Hey Guys,
some info on what's been happening, some musings, some rambling.....and....well....just general BS too.....
So far the solar and wind projects have gone pretty well (Read that as "Not too much smoke escaped during installs!")
Wind/Solar combo power: Looks cute, looks interesting, spins and makes lovely sounds....doesn't make much power....on wind anyway... Best I have seen to get the 500W rated out of it, at 24V that's around 20A, was during the gale force winds a month or two back... The property location just doesn't lend itself to wind generation on a small scale. I daresay that if I elevated it another 20m or so, taking it to a 30m total hub height, things would be a bit more "lively" .... and "interesting" too... The solar side of the combo set works reliably and well, generating 250W from around 9am to about 4pm with little break in between, only cloud cover, obviously.... The wind does bolster it, don't get me wrong, but its spurious at best, with a power supply well below 50W on average... This little SHTF system is hooked up to keep my tractor batteries in charge, and runs the welding bay/machine shop lighting on a day to day basis, around a max of 300W draw for about 4 to 8hrs a day on average. Unfortunately there is little to no natural lighting in those areas, so daytime lighting is in order for any work(Playing and building sh!t) to happen there...
Straight Solar Power installation: Working very well so far - I have got all of the batteries I need for the moment racked up and installed, along with some HA-02 4 port battery balancers to keep things in the land of the living for as long as possible in that department. Yep, I know, 638SMF vehicle batteries are NOT the right things to be using, but at last check they were about the best bang for buck to use in the short term, Now, a bunch of supercaps would be loverrrrly, sniff, sniff....
A few notes on power usage - We have dropped down from a max60kWh, ave50kWh per day down to ave15kWh per day from the monkeypality supply... A fair cost saving indeed!
As has been mentioned more than once around this forum, there is way more to power cost saving/gen/solar/wind implementation than simply putting in a system and expecting the dollhairs to start flowing in. It takes a little scheming and planning to use the power when its available, ie when the sun is shining in the solar sense of the plan... To this effect, I have made some pretty simple changes that are (generally) quite easy to implement, only a little growling and barking to get the residents to play along, especially when I point out that its largely to their financial benefit... to summarize:
Deep Freeze: On timer to start it up at 10am and turn it off at 5pm - Don't piss about and stand there with the top open trying to decide what you want to eat in 10 minutes time... Keep the bugger closed till the next morning, take out the stuff you want to cook and put it in the fridge till the evening....Not only will it defrost slowly and remain fresh, but it will help the fridge a bit too!
Grey Water Pump: These are also on timer, set to come on at around 11am where they will replenish the header tank for the toilet cisterns... If you run out of cistern supply in the evening, use a bucket to flush it... In any event, how the f!@# did you manage to deplete 300L of grey water in an evening anyway(toilet cisterns have been adjusted to use a max of around 12L per flushfill)? Was it fun to stand there flushing the toilet incessantly?
Fridges: Some, soon all, are to be on timers, going off around midnight and coming on around 9am.... It is not required that the fridge be opened in the early morning hours to check if the stuff's still there... There are far better things to do than see if the fridge light is working at 2am....go watch a movie if you can't sleep!
Home network, servers, security systems, pabx.... on power 24/7, but since the inverter has a battery supply, it acts as a ups anyway, so there is no need for a separate ups to be there....same applies to the home offices, all ups's have been put in storage, saving about another 150w of overhead per unit, maybe a bit less, but it all adds up...especially when there are 3 or 4 units running....
Heavy duty home electrical appliances: Iron, chip fryer, dishwasher, hair dryer.... I have provided a single heavy duty outlet in the scullery for playing with these things - Now you can even iron while you watch TV/listen to 2gigawatts of sound power from the adjoining kitchen entertainment system, how thoughtful of me! Oh, by the way, there is only one plug so please select whether you want to iron, fry chips, wash dishes, or dry your hair.... Actually works quite well - I see very little of the iron being left on while the clothes are being fetched/packed away or the smell of something "hot" emanating from a bedroom, like when curling tongs get forgotten on for 2 to 3 hours until the red glow finally attracts someone...Way more too my liking, but I did get a "bit" of opposition with this choice...
Enough ranting... on to some tech type stuff explaining how it all hangs together, the power systems as such...
Power comes in from municipal feed and hits my pay-as-you-go meter. It then hits the "Heavy duty stuff" like the dishwasher plug, the double oven, the electric hob, the metal workshop DB, the wood workshop db. From there it heads towards my Heath-Robinson "auto mains dump" contactors which are controlled by my Lister (See it is a Lister post!!). If I run either of my Listers, they take over mains supply automatically and supply downstream from here. After that, it heads to a couple of "non essential" items, that seldom get used and draw little power when they do. Next it heads to my little auto start 5kVa diesel gennie, this kicks in if the utility power fails, after a few seconds of startup delay. In short order it heads directly to the solar inverter utility input, then back from the solar inverter/ups to the DB board to power the more "critical" things as required (Like fridges, Tv's, Network, Offices, Home entertainment systems, Sound systems, bedroom plugs, Microwave and just about anything else I can squeeze into the 5kVa limit of inverter and gennie....)
The inverter and the little gennie are "plugged" into each other via surface mount plugs... If one or both gives shit, it can be bypassed without even opening the DB board, simply unplug and put the plug in one step closer to the supply....
Right....enough of my idiotic rambling....time to go play and see if I can let the smoke out....
Cheers
Ed
PS: Glort - The babbington powered heat exchanger is still running like a charm, with the odd flame out here and there due to wind or water in the fuel.... Averaging about 3L of waste oil per day on the 300L water supply heatup.....