At the risk of blowing my own trumpet, why generate power at home?

[GuyFawkes]

Rather than repost the whole thing here, pop over to Bruce Perens site, Technocrat, and have a read.

http://technocrat.net/d/2008/1/6/33165

[rmchambers]

Interesting read there Guy!

I attended a "power forum" in the neighborhood a year ago where some of our elected officials and the mayor sat around explaining why our power bills had tripled, why even if you conserved and used less power than before it was still tripled and why there was nothing they could do about it.

One bright spark mentioned that the majority of the power coming out of the generation plants to our houses was lost as heat and such in the infrastructure.  He said we need to go to a model of lots of smaller local power plants so there aren't any huge transmission losses.  If there are enough of these dotted about then if one is offline the others can keep up.

The majority of the people in the room didn't understand or realize that what this chap was talking about was really the only way to stop pissing away energy in transmission losses.  It also makes people face up to the fact that if you really want electric power, you're going to have to put up with a generation plant somewhere near your neighborhood.

Why generate power from home you ask?  I guess your transmission losses are pretty small, the whole thing is under your control versus some faceless bureaucracy and when the rest of the towns lights go out, you have the choice of being in the dark with them or going about your business.

After the various nuclear "incidents" the big one being Chernobyl, but there are lots of smaller ones all over that people remember - the prospect of dotting smaller nuke plants around the place are going to be met with huge amounts of resistance.  They may be the best thing for us in the long run until fusion becomes technically possible and mechanically usable but between now and then, who wants to sit in the dark?

Thanks for posting the link

RC

[buickanddeere]

   Hmmmmmm.
   I would agree that most of the fossil energy going into electrical generation is wasted. Approx 1/3 of all heat is lost just running the steam cycle when condensing steam/vapour at the turbine's discharge back into boiler feed water. Until somebody develops a "Star Trek" energy converter I don't know of any other efficient large scale technology to convert the btu's in fossil fuel into rotating shaft power or electricity.
  I would also agree that burning fossil fuel to operate resistance electric heating for human habitation comfort is a waste. Burn the fuel at the load however there are some losses in transporting that fuel.
   Now as for Nuclear, either you like it. Or you believe it will be the end of all human life in a mushroom cloud and anything you are told is just going to make you more scared or angry.
   Now for electricity generated from nuclear, who really gives a rat's bum about 60% of reactor heat warming up the local river or lake. And the fish like it or they wouldn't be swimming in the water discharge channels.
   Nuclear fuel like anything else can be dangerous in the hands of fools. Its certainly safer than the lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, dioxins,asbestos and organic chemicals that the general public wallows in without apparent knowledge or concern.
   Using a sodium breeder reactor there is now way to run out of nuclear fuel in thousands of years.
   So what am I saying? Electric vehicles for short haul transportation. Fossil or nuclear manufactured hydrogen for long range transportation. Burn fossil for the bulk of domestic heating until more nukes are built.
   So use wind, solar and nuclear to generate the bulk of the electrical power.   

[Doug]

Well Buck I think your old enough to remember the Ontario hydro Golden medalion home program.

Get off oil and use clean efficient Ontario electricity to heat your home.........

I believe 40 % energy convertion from coal ( thermal because a nuke is no better ) to electricity is about the best we've managed so far. From what i rememeber high voltage transmittion was as good as 90% effcient with a DC and for medium and short lines on ac systems about the same.

The idea of distributed power generation is a good only if you can recapture and use that heat but that also means district heating systems and I'm not sure many people are realy motivated to pay that kind of money for an infrastructure change.

The biggest drawn on energy is transportation.

Thank you for clean hydro electricity, now lets get those DC links built between Quebec and Manitoba. All that power going for export maybe should be used here in Canada first then we could look at exporting the extra. In this day and age we don't need toburn coal anymore.

James Bay II, time to dust it off and my heart bleeds for the Indians and their ancestral land but thats life move on.....

Gasification is never gets talked about but with all the non productive land we have in this country gasifying and pelletizing grass for heating and power generation is another thing we never seem to get around to talking about.

And we have a perfectly good fail safe heavy water reactor technology we shoudl continue to use until we actualy have somethnig better.
You wana build a 1 reactor Candu power station up here and sell the waste heat for district heating in my home town. Sure where do I sign up!

[mike90045]

In a different vein, here's a link to a yahoo groups message, with a nicely documented setup in a shed behind the house

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Lister_CSOG/message/5999

video :   http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=jz2v4f2UNL0

owners website:  http://www.powercubes.com/listers.html

Very interesting reading & video, and you CAN hear the injector "creak"

[rcavictim]

Doug,

I remember the Golden Medallion Home program and the home with the aformentioned medallion on it near the front door at a home show at the Ex in Toronto when I was a kid.

[Doug]

I was raised in one myself.

It wasn't long before Dad put in the first wood stove.

Side note:

There are two large diesel gas co-fired co-gen plants right here in town that provide district heating for customers in the city core and for the hospital. Trouble is the system was designed by idiots and run by boobs.
No one from city hall ever talks about them, I don;t see any steam or heat from the staks so I have too assume its a multi million dollar screw up.
But this is a great idea and good system if the right people are hired to do it and the public is informed on the real cost vs benifits for the city .

