that went through there last he was down there.

Rant over.

Go wind and tidal energy!

Sugar. Short AND sweet.

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05.07.2012 7:07am

Crux
A mental Dentist's office

Solar and Wind would be the best bets here in Missouri.

Be sure to spray the panels every so often so as to wash off dirt and maxmize their effectiveness. Also understand that you'll need a system set up in case you hit a dark, calm day. Maybe a high voltage 3D capacitor would help.. or just switch back to the grid for those spells. Also you'll need a good system to regulate the voltages if there is a sharp change in their outputs. (Just a stray thought, I'm sure there are plenty of these)

I would be more interested in Solar cells if they were improved to be more efficient. Ideally the best a cell can do is get <50% energy out of sunlight. GaAs is the best there is atm, but they aren't plentiful elements and potentially poisonous. Also its about the material being able to maintain itself when exposed to solar radiation.

I recently was exposed to Bloch Theorem in my Solid State class and I find it fascinating, it presents the band gap in a way that is graphable and calculable, but I'm asking my prof to explain it to me, I have a hard enough time understanding him.

I also heard an idea a long time ago, about a fellow that was stacking multiple cells and each had a different frequency range of maximum effectiveness, but I can't find anything on where that research went.

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05.07.2012 1:39pm

Southern Comfort
silently judging all of you

Wind would be an effective solution here where I live. Solar is theoretically feasable, but there's simply too much dust to make it worth the effort.

The best solution is to negotiate a deal with the power company, though. They pay you for any excess capacity you supply to the grid, credited to your bill for when you have excess demand and draw power from them. Otherwise, to go completely off the grid, you will have to not only supply your entire energy budget (which will cost $100k+, probably closer to $300k+ for a suitable solar installation, less so but still significant for wind, and will still require some rather extreme energy saving measures to be feasable - things like not using electric lighting and waiting for sunny/windy days to wash your clothes/run your dishwasher/take a bath and never ever use an air conditioner; basically anything that uses an AC electric motor/heating element/incandescent light) but will also require a rather large and expensive lead-acid battery bank (which will have to be replaced every three years or so as battery sulfation is basically inevitable under heavy use) tied to an even more expensive and inefficient high-performance power inverter.

Unfortunately, the technology is simply not yet up to the task of supplying the typical power use of an average member of western civilization. Powering a TV, fridge, and computer off of $4000 of solar panels is still pretty much a pipe dream, let alone an AC or electric heater. Perhaps in another few decades, it may become more feasable. However, that same $4000 of solar can make a significant difference in your electric bill, so it's still worth doing.

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05.07.2012 2:01pm

Big Tall
Taller Than Tall

Tidal power would be the most effective solution for me, given I'm right by the highest tides in the world, but the tech is still being tested and refined to be able to harness it. If I lived in the Northern part of the province I'd go wind without question.

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05.07.2012 3:06pm

Thread Creator

LB
Necromancer of Winning

How many watts does the average person use?

The hardest part to research is the battery issue. I have read to use deep cycle batteries and if kept at a constant temperature, using an AGM battery you can use them for years. I can cover my roof with panels for 3000$ I'll have to research more, maybe experiement with one panel and a few batteries. The panels I've found come with 20 year warranties. I think it was Sanyo...maybe kyocera.

Going to the Zoo...watts is volts x amps. LED tv's run 1.2amps x 120v so 144 watts?

How much is that in amp hours on a battery? The key to keeping the batteries fresh I read is not taking them below 50%.

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05.07.2012 5:37pm

(Edited on 05.08.2012 at 4:00am)

kirbenvost
Give Life Back To Music

Southern Comfort said:

will also require a rather large and expensive lead-acid battery bank (which will have to be replaced every three years or so as battery sulfation is basically inevitable under heavy use) tied to an even more expensive and inefficient high-performance power inverter.

Why specifically lead-acid batteries? I don't know a lot about this stuff but I do know battery tech has come a long way in the past couple decades. Wouldn't lithium or even NiMH cells provide a longer-lasting solution? It's what electric cars use. Perhaps it's an amperage issue, I don't know...

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05.07.2012 10:41pm

Southern Comfort
silently judging all of you

LB said:

How many watts does the average person use?

