Yes, but...

At least that part is a level playing field, and your competition has to pay it too.

And the less they look the better, for everyone.

So be glad he didn't feel compelled to "earn his money"?

Let me start out by saying I'm no math master or whizz kid. I'm just a guy who grew up it the town Edison built one of his labs .. My house was just outside the first estate to have electric lighting, DC powered of course.

Good point about the economies of scale. I'm and A/V engineer working in consumer electronics or communications plant Low Voltage applications since 1967 .

10 years ago I was installing a Fujitsu 42'' "HD" TV , yea right, panel for $12,000 US!

Now you can go to Costco and buy any number of 50" "True HD" for $1,200.

If the Grid is as some say only 17% efficient consumers are buying the wrong flat panels.

• So long as Mining interests can bulldoze off a mountain top into a stream
• haul the coal 400 miles on trains a a mile long.
• Then burn it without any real effort to deal with the Carbon ramifications.
• Transmit the power over thousands of miles of Tesla AC lines
• Then we literally BURN what is left in 3-5% efficient 19th century Edison lamps..

Does anyone think this is sustainable?

Not too sure this one is Off Topic!

And we haul around 1200 miles to get it to Arizona and sell the output at $.15.

The original question

sorry, shiny object syndrome

But great idea - what I do not know about grid economics would fill books (EE 101 et. al.)

But now that they are finally admitting that wind will not be sufficient it would be good to start re-examining the practical aspects.

Practical aspects! Ah yes. We collectively as a society have been baffled by the 'experts' into thinking only of one magic solution as 'THE ANSWER" to all our energy needs. Then there is that phrase 'economies of scale'. It suggest that bigger is better because it brings down the per unit cost so therfore even bigger must also be even better.

In a high density urbanized area it does make sense to have extensive grid distribution. Areas like the eastern seaboard can and does benefit from extensive grid tie networks. However there are also areas where the cost to run any distribution lines makes it not cost effective to do so. These islands of power use would be better off with something independent. Where I live a power outage can take anywhere from half a day to three days to repair. Its a question of how many crews do you keep on call in case an emergency happens. Stand-by cost money. People are demanding municipal agencies cut costs.

So what is practical?

I think part of the question revolves around HOW you use the hydropower.

Single, centralized dams and generation stations have a lot to offer, but they bring tradeoffs.

Are there not other methods of achieving the same?

edignan-

Yes, there are other alternatives for other applications. I recently heoped with the installation of a mini-hydro system here in Panama- at $3,000 per kW of capacity, it is not a viable option for the "power challenged", but more a toy for the resource-rich elite...This system utilized natural flow, and did not interupt the flow of water to down-stream users, and required no significant land sequestration...

Charlie I am curious how that $3000 per kilowatt breaks down. How much of it was spent on over priced equipment that was imported at great expense and perhaps even charged a stiff tarif. How much went into local labor to prepare the site and install the equipment. How much was attributable to transportation costs to bring the equipment onto the site.

Charlie, your comments lend support to the notion of appropriate technology being applied more widely on a global scale; even in so called developed countries.

Yesterday I got side tracked while researching wood burning furnaces. There is something called a Top Lit Gasification burner. Its a simple sheet metal assembly that gasifies the solid fuel for more complete combustion. It can burn almost anything normally used for a cooking fire. It burns cleaner resulting in much less smoke. WHO has supported this initiative because so many third world countries have extremely high incidence of respiratory disease caused by traditional cooking fires. One maker was targeting for a production cost of USD $10 per unit. That makes it affordable to a great many people who could not afford a kerosene or propane powered cook stove. Never mind what the megawatt people would suggest such as electrical stoves. I belatedly realized I have seen one of these and it is really neat.

Somewhere, I had a reference for a similar cooking stove being developed in South America, with the same objective- reducing smoke through more complete combustion. The reference has gotten lost in all my other files for now. Anyone who has experienced cooking hour in an indigenous village where wood is the primary fuel can understand the need for something like this, but even $10 is excessive for some of these people who could benefit most...

