Let me rethink this --
My energy appliances are:
propane poweredrefrigerator
indoor lighting
stove and cookstove
water heater
space heating
air compressor
compressed air poweredwell pump
washer
some shop tools
electricaly poweredPC
small chargers and knick knacks - less than 50W
probably some future shop tools
I have no large appliances like a dryer (clothesline takes its place very nicely
) and no air conditioning (enough trees take care of that) and no TV, VCR, stereo (have no use for them), and no microwave, so my current electrical needs are very small
The grid is not available, or an option, in my case
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Hence you see why I only thought about a small battery bank, and also because the battery bank is crazy expensive
rbodell,
Yes I agree on the ease of charging with a manual rheostat, we do it that way here at work, it does the job quite well. Regarding the inverter, as far as dollars and cents go I'd probably be coming out on the losing end if I made one myself, at least the first time or so, but I would tackle it because I can do it, (I have programmed micro controllers in the past, and built various electronic projects) and because I like doing things myself. For converting the the 120 to AC I would be using modern MOSFETs and transistors, and the conversion loss should theoretically be close to zero, BUT I haven't tried it yet. I'll do that as time and money allows
If you want to try a different engine, look at the Changfa engines. The smallest they have with balancer shafts is the 12HP model and I know owners who have 6000+ hours up on them now with zero problems. The price is pretty good too and plenty spares around. Yanmar and Kubota also make the same type engine, but you wont see many of them in the west. They are for Asian and Australian markets.
No offense to Changfa, but I much prefer the Lister type. Not sure why, I'm sure a Changfa would probably work very well......
You should get 2, and alternate them weekly. 1 engine at half load = last long time Full load = shorter time
if one dies (and it will, going 24/7) you have a "hot" spare ready to go. And you can do leisurely maintenance with 2, while you wait for parts for 1.
Good point. But I'm thinking I'll probably retain the current system and use that as backup
when I started thinking about this I figured on putting in a small engine, and just running my electrical stuff and then using whatever heat I could capture to supplement the propane. If I would use a 6/1 I could probably run everything off that, I just need to figure out a way to convert the propane based stuff over. I can't understand why that thought didn't occur to me before