A carbon neutral big island?

[JWFITZ]

The big problem with those big projects like geothermal is simply that everyone is too broke and leveraged out to even take a project like that on. What raise property taxes to pay for it? Even if one did, that plant is probably 5 years out. With taxes anyhow, at some point people will simply stop paying. This is a real danger at this moment. As well, there's a risk that HELCO could lose a fuel contract, or go bust, and the lights could just go out. Everybody really needs a backup generator on this island, and if you've got it, there's little reason to use the grid power in the first place. That's what I've done, and run my whole place on gasoline, and woodchips when I'm up to it. I've installed probably a dozen solar system--they will not pay for themselves in Puna. Wind is intermittent at best, noisy, and prone to other troubles. Storage capacity in batteries is no better than it was 50 years ago, and this is a big bottleneck. We're faced with a very singular issue here. Power will be expensive. Period. Earn more money to have the luxury of using it, or use less. Those are the choices we're left with.

[JWFITZ]

Anybody else note that in the time this thread has been in existence the price of oil has nearly doubled?

[gtill]

JW, do you find the woodgas unit that much hassle to operate? If built from scratch could one be made for minimal trouble. I'm moving down below, so dry wood would be a possibility. I have other people interested also, and not looking for freebees. Consulting is a legit trade.
I have also found for about 10K (in Australia) a functioning steam engine, boiler and generator that would keep batteries charged. Plus Shipping.
I think the 5$ gal price will replace the 3$ spell we just came out of.
I belive that Ormat would be willing to up their production for minimum cost to us, Which could eliminate most of the fuel that Helco charges us for.

[Tahunatics]

There are alternatives to spending tens of thousands of dollars on photovoltaics. You can do all kinds of things with Fresnel lenses which you can buy pretty cheap on eBay or even recycle from on old large screen TV.

I think you'll find this pretty interesting, clean and free energy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud8JZLgNFHE

http://www.youtube.com/user/GREENPOWERSCIENCE

http://www.greenpowerscience.com/

It's going to take a combination of a whole bunch of ideas to make up for the vast amount of energy contained in fossil fuels, which is just super concentrated solar energy stored as carbon.

[JWFITZ]

I wish people out there who advocate PV panels would have more experience with them and would fully describe the ups and downs of the things before they advocate. They work well, but are very expensive, you'll be lucky to even hit 2 bucks a kw with an array--they don't work when the sun doesn't shine--and storage capacity is the big problem. If you're willing to live very minimally as I have on my boats, they're great to to keep a light on and to listen to the radio. Will they power a tablesaw? You must be kidding.

As for the woodgas. It works. It's a hassle. Will it keep a homestead running? Yes. The ideal fuel on the island is strawberry guava. It's actually very very good. Is it a clean green fuel? Well, THAT depends on you. It's smoky, and off-gasses a fair bit of methane, which you're going to burn, but you'll lose some too. So, with my concern about global warming, that's a problem and why I wouldn't really advocate the process. But, the question is, does it work? Sure it does. It's proven, and ran most of the world prior to WWII. We've just forgot about it.

Another issue that I'm working with is scalability. I want to run small powerplants of less than 5kw. That's a problem, because it takes a certain amount of critical internal heat to keep the reaction going. Once you get small, that's a pain, and fires go out. The solution is to make your fuel in a two stage process. First, you make charcoal, then you burn the charcoal in the gas producer. This works very well and seems to be the answer, but ultimately it is less efficient as you lose a good amount of energy in the charcoalization process. Ultimately, that's what I'm doing, as I'm perpetually dealing with wet wood and crap fuel and that eliminates the problem completely. As well, you will burn up a lot of tars and crud that plug up modern motors, and that's all to the good too.

So at this point I run on the stuff when I feel like it, confident that the system works. I'll tinker with it but it all works. It is a tinker'ers system and there is no way about that, as the quality control of a lot of factors depend on you and only you. And you'll need to be enough of a motor-head to diagnose and figure stuff out. Will it work? Yup. It's cheap, versatile, and proven. Will I teach you? Sure. It's pretty simple really, in theory at least. Could I run a truck on it? Easy.