From looking at the various models entered in a competition my guess is that once the design catches onl local metal smiths will be able to duplicate it for less. The $10 cost came from a modern S. African fabrication shop with attendant higher wage levels.

Have a look at this. http://www.bioenergylists.org/en/belonioccoaltlud This is where I started but kept meandering along the links provided. This guy Paul Anderson sem to be some kind of guru for the concept.

elnav --This gasification idea has been around for a while in the advanced design wood stoves that came out of Scandinavia in the mid 20th century. The popular understanding of this technology has gotten a bit lost in the current interest in making wood stoves emission compliant in developed nations. But the techniques are straightforward and would be easily understood by a bright entrepreneur in almost any part of the world where there was market potential. Some google searching and study is all that would be needed.

Ed Weldon

Ed I am quite aware of that. My father cursed them but it was all the occupation army would allow civilian drivers of busses and taxis. Real gasoline was reserved for the Werhmacht vehicles. But the old WW2 gasification generators were crude and bulky compared to these cook stoves. The resultant gas was dirty and gummed up the carburetion, on fuel intake systems. But at least it allowed for conversion of a piston engined vehicle. My father said he sometimes had to ask his passengers to get out and push it was so bad and the engines developed so little power.

After the war many people had the stoves you refer to. I grew up in Scandinavia. It was all that was available and coal was very expensive. So anything that was economical in fuel use was in demand.

The elegance of the new top lit units is the clean burn and reduced fuel consumption. Did you explore the various websites. Quite interesting.

We had one of the TLUD at our sales booth last year. It was intended as a gimmick to highlight our new pellet stove model, but so many people insisted on buying one for a camping stove we got cleaned out. Which wasn't the plan at all. The TLUD was so clean burning we had to put up a sign warning people it was lit. No smoke, no visible flame outdoors. Finally we scrounged a pot and boiled water to demonstrate the clean burn. Our pllet stove was also burning continuously and we would stand there talking to customers while leaning on the chimney. Yes it was a double insulated type. But the rain cap was still cool enough we could place a hand on it.

No comparison with the old gasification burners from WW2. That darn thing weighed nearly 200 kilos and took up as much volume as a water heater tank. It was mounted on the back bumper on most busses and taxis.

" Except for situations where you have no alternatives, the use of alternative energy sources is not cost-effective."

i can not afford the cost of dropping utility power. cost to install transformer, drop power run underground 50 feet was quoted by utility as $6,000. then there is the permits, the mains, the breakers and the wire.

i put in low cost poor mans solar for about $2,000. i live with the power available. when i need high power, i fire up my generator. usually not more than 20 gallons of gas per year.

it all depends upon how much wattage you normally really need. right now, i am getting along on about 1,500 watts per day.

I have run in to similar situations where the cost of running mains to a remote site are prohibitive, and where power demand is low enough that the cost of a solar system can be controlled. This is very much an appropriate application of solar energy. However, when energy demands are significant, it is difficult to justify solar as an alternative, mainly due to the cost of batteries of sufficient capacity (which seem to have a realistic life expectancy of something on the order of 4 years- mostly because most people don't understand how important proper maintenance and charging cycles are to battery life).

I sympathize

The family owns a place fortunately only for summers that we run off Coleman lanterns and only fire up the genset rarely.

The quote from out local grid provider was $78,000 per pole to bring us power due to terrain. in 1978. I don't know what they proposed for a pole count, but it was 19 miles over a couple of mountains.

How much gasoline, propane, and "white gas" have I burned since? Not enough to pay for one pole.

Winter solar may be useless, have you looked at ground sourced heat exchange?

They lay miles of cheap irrigation tube below the frost line, circulate hot water all summer, extract all winter.

Just a thought...no experience.

In extremely rocky areas it sdosn't work. But some locations are suitable for geothermal and some people have used it. However it relies on a source of electrical power to work. Its getting the electrical power to start with, that is the challenge. Up here we have hundreds of thousand acres of beetle killed forest just rotting on the stump. Anyone with five acres or more of land has a life time supply of free heat.