The given figure by the Department of Energy is roughly 15,000 kW/h per year for the average American household. That averages out to 41 kW/h per day. Somewhat less so if you're relatively efficient - fluorescent lighting instead of incandescant, LED TV instead of CRT, etc., but still over 12,000 kW/h.

kirbenvost said:

Why specifically lead-acid batteries? I don't know a lot about this stuff but I do know battery tech has come a long way in the past couple decades. Wouldn't lithium or even NiMH cells provide a longer-lasting solution? It's what electric cars uses. Perhaps it's an amperage issue, I don't know...

In short, lead-acid leads the pack in cost efficiency by far. Lithium-ion and lithium-polymer are vastly more expensive for their power capacity (electric cars are surprisingly a low-draw application), and were developed specifically to let you carry around a lot of energy in a small package, with efficiency and capacity secondary concerns at best. (Ni-Cd and NiMH are ancient tech and highly inefficient, and are only still around because their cell voltage makes them acceptable drop-in replacements for standard carbon-zinc and alkaline batteries.)

Everything you ever need to know about solar/wind battery banks can be found behind this elegantly crafted link.

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05.07.2012 10:50pm

Thread Creator

LB
Necromancer of Winning

That's a good question. Do they make lithium batteries that big? I've been fantasizing about a windmill on my roof toda. Ohio winds are gusty. Might be handy at night.
Nobody has any off the wall dreams they would blow 5k on? 20k? More? Are there any good videos about this I might torrent?

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05.08.2012 4:10am

kirbenvost
Give Life Back To Music

^ They would be batteries of many cells. Each lithium cell is capable of supplying 3.7v, to get more you connect them in series. Laptop batteries have multiple cells inside, for example.

Southern Comfort said:

In short, lead-acid leads the pack in cost efficiency by far. Lithium-ion and lithium-polymer are vastly more expensive for their power capacity (electric cars are surprisingly a low-draw application), and were developed specifically to let you carry around a lot of energy in a small package, with efficiency and capacity secondary concerns at best. (Ni-Cd and NiMH are ancient tech and highly inefficient, and are only still around because their cell voltage makes them acceptable drop-in replacements for standard carbon-zinc and alkaline batteries.)

Everything you ever need to know about solar/wind battery banks can be found behind this elegantly crafted link.

Huh, I never would've thought electric cars are low-draw compared to home appliances and stuff. Nickel-based batteries are definitely old tech but I was reading that some electric/hybrid cars still use NiMH, I guess for cost reasons.

Totally missed that you asked the question at the end. Do you mean for home-related projects or just 'what would you do if you had a few thousand bucks?'

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05.08.2012 4:49am

Lexx
I know how they work

I guess solar would be best for me. That wonderful New Jersey urban sprawl means there's no room nearby for wind turbines, and I'm as far away from the coast as you can get in Jersey.

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05.08.2012 2:51pm

Thread Creator

LB
Necromancer of Winning

Thanks for the link. They pointed out AGM batteries as well. I'll have to read it more in depth later.

Kirb, I guess what I mean is, if you had a bunch of money, what direction would you go with it? Invest it? Lock it up in a safe bank investment? Take a risk on something?

Mostly, I'm curious about what people would do if they were taking a risk. 10,000$ 100,000$ ?

With 10k, I'm not sure. Maybe finish school and spend the rest. 20,000 I'd probably try something like green energy. 100,000? Maybe build an apartment complex, or a solar farm? I don't like the stock Market. 200,000k? A little bit of everything? How much do you need to invest in a retirement fund to be safe in 30 years? Take the rest and go try to make the world a better place?

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05.08.2012 11:09pm

Sei'taer
lost

Solar is the only surefire bet around here. There's just not enough wind to make it consistantly viable.

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05.09.2012 12:00am

Thread Creator

LB
Necromancer of Winning

SC, effectively you can eliminate batteries altogether by feeding the grid? Not enough power? Buy more panels. Batteries would be a nice way to use what you grow.

What about mirrors and solar panels? A two way mirror laying above a panel, with mirrors pointing up at the reflective side of the two way. More rays = more power...?

This is interesting: https://www.alternative-heating.com/geothermal-residential.html

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05.09.2012 3:16am

scnix
scnix.com

I remember reading/watching about this alternative energy called Bloom Energy. Might want to check them out, not sure if their product is suitable for homes yet, but there're some videos on youtube (2 years ago) stating that they could supply alternative energy to homes.

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