Ramblings on Alternate Power Sources

[dcara]

The increasing fuel prices have me thinking once again about ways to reduce power costs. I can't count the number of times I said to myself, "Thats it, I'm getting a windmill", after receiveing that months electric bill. Given the innovative and indepentant spirit of farmers and ranchers I thought some of you folks may have seen, heard of, built, or even dreamed up some other type of farm power generation system.

I heard about one dairy farm a year ago outside of San Fransico that was/is using its waste to run methane based generators which produce the electrical power for the farm, power the farm's electrical vehicals, and produce liquid fertilizer for the fields. He can even pump power back into the local utility power grid, but I don't think they pay him for it. I know methane based generators have been around for years but I don't hear much about their use.

I think one of the biggest problems with cost effective alternate power sources is the energy storage. Windmills and solar panels for instance can produce electrical power that can be used to charge batteries which then power DC to AC convertors. However, these types of approaches are fairly complex, expensive, high maintenance and probably not cost effective when all is said an done.

Another approach might be to use a windmill to pump water from a lower elevation pond to a higher elevation pond (say 30 ft higher than the lower one). The higher elevation pond would drain back into the lower one thru say a 6 inch pipe which had a hydroelectric generator connected to it. This would produce a steady rate of power as long as the upper pond had water. The pond sizes would determine how long you would have power when the wind wasn't refilling the upper pond. The windmill(s) would have to be sized to keep up with the drain rate, evaporation rate etc.

Does anyone else have any thoughts, experiances, or even wild ideas on this subject?

 

[Campground Cattle]

The increasing fuel prices have me thinking once again about ways to reduce power costs. I can't count the number of times I said to myself, "Thats it, I'm getting a windmill", after receiveing that months electric bill. Given the innovative and indepentant spirit of farmers and ranchers I thought some of you folks may have seen, heard of, built, or even dreamed up some other type of farm power generation system.

I heard about one dairy farm a year ago outside of San Fransico that was/is using its waste to run methane based generators which produce the electrical power for the farm, power the farm's electrical vehicals, and produce liquid fertilizer for the fields. He can even pump power back into the local utility power grid, but I don't think they pay him for it. I know methane based generators have been around for years but I don't hear much about their use.

I think one of the biggest problems with cost effective alternate power sources is the energy storage. Windmills and solar panels for instance can produce electrical power that can be used to charge batteries which then power DC to AC convertors. However, these types of approaches are fairly complex, expensive, high maintenance and probably not cost effective when all is said an done.

Another approach might be to use a windmill to pump water from a lower elevation pond to a higher elevation pond (say 30 ft higher than the lower one). The higher elevation pond would drain back into the lower one thru say a 6 inch pipe which had a hydroelectric generator connected to it. This would produce a steady rate of power as long as the upper pond had water. The pond sizes would determine how long you would have power when the wind wasn't refilling the upper pond. The windmill(s) would have to be sized to keep up with the drain rate, evaporation rate etc.

Does anyone else have any thoughts, experiances, or even wild ideas on this subject?

Part of your post is refering to perpetual motion which is impossible. It takes energy to produce energy, Unless you have a hydro source for energy, creek, steam, river. where you have free energy. Using wind to pump water to fall down a hill is real inefficient due to the laws of Physics.
The cost of setting up your on electrical system along with upkeep would make it cost prohibitive, unless you can build a cogen plant.

You would be money ahead to make your home energy efficient, insulation. energy efficient appliances,AC/Heat. I recently built a 2500 sq ft home R-30 insulation energy efficeint appliances my average electric bill is 80 bucks a month, propane 20 bucks.
It would be easier and cheaper to keep up with the technology advances for efficiency for appliances and energy saving devices, than the price of an electrical generating and upkeep of the system. My 2 cents.

 

[dun]

The increasing fuel prices have me thinking once again about ways to reduce power costs. I can't count the number of times I said to myself, "Thats it, I'm getting a windmill", after receiveing that months electric bill. Given the innovative and indepentant spirit of farmers and ranchers I thought some of you folks may have seen, heard of, built, or even dreamed up some other type of farm power generation system.

I heard about one dairy farm a year ago outside of San Fransico that was/is using its waste to run methane based generators which produce the electrical power for the farm, power the farm's electrical vehicals, and produce liquid fertilizer for the fields. He can even pump power back into the local utility power grid, but I don't think they pay him for it. I know methane based generators have been around for years but I don't hear much about their use.

I think one of the biggest problems with cost effective alternate power sources is the energy storage. Windmills and solar panels for instance can produce electrical power that can be used to charge batteries which then power DC to AC convertors. However, these types of approaches are fairly complex, expensive, high maintenance and probably not cost effective when all is said an done.