The situation is this. Logging companies wil go in and log beetle kill trees provided they get a large enough parcel of land. Typically a 1000 acre plot. One processor can cut approximately fifty acres per day. Clearly it will cost more in fuel for trucking a processor to the job site that what a 5 or 10 acre plot will give in return yield. So properties of 10 acres and less are worthless commercially speaking and not viable for machine logging. These are hand logged by owner or wood cutter providers. Up here you can get one ful cord of cut and split fire wood delivered to your driveway for $100 - $120 depeniding on delivery distance. If you want birch wood it cost $130 per cord.

Home heating is not the issue; electricity is. What started this thread was figuring out if solar panels was cost effective for a wood burning boiler using free wood. As it turns out it simply isn't. Wood heat with a hydronic system requires a constantly running circulation pump. This power for the pump is enough to demand a 1kW solar panel array. Even a gasoline generator driving a battery charger / battery system to power the circulation pup is less expensive than solar power.

I sympathize - one of the things that had me looking far afield to things like "How do we power satellites and Your Backyard Nuclear Reactor"

This is going to be one of the things that is an unrecognized or unaddressed challenges to alt energy - it has to be local appropriate.

If there was a drop-in, one size fits all device someone would be selling it. Someone very, very large. This field is going to count on local pros.

If a fella had all day (and night) I suppose we could always do steam generation of electricity, but I don't think self-tending boilers are quite home-owner appropriate.

Eignan wrote: If there was a drop-in, one size fits all device someone would be selling it. Someone very, very large. This field is going to count on local pros.

If a fella had all day (and night) I suppose we could always do steam generation of electricity, but I don't think self-tending boilers are quite home-owner appropriate.

Here again this is where red tape rears its ugly head. Steam powered equipment is tightly controlled and regulated. Any operating steam powered equipment must be inspected and certified annually. Failure to do so leaves you liabel to all sort of punitive fines and sanctions. This area not to mention several others in Canaada has a past history of exploding steam boiler due to the oerpator pushing the equipment beyond its limits. Also due to some owner pinching the penny a bit too much. rumor has it fine electrical wire for telephones as invented by Dr.Graham Bell while working in his Baddeck summer residence was produced by two scotsmen fighting over a penny. Is it just coincicdence many of the early telegraph lines in our area wer set up by Scotmen?

Likewise woe betide anyone atempting to tap the runnign streams for power. It's fish habitat and the greenies have made sure the law prevents anyone from so much as putting foot in the water without prior permission. You cannot have a building within 100 meter of a natural creek. There have even been instances of people being forced to remove buildings that infringed on the new boundary defining laws that extended protection to the environment close to fish habitat. They changed the law from a 30 meter limit to a 100 meter limit.

elnav and endignan -- Thanks for your comments about the relationship of soil moisture to the usefulness of that medium as an energy storage sink for a heat pump system. That explains to me why the more mechanically inclined folks inthe Puget sound area are having good luck with ground source heat pump systems. I watch a Yahoo forum called "Seattle Metalheads" and occasionally these folks talk about the subject of heat pumps and energy usage. At least a couple of members of that group have tried ground sourced heat pump systems with success. But I guess it's probably too dry where I live to make ground source work.....except maybe around the septic tank and drain field..... maybe there is something to that. Like you're going to dig up the ground there anyway during initial construction.

Ed Weldon

Very good point, but my last septic venture required a septic well, still has possibilities.

And oddly, calling the State Ag dept in Arizona to ask a couple geo questions like that got me some strange answers.

All I wanted to know was if we had mapped ground moisture downward. If it was seasonal. Did we have temperature maps of subsoil, were they seasonal.

Or in both cases was there a depth below which they were NOT seasonal.

They mostly babbled and got off the phone

edignan -- When my house was first built the developer had two 36 inch diameter septic wells as you call them drilled for a drain field and backfilled. The first well was done the same way about 50 yards away upslope to a depth of 75 feet and cased with 36" diameter galvanized steel culvert pipe. (a terrible design for many reasons).

