Author Topic: Micro power gen  (Read 11183 times)

LowGear

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Re: Micro power gen
« Reply #15 on: August 26, 2018, 08:48:19 PM »
Hi mike90045,

The calculator came up with 1.11 KW a day.  The rush is over.  It'd take one hell of a pump to duplicate the flow but even fudging the flow up to 100 GPM I only got $1.90 per day.

Thanks,

Casey
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dieselspanner

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Re: Micro power gen
« Reply #16 on: August 26, 2018, 09:11:02 PM »
Bob,

I want, no I need the wall. So much so that I'll chip in a few shillings, i see it as defence rather than exclusion.............

Cheers

Stef
Tighten 'til it strips, weld nut to chassis, peen stud, adjust with angle grinder.

mikenash

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Re: Micro power gen
« Reply #17 on: August 26, 2018, 10:33:29 PM »
SWMBO doesn't wear Male undies, she wears the trousers.............

I did go through a spell of wearing pink lacy French knickers, the lads found out when I turned up for practice at the rugby club having forgotten I was still had them on, when the tight head prop said

'How long have you been wearing them, Stef?'

I said 'Since the Mrs found a pair in the back of my Landrover'

Cheers Stef

LMFAO

ajaffa1

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Re: Micro power gen
« Reply #18 on: August 27, 2018, 09:42:41 AM »
If only building a wall could protect us from the greed of capitalism and the stupidity of governments that rely on it for income.

I suspect the only way to protect yourself from their influence is to build a rocket and f*ck off to another planet. Sadly every billionaire on earth has already come to the same conclusion. Musk, Branson, Bezos and all the rest of them would make lousy neighbors. The Pyrenees is probably as safe as you can get.

Bob

dieselspanner

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Re: Micro power gen
« Reply #19 on: August 28, 2018, 11:11:06 AM »
Like wot I said, don't piss anyone off and it's great.......

Cheers
Stef
Tighten 'til it strips, weld nut to chassis, peen stud, adjust with angle grinder.

dieselspanner

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Re: Micro power gen
« Reply #20 on: August 29, 2018, 03:51:48 PM »
Hi All

So yesterday a mate and myself climbed up to the steam at the top of the plot with the test equipment, well a four foot length of three inch pipe and a ten liter bucket.

I had no idea what 10 liters a second looks like so we had a play. The stream splits into two just above the ideal point to collect the water, with the larger part on the south side, this means that even if I use all the flow on the smaller side, around one third of the total, I'll not bugger up the valleys fresh water supply.

We made a small dam and got around a third of the smaller flow through the 3" pipe, it filled the bucket in less than 3 seconds, the flow was filling about a quarter of the pipe. I was well surprised, I reckon with some playing around 10 liters a second will be easy, and 15 likely.

This is the driest time of year, so I should thing the project has some legs.

Cheers
Stef
Tighten 'til it strips, weld nut to chassis, peen stud, adjust with angle grinder.

BruceM

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Re: Micro power gen
« Reply #21 on: August 29, 2018, 04:06:43 PM »
That's sweet, Stef.  There's nothing like a 24/7 power source to minimize your battery bank size and ongoing battery replacement cost! 

Passive filtering of power to the home plus EMT conduit and compression fitting for the home wiring to minimize emissions and you will save a fortune in medical costs/misery.

BruceM

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Re: Micro power gen
« Reply #22 on: August 29, 2018, 05:22:26 PM »
Batteries may not be required at all, with good design.  3KW seems a perfectly luxurious home power service to me.  I've lived comfortably with far less for many years.  A backup generator should be all you need for some exceptional power need.




mike90045

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Re: Micro power gen
« Reply #23 on: August 29, 2018, 07:22:07 PM »
3kw is fantastic.   I can live with a 1500w inverter generator, and 4, 12V 100ah deep cycle batteries wired for 48V.  That gives the inverter some surge capacity, otherwise loads are running off the solar or generator

dieselspanner

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Re: Micro power gen
« Reply #24 on: August 30, 2018, 08:26:58 AM »
It's certainly looking good, apart from the humongous list of things to do and the three years or so it's going to take to do it all finding a Fisher Paykel motor will probably take most of that time.

In much the same way that the CS motors are thin on the ground in the US, F&P (and whirlpool, ect,) stuff is rare in Europe,

Perhaps the answer is international trade............

Cheers Stef
Tighten 'til it strips, weld nut to chassis, peen stud, adjust with angle grinder.

mikenash

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Re: Micro power gen
« Reply #25 on: August 31, 2018, 01:41:16 AM »
It's certainly looking good, apart from the humongous list of things to do and the three years or so it's going to take to do it all finding a Fisher Paykel motor will probably take most of that time.

In much the same way that the CS motors are thin on the ground in the US, F&P (and whirlpool, ect,) stuff is rare in Europe,

Perhaps the answer is international trade............

