Author Topic: Finally, some use for excess solar power.  (Read 8433 times)

guest22972

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Finally, some use for excess solar power.
« on: September 29, 2018, 11:42:18 AM »

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

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Re: Finally, some use for excess solar power.
« Reply #1 on: September 29, 2018, 12:09:57 PM »
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

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Re: Finally, some use for excess solar power.
« Reply #2 on: September 29, 2018, 06:06:10 PM »
I'm suggesting you take the leadership of your very progressive and intelligent utilities companies and put in a Power Wall system.
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LowGear

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Re: Finally, some use for excess solar power.
« Reply #3 on: September 30, 2018, 05:34:12 PM »
8)
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guest23837

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Re: Finally, some use for excess solar power.
« Reply #4 on: September 30, 2018, 05:56:32 PM »
Musk is gone glort, are you psychic, an insider trader or VERY perceptive?

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Re: Finally, some use for excess solar power.
« Reply #5 on: September 30, 2018, 07:36:25 PM »
No, he's in Oz, their day starts way earlier than ours, so the news gets there first ;D

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Re: Finally, some use for excess solar power.
« Reply #6 on: October 01, 2018, 06:42:14 PM »
All in all he is still the man person of the 21st century with only 80 years to go before it's ended.  I can hardly wait.

I wonder if he'll be involved in another publicly traded company?  How soon before Tesla is taken back to private ownership?  I haven't heard the full bodied woman sing yet.  I agree with glort - he's not gone from Tesla yet.

Another secondary genius of this guy is the world wide super charger system.  When there are a couple hundred thousand Model 3s out there this is going to be a tidy profit center on it's own.

Oops.  This is glorts thread and I can get into a rant about Elon at the drop of a hat.

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1119088_report-utility-survey-shows-overwhelming-support-for-renewable-power

« Last Edit: October 01, 2018, 06:46:39 PM by LowGear »
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LowGear

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Re: Finally, some use for excess solar power.
« Reply #7 on: October 02, 2018, 09:46:34 PM »
Hi glort,

I read the whole thing.  And all by myself!  See what playing nice with others can accomplish.

The fourth quarter of the game can be the most telling and challenging.  I've lost 30 pounds in the last two years looking to downsize for the final ending.  Light players can run faster and longer.

I too got excited when Tesla went momentarily down to 260 USD.  But by the time my IRA team was on deck it was back up to 310 and is 301 this morning.

I can't believe you haven't purchased a totaled Leaf for it's batteries and made you're own storage system.  These next two years are going to be fun in the electrically powered world.  So many options.

Emotionally based stuff can be a lot of fun and exciting.  The trick is to know when you're in LaLa land.  I get tired of fake news (on all fronts) being sold as real.  There are only so many photos of the US Inaugurations.

I think the "go PV" for hot water is still being sold.  There are a number of members here on LF that heat and store  water for space heat as well as hot water only most of them use solar direct rather than losing the 10+% efficiency from changing electrical to heat propagation methods.

My fingers need a break.  How do you do it.

Aloha

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guest23837

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Re: Finally, some use for excess solar power.
« Reply #8 on: October 02, 2018, 10:38:43 PM »
I'm jealous reading this thread I couldn't generate enough power with solar here to power a digital watch! OK thats not quite true but I have talked to a few people that have solar water heaters and when you need hot water (winter) they are pretty ineffective in Ireland. I don't know if solar PV panels would be any better I somehow doubt they would provide any return on investment in Ireland no matter what the salesmen say.

With a lot of power going spare maybe it's time Glort got an electric vehicle on the road, I bet he could do it too!

ajaffa1

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Re: Finally, some use for excess solar power.
« Reply #9 on: October 03, 2018, 12:17:36 PM »
Hey Glort, I am curious about bio diesel. Does it have the same properties as regular diesel? What I want to know is if it as flammable as regular diesel. Thirty years ago I used to run domestic oil fired boilers on red diesel as it was tax free and cheap. These boilers had spark ignition systems that would ignite heating fuel and diesel, I doubt they would light vegetable oil but they might light Bio diesel. Another possibility would be to thin the veg with another fuel to get it to ignite.