I wonder what would be the best type and way to install piping in such a septic well to transfer heat. Not that I have any plans to redo my drain field before I die.

"They mostly babbled and got off the phone" ....... That's what you get, Emmett, for fooling around on the cutting edge of technology. (LOL)

I've got to believe that somewhere there are some soils engineers that are studying this subject right now. David J.C. Mackay's book touches this subject on pages 301 to 305. Link to free text:

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/cE/page_301.shtml

If I were the CEO of a company like Carrier I'd be scrambling right now to research this area for application of my heat pump product line. The future market for heat pumps for comfort heating based on energy savings potential is on the same order of magnitude as all solar or wind power generation taken in a general sense.

Ed Weldon

My septic well went awry as they usually chunked in uncased rock, also 36" 40' deep. Should take about 3/4 of a good size dump truck they tell me.

Unfortunately they hit sugar sand and I ended up with a three truck septic well!

I would think loops of irrigation line in the bottom, layer of sand to protect it and lay the rock on top? It *should* stay nice and wet

I assumed I got the wrong department, because ag schools track this kind of stuff elsewhere, or it just doesn't apply in the desert. OR as I have discovered here, knowing HOW to ask the question makes a huge difference

Carrier/Trane - ugh.

I think I mentioned my previous experience with them. As you are aware, the desert cools wonderfully at night. I brought out the Trane guy for an evaluation. I wanted a combined (hybrid?) system that resorted to "conditioned" air under the right circumstances, but predominantly I wanted to cool with evap and whole house fans.

He got snotty about fresh air and I tossed his ass. Kept the coffee cup tho

NOW Trane wants to talk about conservation and fresh air - I got mugged by a salesman in a BIG BOX store just a couple months ago wanting to sell me such a system.

I got to announce LOUDLY that his firm had voided my warrantee for exactly the system they were now selling, but now that I was in a new house we could talk - just as soon as they re-established warrantee for the last system. Interested parties around us faded away quickly

The advocates for semi buried homes say the ground temp below the frost line is at a steady 60 F temp almost year round. Obviously the depth of frost varies from area to area. In the areas I have lived in where winter temps reach -40F this frost line is around 5 feet in wet soil. Permafrost up north is six to ten feet deep. Is that the kind of information you were looking for?

Very similar, there is a line anywhere below which the temperature ceases to be seasonal (largely - don't take that literally). And from your example - to go underground someplace it is cold enough for perma-frost to a constant 60 would have huge advantages! That also works backwards, to go from an environment of 115F to one in the 60s would reduce the cooling load.

There is also another line - dryer than the water table but constantly moist - which you need for subgrade heat exchange.

Now that said - two points:

1. Trying to do that in an area with *actual* permafrost brings technical difficulties that may not make it worth it (I lost a 2 1/2 ton truck in the permafrost in Adak - one of many I was told)

2. A realtor friend in Phoenix told me straight out - only engineers BUILD subteranean or even earth berm houses, and only engineers BUY them. So if you want to cut your market to 10% before you even decorate - up to you

Not me. I know bermed houses are not popular. Technically it it an elegant solution but for other reasons people simply do not want them. I'm told adobe houses are also cool. Again due to earth mass. A friend who once worked in Dubai told me he visited the home of one of the local people. The house was old and built in the traditional style complete with a cooling tower. Crushed coral was used as the wall construction material. Walls were several feet thick. Being a very white reflective material the coral reflected the sunlight. The design minimized the windows looking out thus also reduced heat intake. The cooling tower created air circulation by taking advantage of the temperature differential between north (shaded) side and the south (sunny) side. Hot air rises and cooler air falls. the interior layout created a definite air flow path so the rising hot air pulled air from the interior and the cooler air dropped to replace what air had been pulled out. In addition long strips of cloth could be hung in the air channel of the north side. This cloth was soaked with water. Evaporation resulted in additional cooling. Granted this was not as cold as modern direct expansion air conditioner but it did make the interior comfortable and from 15 - 20 degrees cooler than the exterior air temp.

Best thing; it did not require any power whatsoever.

Thanks for the description!