Cheers Stef


https://www.trademe.co.nz/home-living/laundry/washing-machines/parts-accessories/listing-1752234960.htm?rsqid=9bee560dfeb54160960f4ba0005341d6

and

https://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=1752234960

and

https://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=1746605740


or just search TradeMe under the listing number if the links don't work

or just go to www.trademe.co.nz and search for Fisher and paykel or maybe "fisher and paykel AND motor"

If you find the one you want (research the PowerSpout videos to see which is best maybe?) and get in touch with me

Surely I can just buy one and mail it to la Belle France?

How hard can it be?

Cheers

BruceM

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Re: Micro power gen
« Reply #26 on: August 31, 2018, 03:58:55 AM »
I'll bet there's a self-speed regulating single phase AC power head for that level of flow and pressure. Screw all the conversions and their losses.

mikenash

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Re: Micro power gen
« Reply #27 on: August 31, 2018, 10:41:03 AM »

You don' t NEED to go to a F&P motor Stef.
With the Hydro energy you have available, you could use a regular gen head if you wanted or any other low Voltage generator/ alternator.

The power you have available is way more than an F*P motor can produce anyway.  If I were you, I'd be looking for a  24v Truck alternator.
Anything from about 120 to 150A would match your generation capacity very well. The benefit of being able to do say 3+ Kw with a truck alt as against 1 kw with an F&P Motor is when you are running the bigger loads the generator will be supplying the power and your battery bank will remain at 100% capacity.

As Bruce Pointed out, you may not even need batteries at all or to make it simple and cheap, you could just have a couple of Deep Cycle marine/ Automotive type.  Pretty sure in Europe these alts are quite cheap and would obviously be widely available.

Quick look on fleabay  UK Found this:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Alternator-Prestolite-24v-180A-Wright-Bus-Routemaster/283123421364?hash=item41eb7890b4:g:FxoAAOSwR4hbgZJg


180A @ 28V is equal to 5kw!  For 99 quid, that's real cheap power.  Other thing is you can just bolt it up and it would work.  That would give you power at the sire and you could then find the f&p and play round with re wiring that..... At night if you liked by the light you would already have.   :laugh:

If you needed to conserve water a bit, You could go to a multi Nozzle system in the turbine housing.  Have 2 or 4 Nozzles and open as many as you need for the power required. I'm sure someone would have done an arduino program for that to make it automatic.

An F&P might be good for battery floating or low level loads but unless you ganged a few up, you'd be cutting yourself short of the full power production opportunity you have.


Leece-Neville truck/bus alternator . . .

BruceM

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Re: Micro power gen
« Reply #28 on: August 31, 2018, 06:42:53 PM »
Glort's comment about regulating generator speed by a shunt load woke up my shoddy memory a little.

I saw a website of an engineer years ago who had something like 7KW via water power, and used a single phase generator head.  He used load shunting to regulate power frequency, with home resistive heating as the base load. 

3KW of 24/7 of resistive heating could cut Stef's winter wood use down dramatically, so that suggestion by Glort is right on the mark.  A water heating element in the water stream could be used to dissipate waste power when home heating is unneeded.  You could prioritize the shunt load- house hot water, heat house, waste heat. Use it or loose it!

Boy, would I love to have Stef's water power!

Shunt loading would likely be way easier than dynamic water flow regulation, though either is certainly viable. 




dieselspanner

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Re: Micro power gen
« Reply #29 on: August 31, 2018, 07:38:57 PM »
Hi All

Mike.

Thanks for the offer of posting parts out, I'll let you know..........

Glort.

This had sort of gone around in a circle, or maybe a spiral, I'm liking the 24 volt alternator option, a lot.

It appeals to my idea of simplicity, connecting straight to the battery and controlling it's own output, which is where I started.
With the output from a 24 v alternator I'd be prepared to run the whole place on a single battery bank knowing that the 'catch up time would be vastly reduced.

Bruce.

I read all your posts, in the hope I might learn something, all I ever get is reassurance that I know sod all about electronics, this time you've come up with something I can understand!

Whilst I don't think I could manage a set up as clever as the one you've just described, I like the idea of house heating with the surplus power.

I envisage a back boiler on the wood stove looping round through a hot water tank, radiators upstairs and finally through underfloor heating downstairs, putting a second set of underfloor heating pipes in before concreting the slab will be easy and peanuts.

In Kazakhstan I saw a system with a 3Kw water heating element in a 3" pipe running a thermo siphon system in a small building, electricity was cheap. If I had power to spare at night diverting it to a similar set up with it's own dedicated pump would be fantastic and bloody easy for the electrically challenged!.

So, the next question, I started to try and find out what size of Pelton wheel I'd need to drive said 24v alternator, found a site with various calculations and then glazed over when I got to the word 'abscissa'

Given the 40 meter head and a 3" (or 75mm) plpe, would anyone like to hazard a guess what size wheel would be best?

I don't need the answer to 6 decimal places, somewhere close on a cigarette packet will do!

Cheers
Stef


Tighten 'til it strips, weld nut to chassis, peen stud, adjust with angle grinder.