Another approach might be to use a windmill to pump water from a lower elevation pond to a higher elevation pond (say 30 ft higher than the lower one). The higher elevation pond would drain back into the lower one thru say a 6 inch pipe which had a hydroelectric generator connected to it. This would produce a steady rate of power as long as the upper pond had water. The pond sizes would determine how long you would have power when the wind wasn't refilling the upper pond. The windmill(s) would have to be sized to keep up with the drain rate, evaporation rate etc.

Does anyone else have any thoughts, experiances, or even wild ideas on this subject?

Part of your post is refering to perpetual motion which is impossible. It takes energy to produce energy, Unless you have a hydro source for energy, creek, steam, river. where you have free energy. Using wind to pump water to fall down a hill is real inefficient due to the laws of Physics.
The cost of setting up your on electrical system along with upkeep would make it cost prohibitive, unless you can build a cogen plant.

You would be money ahead to make your home energy efficient, insulation. energy efficient appliances,AC/Heat. I recently built a 2500 sq ft home R-30 insulation energy efficeint appliances my average electric bill is 80 bucks a month, propane 20 bucks.
It would be easier and cheaper to keep up with the technology advances for efficiency for appliances and energy saving devices, than the price of an electrical generating and upkeep of the system. My 2 cents.

Your 2 cents in this case is worth more like 100 bucks. Good response!

dun

 

[jkwilson]

Part of your post is refering to perpetual motion which is impossible. It takes energy to produce energy,

Campground: While it's true that insulation and energy efficiency is by far the best investment, what the original post proposed isn't perpetual motion. Pumping water into an uphill or raised reservoir for later use is not at all impractical. Probably not economical for power generation.
Water utilities do the same thing by filling their towers at night to allow higher flow during the day without needing bigger pumps. Of course, the utilities aren't using wind to do the pumping.
The key is that household energy use is usually much heavier during short times of the day--in the evening when everybody is home and cooking etc. or in the morning when people are showering. Pumping the water at a steady pace all day and night COULD be used to provide power during these surges.

 

[Campground Cattle]

I'm through I quit fuel now energy, I have 30 + years in the field I defer to your expertise.

Using a constant wind source that doesn't exsist to pump water to make a constant supply of electricity is perpetual motion.

 

[dun]

Hate to start , but The old "Mother Earth News" was very big into alternative power back in the 70's, don;t know if it's still around or not. I'm sure that there is still some of that information availble on-line somewhere. Back then most of the methane powered stuff was being pioneered in India or that area.

dun

 

[Dave]

I know of several dairies that have looked into the methane digester. Actually there are two operating in Oregon and one under construction in Washington that I know of. They do work but they are expensive to install. The problem is the extra power that you sell to the grid is at wholesale which isn't much. If you could sell the power at retail to your nieghbors the digester would pay for the price of installation, but when the law requires you to sell the power at wholesale it just doesn't pay. The technology is there to build these but the cost of construction is too high and power still too cheap.
Dave

 

[dcara]

Campground, not sure what part of it you thought was based on perpetual motion, or what law of physics you thought made the scheme inefficient. We can discuss this in more detail if you like but I'm really just trying to see what some of the most innovative people in this country may have tried. Although, I have a Masters in engineering with a minor in physics and 30+years in the engineering field myself, I am always interested in what innovators think or have done.

I agree that another big problem is the cost effectivity issue. Cost effectivity is directly related and proportional to system complexity, and system complexity often increases with system size. Hence, it may be that only large operations that have huge electric bills could justify those complex methan digestive systems, maybe. Then again, innovation may eventually reduce the complexity and cost of those systems. But certainly there are other simplier approaches. I'm sure most of you have heard of the kiss principle (keep it simple stupid)

I had a guy tell me once that he was going to set up his breaker box in his next house so he could switch the power for just the lights and a few small appliances like the TV and refigerator over to a DC to AC invertor which would be fed by batteries connected to solar cells stacked to provide the necessary charging voltage for the batteries. That seems like a relatively simple system that could provide a reasonable percentage of power to the house. How cost effective it is, is debatable given the solar cell and invertor costs, battery maintenace and disposal costs, and how much he would actually save powering just those few items . None-the-less its innovative enough that proper system optimization and managment may make it a realizable approach.

I also agree completely with the "improving the use efficency" perspective. Increasing use efficency results in smaller power requirements, yielding smaller generation systems which increase cost effectivity. I was the engineer, architect, and builder for our house we built 5 years ago. Since we live in Texas I paid close attention to the thermal design for the house. I kid you not, this house has twice the square footage and half the electric bill of our previous house. An improvemnt of 4x over our previous home's thermal efficency! I'm please with that, but I'm still interested in improving the situation further.

