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Finally, some use for excess solar power.

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guest22972:

Been wasting power boiling an urn for a while now to use some of the excess solar power I have that pushes my line voltage too high.
Today Finally found a couple of worthwhile uses.

The first one as mentioned elsewhere was to set up a Test batch Bio gas digester and use the excess solar to heat that. Probably not going to need enough heating to use much power but a few KWH I guess can be put to some sort of worthwhile use.
I thought I'll do this the clever way and boil the urn then put the hot water in progressively rather than chill the mix that has some warmth with tap water and then try to heat it all up.  That went a LOT faster than I thought.  Was soon using cold water to lower the temp of the partial fill.

The other use for the excess was Boiling the urn..... as usual. Difference was today I finally had a light bulb moment with it.

Being spring here, the garden is growing well.... as are the weeds. Everywhere. Normally I'm not too worried as the main type we get, Dandelion, is my Little Bunny's favourite. Trouble is, where he once went nuts for them, I have been giving him so much lately, he's now obviously sick of them.  It's not all he gets, still loves his Dry Mix and is OK with carrots, but the Fresh greens have definatey lost their appeal.  Maybe the kilogram a day of them that he can easily hide under I have been giving him every day is a bit of over kill?   ::)

Noticing all the weeds in the cracks of the pavers, I was going to boil up the oil burning water heater and give the weeds a scalding bath which takes good care of them roots and all and needs no chemicals. Back in the  suburbs, I would have Sprayed DDT around with no concern but now out here as a man on the land with one whole acre,   ::) I have become more fussy about things.  Well that and Bruce's heads up on the effects of so many things most of us are ignorant to with chemicals, EMF and the like.   Back there my favourite weed Killer was caustic, salt and probably some sump oil mixed in.
There is no truth at all to the malicious and unfounded scurrilous rumor that I laid waste to my Mongrel neighbors entire back yard with 150L of this stuff  couple of weeks before I left and I have NO idea how this mix got in my Diesel Fire pump and hose.   :angel:

Using my faithful urn and a 2 Kw Submersible element meant for impatient people wanting to make tea or coffee, I BOILED about 50 L of water today.
Throwing 4KW of power at 12L of water in the watering can boils it faster than I can drink a cup of coffee... so I found out repeatedly.
And doesn't it work great on the weeds!

There were a few Thistles coming along way too nicely and when I hit them with the hot water, as soon as you take the stream off the leaves, they go from Juicy green to Morbid dark gray. Everything else cooks and wilts before your eye's.
At first I was just taking water from the hot tap and I'd say it was working only because I have my heater maxed out temp wise, but it took a fair bit of water to see a change in the plants. Adding that last 20oC and boiling the water, made a BIG difference. Did this from late morning to early afternoon and walking round just before packing up for the day, I could see the weeds well and truly buggered.


The side effect of all this power consumption heating and Boiling water was really surprising.  I Made more power today than ever before AND still managed to pump more power back than I have achieved previously.  Very surprising when taking into account I bled off over 100L of hot water from the tank which was back up to temp in a couple of hours as well as everything else. Pumped about 2500L of water out the Bio storage tanks as well with the 1.5 Kw Pump which has a reasonable edge pressure wise over my 8HP petrol fire pump. I was running out of ideas of how to burn the power off short of opening all the doors in the house and turning on the AC. 

My total generation today was 75.6 KWH.  It wasn't even the most sunny day we have had in recent weeks.  Just keeping the inverters loaded I suspect kept them from throttling back and although I was burning power, I still managed to supply the house AND put an extra 24Kwh away in credit. Most days latley I can get about 14 KW back in over and above what we use. Thanks to cool nights that have still been around 3-5oC, we have had the air on at night as well.

I was happy to be able to make more power than ever and really put things to the test generation wise, but to get the high game on power back to the grid was not what I was expecting. I have been trying to use the least amount of power on the  Dummy load side but this may have been a mistake. Maybe I should be Boiling a drum of water every day and working the inverters to their max all the time?

Most I have got out my main shed array before was about 3.8 KW. Today I got that a kilo up at 4.8 on the 5.0 inverter.... which probably maxes at 4.8 knowing the way they are rated and the fact single phase systems have a 5Kw limit here.
At one point just after mid day, I had a look at all the inverters and was getting  a smidgin over 11Kw being generated.  Probably get 12kw if 3/4 of the panels were not in winter tilt still! Had half the inverters maxed out so what am I going to do with it anyway?

More to the point, what am I going to do next week? Only so many weeds I can cook and I think I'll be done by monday being a long weekend here.
Only so much dung to be kept warm.
Told the Mrs, If you want to wash in hot water,  just do it mid morning when the sun is out and not a problem. She said I never wash in hot water. I said well now at certain times if you check with me you can!

Reckon I might have to look at buying an outdoor spa. That would give me something useful to sink all this power into.
Maybe a pool.... which I could dig myself with an electric Backhoe!   :laugh:

ajaffa1:
Hey Glort, sorry you got the blame for poisoning your neighbors garden. Many years ago I was in a private school and fell foul of a particularly malicious teacher. He had a large garden and lawn outside his home, which he kept immaculate. I had a friend who was the son of a farmer, he supplied me with a quantity of Gromoxone (a persistent agricultural weed killer). Several days later the grass on his lawn died exposing the word WANK*R in eight foot characters. I still have no idea how that happened!  :laugh:

Bob

LowGear:
I'm suggesting you take the leadership of your very progressive and intelligent utilities companies and put in a Power Wall system.

LowGear:
8)

guest23837:
Musk is gone glort, are you psychic, an insider trader or VERY perceptive?

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