[Rob Tucker]

No one mentions steam. The Industrial Revolution was built on steam power. Old technology. I used to visit steam engine societies in New England where they would show off and operate their steam equiment.

One guy had a truck mounted shingle mill. He could arrive at your farm (in New England) and convert your cedar trees into roof shingles with a steam powered mill. Other steam power units were small enough for one person to lift and load.

Jay, when you talk about running lights and a radio you are talking about ongoing use of power. When you talk about running a table saw you are talking about occassional use of power. It will likely be a combination of technologies to fill the bill.

Lower your inventment in PV for what PV does best. Another investment in something like wind, wood gas or steam power for other purposes.

I used to see old power shops on the east coast in which a whole factory (large or small) was operated with one power unit (steam, gas, diesel, electric) and line shafts wre used to physically distribute the power through the building to machines. That stuff worked and the old equipment is still out there.

Anyway, my two cents for today.

[gtill]

Steam, I have only found one steam engine manufacturer, and they are in Australia (Strath steam), but the only complete ri I priced was $10K+ shipping.
Anyone have any leads?

[JWFITZ]

I looked into steam as well. I couldn't find anything out there sensible.

However, I have seen old gas engines converted to run on steam, and I imagine a ford 4-104 or a 300-6 would be fine and it wouldn't take much valve work to get it to run. How long it would last is another issue, and maybe longer than I think. Oil injection could help a whole lot. Off the cuff it seems all one needs to do is fabricate a manifold, boiler, and pull the cam gear so that it runs at crankshaft rpm not 1/2, as you don't need a compression stroke obviously. Would be fun to try, if you didn't end up pressure cooking yourself. Actually, it wouldn't take a lot of pressure really to get useful power out of a 300-6. I'll have to add that up.

[Kapohocat]

quote:

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Originally posted by JWFITZ

I wish people out there who advocate PV panels would have more experience with them and would fully describe the ups and downs of the things before they advocate. They work well, but are very expensive, you'll be lucky to even hit 2 bucks a kw with an array--they don't work when the sun doesn't shine--and storage capacity is the big problem. If you're willing to live very minimally as I have on my boats, they're great to to keep a light on and to listen to the radio. Will they power a tablesaw? You must be kidding...

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SB had two different clients with big solar systems.

On the first one put in 8 years ago they had a 4400 trace inverter with 8 panels and 16 batteries (I think 16), they also have a 21000 W Kubota marine diesel generator - 100% duty rated for 20 years. Cost of entire system run $23,000 in "2000" dollars. System runs the genrator about 45 mins every five-six days. So over 8 years the cost has been $2900 a year plus the 50 gals of diesel a year. other than remembering to check water in batteries, they have had no problems with it other than operator error - had to adjust the panels from winter to summer height, and N run the generator out of fuel and had to prime it for the first time about a month ago. Thats it. He is buying new batteries this year some time as they arent holding as much of a charge as year 1-7.

Second system had two 4400 inverters slaved together with 8 panels and corresponding amt of batteries (cost was $27K in 2003 dollars). it run so effortlessly that for 1 year no problem. One day as the house was being finished with one tile crew of 3, SB's crew of four doing trim, plumbers & electricians, the system popped when SB started the tablesaw about 2:30 PM on the 4th rainy day. There was a BIG red light. The owner freaked out and called the solar guy who said "it is just out of power - send everyone home and start again tomorrow! Let the (small Honda) genny catch it up." One year they worked before actually running it completely out of power for the first time.

[JWFITZ]

8 panels would be a maximum of 800 watts, if they were big ones, and half that figure is more realistic. The inverter reflects that. So, we're looking at a .5 kw array that will make a super optimistic amount of 5 kwh of electricity a day. That will cost you 5 x .45c= two dollars and fifty cents a day. Assuming it's never rained or been cloudy in the last eight years you've got yourself 912 dollars of grid power a year, for a cost of nearly 3000 bucks a year. That's better than the 2 dollars a kw I offered up off the cuff, but dang expensive electricity at 1.50 a kw at the absolute minimum. The real figure I expect is about double that.