 

[Frankie]

The increasing fuel prices have me thinking once again about ways to reduce power costs. I can't count the number of times I said to myself, "Thats it, I'm getting a windmill", after receiveing that months electric bill. Given the innovative and indepentant spirit of farmers and ranchers I thought some of you folks may have seen, heard of, built, or even dreamed up some other type of farm power generation system.

I heard about one dairy farm a year ago outside of San Fransico that was/is using its waste to run methane based generators which produce the electrical power for the farm, power the farm's electrical vehicals, and produce liquid fertilizer for the fields. He can even pump power back into the local utility power grid, but I don't think they pay him for it. I know methane based generators have been around for years but I don't hear much about their use.

I think one of the biggest problems with cost effective alternate power sources is the energy storage. Windmills and solar panels for instance can produce electrical power that can be used to charge batteries which then power DC to AC convertors. However, these types of approaches are fairly complex, expensive, high maintenance and probably not cost effective when all is said an done.

Another approach might be to use a windmill to pump water from a lower elevation pond to a higher elevation pond (say 30 ft higher than the lower one). The higher elevation pond would drain back into the lower one thru say a 6 inch pipe which had a hydroelectric generator connected to it. This would produce a steady rate of power as long as the upper pond had water. The pond sizes would determine how long you would have power when the wind wasn't refilling the upper pond. The windmill(s) would have to be sized to keep up with the drain rate, evaporation rate etc.

Does anyone else have any thoughts, experiances, or even wild ideas on this subject?

Interesting topic. They're putting in a group of windmills not too far from where I live; our electric company will buy some of the power. But there is some research that tells us those big windmill sites are damaging to the environment. I think it was So Carolina (maybe No Carolina?) where the bat population was being affected by the windmills. Apparently there's no free lunch. I am interested, though, if someone can tell me where the new gasoline refinerly was built over the last week or two. Gas prices have come down to $2 a gallon in my area. Since we know higher gas prices are mainly caused by a lack of refining capability, I feel sure someone must have built another plant but I missed the location. Anyone?

 

[Frankie]

Hate to start , but The old "Mother Earth News" was very big into alternative power back in the 70's, don;t know if it's still around or not. I'm sure that there is still some of that information availble on-line somewhere. Back then most of the methane powered stuff was being pioneered in India or that area.

dun

You're telling your age, Dun. That magazine had houses built out of recycled cans, all kinds of stuff. But there were some tax breaks back then to put in solar panels, etc. Undergound houses were a big thing for a while. Too bad our government didn't continue to encourage that sort of research and development.

 

[dun]

You're telling your age, Dun. That magazine had houses built out of recycled cans, all kinds of stuff. But there were some tax breaks back then to put in solar panels, etc. Undergound houses were a big thing for a while. Too bad our government didn't continue to encourage that sort of research and development.

Never claimed to be a spring chicken, but you know about it too. HMMMMMM

dun

 

[Caustic Burno]

Frankie I don't know about any refinery being built, I know people are driving a lot less in my area. It is not a well to do part of the state and I have seen the impact on the highway here. I make a trip to Lufkin a couple of a times a week never was a bad drive in the last few weeks seldom see a car now. Might be different where you rich folks live.

 

[Chuck]

Hate to start , but The old "Mother Earth News" was very big into alternative power back in the 70's, don;t know if it's still around or not. I'm sure that there is still some of that information availble on-line somewhere. Back then most of the methane powered stuff was being pioneered in India or that area.

dun

You're telling your age, Dun. That magazine had houses built out of recycled cans, all kinds of stuff. But there were some tax breaks back then to put in solar panels, etc. Undergound houses were a big thing for a while. Too bad our government didn't continue to encourage that sort of research and development.

I recall they also built a bio-mass truck that burnt everything from peat moss to construction waste. Kind of a Stanley Steamer for the hippie generation. :lol: Would think it would smoke a lot. As far as the private windmills go, some of the utilities will not pay for the excess power, you just give it to them. Neighbor put one up several years back,cost to build and maintain was outrageous. Then the co-op backed out of paying him for the extra KW. Spent more on it than on his utility bill will be for many years to come. Then lightning got it, killed the control circuits and whatever else. Now it's just sitting there in his barnlot dead.

 

[flaboy]

[/quote]
You would be money ahead to make your home energy efficient, insulation. energy efficient appliances,AC/Heat. I recently built a 2500 sq ft home R-30 insulation energy efficeint appliances my average electric bill is 80 bucks a month, propane 20 bucks.
It would be easier and cheaper to keep up with the technology advances for efficiency for appliances and energy saving devices, than the price of an electrical generating and upkeep of the system. My 2 cents.[/quote]

Be careful when comparing electric bills. The cost per kilowatt hour varies quite a bit from state to state or power supplier to power supplier.