[buickanddeere]

  One of my favorites was the Toronto Transit Corporation. TTC or "take the car".
  Some brainiac decided the TTC could save the world and be politically correct by not idling bus diesels in the winter overnight. They didn't seem to understand about cheap clean off peak electricity generated by nuclear and hydro electric. So instead of just plugging in the bus engine block heaters.
   The TTC's budget,already strained by other foolishness. Paid for a great massive natural gas fired boiler, miles of pipework, insulation, engine coolant antifreeze and converting the bus engine cooling systems with quick disconnects.
  The idea was to park the bus, shut off the engine, plug into the heating system and keep the engine warm with the boiler.
   Problem was all the antifreeze running all over the ground. In order to move the coolant through the boiler system, pipe work etc, the  system pressure was above 15 psi. Just happens that the bus engine's rad caps open on over pressure at 15psi.
   If all of electricity except for some emergency peak standby capacity as natural gas, diesel or even coal. And the bulk of the load carried by nuclear, with a little dab of solar and wind power when available. I couldn't feel bad about long electrical transmission lines and electricity used to just make heat.
  About the only place burning fossil fuels is to power loads where an extension cord won't reach.Standby power. With renewable energy. Or a close to load co-generation plant.

[Doug]

A coal peak load plant?
I always thought you were looking about 12 hours to reach full power even on a hot start.

All time stupid transit slogan " One for the road Thunder bay Transit " Not a word of a lie they printed a pile of blue T shirst and gave them away.....

Sadly I can see some dumb ass trying to preheat a pile of busses like that. Realy what were they thinking???
Up here they just plug the busses in, they start just fine....

[buickanddeere]

     There is always supposed to be a spinning reserve of available power should a transmission line open or a generating unit(s) trip. It's a combination of hydro electric units spinning synchronized to the grid but with throttled back water flow through the turbine. And a couple of hot and pressurized coal units synced to the grid but only shoveling enough coal into the boiler to cover the electrical loads to run boiler feed pumps, condensor cooling water and fuel handling.
   http://www.theimo.com/imoweb/market/mi_index.asp        About 1300MW of spinning reserve at the moment.
   http://reports.ieso.ca/public/GenOutputCapability/PUB_GenOutputCapability_20080106.xml       Heres a list of units with their rated capacity and what they are actually generating.  Most thermal at the moment are spinning hot and pressurized. Both as spinning reserve, to avoid  thermal cycling and other wear/tear issues associated with bringing a unit up or down.   
  In the peak of the Glory Days of the Candu Fleet with 18 to 20 running units before the American experts showed up with their own hidden agenda(s) . At night during off peak, Ontario limited all thermal to just hot, pressured and synced but drawing grid power to run loads. Hydro Electric was throttled back to allow just enough water through the turbines or over the spillways to keep the down stream fish swimming.  Nuclear units that would throttle with the least aggravation were the four Pickering A units. Pick A would be eased back to 90% reactor power late evening, then be ramped up to 100% around 5-6AM. New York State would also purchase some really cheap off peak power and throttle their coal units back.
   A Nuclear Unit runs the best ran steady state flat out full power. Varying power can initiate aggravating little flux tilts in the core.
   Down rating power too rapidly to too low a power level will have the delayed production of the neutron absorbing fission byproduct xenon. Showing up at 100% reactor power levels 20-30 minutes later. If the reactor power is less than 60% there will not be enough extra positive reactivity to overcome the xenon's neutron absorbsion.  This will put the reactor to sleep for 36-48 hrs.
         
   

[Doug]

I thought they would keep the nukes and coal running as close as possible to full power and only throttle the hydro because the response time for the base units was too slow ( in hours for the base and minuts for the hydro seconds for the peak units ).

[cujet]

Back to the original title of this post.

Why generate power at home? That is a good question when grid power is far cheaper than Lister power.

Chris

[rmchambers]

My thoughts (in no particular order):

1. Most if not all of us are mechanically minded and like the idea of building and maintaining a machine that can keep the lights on in the house.
2. Costs of NOT having power - food spoilage, pipes freezing, etc.
3. Living so far away from so-called civilization that it's not fiscally prudent to have power brought in (Okiezeke springs to mind).
4. Some of us have access to very cheap or free fuel.  If this is the case then the costs of making our own energy drop quite a bit.  Add to this the "waste" heat can go into our houses or workshops it becomes a lot more palatable.
5. When the shit hits the fan... how bad it will be, or if it will happen - who knows.  we want to be ready.

I'm sure I could come up with more given time but that's a start.

RC

[Doug]

You left out because I can.....

I keep walking past an old 1960's chart recorder ( in Mw but I can scratch out M and tune it to just plan old w ) and keep thinking it would be cool to track my power requirements from the set.

Just cause I can lol....

[aqmxv]

I've got my own set of answers to that one, predicated with the statements that 1) I have plenty of mechanical and some electrical skill, and 2) I can afford and justify investment in a system that will have lower long-term running expenses.

So why generate power at home?

1) I'm at the very farthest end of my generating utility's grid, at the end of a dead-end road with a 1/10 mile line running to my very own pole-mount transformer.  If a squirrel sneezes on something in West Virginia I have no power.  I've already had my small (1kw) genset up and running twice in the last three months keeping the natives happy while the utility failed to provide what we pay them for. (I have plenty of CF bulbs, three Aladdin lamps, and two Aladdin Blue Flame Heaters.  About the only thing I can't do easily is heat the water in the water heater for a shower or (a biggie) run the well pump (but do have a big accumulator tank).

2) It's a well-insulated house with modest heating requirements in winter.  10-20K BTU/hr waste heat is enough to keep it toasty warm.  if not, see above for the Aladdin solution.

3) if I can get cheap/free fuel and do cogen, I can afford to justify running the generator just because the heating costs on cold days become a sunk cost.  If we then have an ice storm and the power goes out, I should be able to run anything I care about with a 4 KW gen head.  If the outage is in high summer for some reason, a 4 KW/220 head is big enough to run the heat pump or a couple of window a/c units I have laying around.

4) I lived through Hurricane Fran in Raleigh, NC.  My little portable generator made our house an island of civilization on a dark night.  Bad stuff happens.  Being ready for it means you are smart and foresighted, not paranoid.

5) it's fun.