I should point out that these boilers were all wet back systems plumbed to hot water and other heating appliances with circulation pumps. Very effective in winter but very inefficient in summer when you only need hot water.

Bob

ajaffa1

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Re: Finally, some use for excess solar power.
« Reply #10 on: October 03, 2018, 01:51:54 PM »
Hey Glort, yes these boilers had electronic start stop. As I said earlier they were spark ignition. I also lived in properties with gas boilers, these had a pilot light. Wonder if a gas fed pilot light would ignite vegetable oil sprayed through a fine nozzle. An 8 KG bottle would probably run a pilot light for a year or more.

Think you are right about the addition/blending with something more volatile.

I`m in the same boat as you, I have solar during the day which heats hot water and provides electricity to household appliances. I am buggered if I can find a cheap way to store it for use at night, which is when we usually need it, I export far more to the grid than I import but I still get a heft bill every quarter. Batteries are too expensive and unreliable.

Looking forward to running the CS on WVO to fill this gap, might even be able to export any excess to the grid if I can

Bob

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Re: Finally, some use for excess solar power.
« Reply #11 on: October 10, 2018, 10:23:15 AM »
Hey Glort, I`ve been thinking about your enormous power generating capability and a good use for it. There has been a lot of talk recently about growing food hydroponically indoors. In the USA there are several companies that grow fruit and vegetables indoors in inner city areas. These farms are usually on a very small plot and produce an enormous amount of top quality food in a very small area, very close to where the customer/consumer lives, reducing delivery costs.

These setups are very high tech with temperature and humidity control, computerized watering and lighting systems. Should be right up your alley.

Bob

ajaffa1

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Re: Finally, some use for excess solar power.
« Reply #12 on: October 10, 2018, 12:52:08 PM »
Hey Buddy, glad you like the idea of growing your own food, never know what you are getting from the supermarkets or if you`ll be able to buy what you need considering the present drought.

Just a heads up on lighting for plants, it might sound strange but they need sleep too. 5 to 6 hours a day of darkness or they will die.

Rainfall here has been OK, not what the weathermen predicted but still good. Sent 8 hours today cutting the bloody grass, not going to complain just going to go to bed early, very tired out.  :laugh:

My solar output has also fallen but I`d rather the rain.

Bob

ajaffa1

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Re: Finally, some use for excess solar power.
« Reply #13 on: October 11, 2018, 11:07:47 AM »
Hey Glort, I did do it with a push mower and a whipper snipper!  :laugh: I`m not sure a tractor would be advisable in the house paddock. I always do the first cut of the year with a push mower, it allows me to pick up all the sticks, stones, dog toys and other detritus. It also gives me a good cardio workout, which I`m glad to say I passed. Sore all over today but gave me a good excuse to spend today in the shed servicing Lister injector pumps.

Still got to mow the vegetable garden and then I`m onto the other paddocks where I really do need a tractor.

Bob

 

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Re: Finally, some use for excess solar power.
« Reply #14 on: October 12, 2018, 12:02:25 PM »
Hey Glort, I don`t mow the veggie patch only the paths in between!  :laugh:

I think that, with the right setup, inner city farmers can make a very good return on minimal investment. There are a few very highly prized vegetables that chefs will kill for. For example fresh horseradish root, fresh wasabi and all herbs. Last time my Wife was at the Sydney markets they offered her $90 a kilo for fresh horseradish root!  :o  I do grow some but it`s difficult in the Australian climate. would be very easy in an environmentally controlled container.

The easiest way to break up clay is with gypsum, trouble is it`s expensive. Standard plasterboard sheets are made with gypsum, there are probably skips full of the stuff around you. Just lay it on the ground and plough it in with your rotorvator, works just as well and costs nothing.

Bob