 

[dcara]

I agree flaboy - you really have to compare the actual Kilowatts used. And even that can vary alot depending on whether your house is shaded by trees or not, or your house is in a place where you can get a decent breeze.

About a week ago I saw a news item on PBS news where the guest said there had not been a refinery built in this country in the last 15 or so years, and that none were planned to be built any time soon because of all the enviromental regulations. Don't remember the guys name though.

A house built out of Tin cans, Really!?? In my early twenties my roomate and I built a wall out of tin cans. Ok, they were really just stacked against the wall. But it was a 10wx8h wall and we thought it looked cool. Little did we know what we were on to.

 

[Frankie]

You're telling your age, Dun. That magazine had houses built out of recycled cans, all kinds of stuff. But there were some tax breaks back then to put in solar panels, etc. Undergound houses were a big thing for a while. Too bad our government didn't continue to encourage that sort of research and development.

Never claimed to be a spring chicken, but you know about it too. HMMMMMM

dun

And apparently Chuck does, too. Hmm.

We were living in Denver, CO, when we received the magazine. All the gasoline stations were replacing their pumps with newer ones that could show the extra digit in pricing. That's what convinced me we were in permanently for higher prices. But I can't tell you how angry it makes me when a Saudi prince stands on US soil and tells us we are paying the price for not building more gasoline refinery plants here in the US. Its the price of OIL that runs up the price of gas. There's no shortage of oil. The US reserves are the highest in years. IMO, it's sheer greed by the big oil companies. Did you see the profits recently released by one of them? I'll shut up here, don't want to get CC started. BTW, got the PM, CC. Made me laugh....

 

[Campground Cattle]

You're telling your age, Dun. That magazine had houses built out of recycled cans, all kinds of stuff. But there were some tax breaks back then to put in solar panels, etc. Undergound houses were a big thing for a while. Too bad our government didn't continue to encourage that sort of research and development.

Never claimed to be a spring chicken, but you know about it too. HMMMMMM

dun

And apparently Chuck does, too. Hmm.

We were living in Denver, CO, when we received the magazine. All the gasoline stations were replacing their pumps with newer ones that could show the extra digit in pricing. That's what convinced me we were in permanently for higher prices. But I can't tell you how angry it makes me when a Saudi prince stands on US soil and tells us we are paying the price for not building more gasoline refinery plants here in the US. Its the price of OIL that runs up the price of gas. There's no shortage of oil. The US reserves are the highest in years. IMO, it's sheer greed by the big oil companies. Did you see the profits recently released by one of them? I'll shut up here, don't want to get CC started. BTW, got the PM, CC. Made me laugh....

Frankie for someone so smart you can really be dense at times just try not being a know it all on everthing. The largest refiner in the US as others purchase crude from other countries, and companies. You really have a tough time with supply and demand economics. The refinery I work at used to target for a penny gallon profit on 520,000 barrels thats 21,840,000 gallons x .01 = 218,000 a day 79 million a year profit on one refinery. if the profit goes to .03 a gallon numbers get astonomical very fast. Exxon has roughly 1 million barrels a day capacity is 420,000 dollars a day profit at a penny thats 153,300,000.00 profit on gasoline not counting there other products. Of course the Oil companies make no profits from credit cards and no one buys a Coke or chips when they fill up, no one uses plastic etc.

 

[flaboy]

At the risk of all you Texans out there, do you think the higher prices have anything to due with our current president (lower case intentional) being from Texas? I heard most of his campaign contributions (the big ones) were from US based oil companies. Just thinking here that maybe there is some payback being made

 

[Hawk]

About a week ago I saw a news item on PBS news where the guest said there had not been a refinery built in this country in the last 15 or so years, and that none were planned to be built any time soon because of all the enviromental regulations. Don't remember the guys name though.

Actually, it has been over 25 years since the last U.S. refinery came on line. There is one in the plans, however, in the Yuma, Arizona area. The environmentalists seem to be doing their best to kill it by demanding extraordinary air quality permit requirements. If it ever gets built, it will be the cleanest oil refinery in the world. Probably the most expensive also due to all of the polution control equipment.

 

[bwranch]

At the risk of all you Texans out there, do you think the higher prices have anything to due with our current president (lower case intentional) being from Texas? I heard most of his campaign contributions (the big ones) were from US based oil companies. Just thinking here that maybe there is some payback being made

You must live near Orlando. Disney World is one of the few places I can think of that would support a conspiracy theory that grand. What kind of awesome power do you think belongs to the US President, such that he would be able to control the price of oil?