I actually tried carrying some of these techniques into my current house (adobe) in New Mexico - but have to confess I found swamp coolers easier

Edignan could you please elaborate on how a swamp cooler works. I think it is an evaporative system but the exact details escape me.

TIA

Aaaagh! After just discussing colloqualisms and proper english - here I am embarrasing myself

You are correct - either fixed mount or window mount evaporative coolers, don't know where they got the nickname.

http://www.wonderquest.com/swamp-coolers.htm

Okay now I got it straight.

BTW I saw a real neat out door air conditioning system at the Ag fair . A big tent awning was set up, just roof no sides. Stainless steel piping of 3/8" diameter crossed the space along the support wires. At 3 foot intervals there was a misting head similar to what you see in green houses. A pressure washer pump was feeding the piping. Out of the nozzles came a very fine mist. In the summer heat, this mist evaporated within two feet of the nozzle. Since the piping was nine feet above ground no one got hit by water. However between the shade of the awning and the cooling mist the temp under the tent was 20 degrees cooler than out in the sun. A timer cycled the unit on for 15 seconds every couple of minutes. Tent has space to accomodate forty or so people at once. Some of the big luxury yachts also use this for cooling the aft cockpit area. Surprisingly it does seem to work in more humid locations. The AG fair tent install was down in Vancouver on the coast.

Widely used down in our desert for outdoor dining etc. the one downside to the damned things is they are no-goofing high pressure. 5,000 psi.

So not only are the pump units expensive ('cause I was going to use them out back) but the pressure almost demands hard line.

Lowest quote I got was about $3,500 for the pump.

Hmmm. Intersting. this unit had a pressure gauge showing 1800 PSI. It had three pe filters in series. Fed by municipal water it still revealed visible specks in the first and some graying on the second filter but the third looked pristine. Filters looked to be the 10 micron and 2 micron filters you get for well systems. I paid particular note since the pump motor was a 2 HP Leeson model, same as what I have at home, and I have a new 2500 PSI pump from a pressure washer. The nozzles looked to be laser drilled synthetic jewel types. Center was red like it was a synthetic watch /clock bearing. The size had to be less than 0.005" being smaller than a propane jet nozzle.

I hadn't (I looked some time ago) seen one that ran at that low a pressure - that should bring the price down.

One problem you can run into with these misting systems if you go DIY is that they will leave whatever minerals are in the water that evaporates all over everything nearby. I guess if the pros already have a high pressure pump in the system they might as well have a reverse osmosis last stage to pull out the minerals.

Another note on the sapphire nozzles. They are amazingly inexpensive. Bird Precision back in Masachusetts makes them. One of the neatest tricks is the wire lapping process used to size the holes after they are laser drilled. A quantity are loaded on the small end of several thousand feet length of gradually tapered wire wound on a capstan. That end is then attached to another capstan that gradually pulls the wire through the batch of orifices while they are submerged in a diamond slurry bath. Tolerance control and finish is way beyond anything you can get with a laser. I can only guess at how they make that mile long tapered wire.

Ed Weldon

don't know where they got the nickname.

From the units interior aroma

something like a catheter?

Wouldn't work like a catheter. They fill those septic drain field "wells" with drain rock. For the heat pump source you'd have to install the heat transfer piping in the well first.

I haven't thought through the best way to do that. The piping array would have to be placed in the hole and dropped to the bottom some 30-40 feet. Then it would have to be able to withstand having drain rock dumped on it. It would be nice if it could be removed for service.

Somebody must have already figured out the best way to do this, best pipe material and size for heat transfer, corrosion resistance, cost, ease of installation, etc. Seems to me like the heat transfer calculations are straightforward though I'm unlikely to go there in this lifetime. Of course if PVC pipe turns out to be a workable method it may be as simple as drilling new 6" wells adjacent to the septic wells figuring that the ground moisture will be pretty good in that area. Casing the wells with 6" pvc pipe with perforation slots saw cut in the bottom (in the manner they do it around here; costs about $25/foot) means that almost any kind if pipe setup could be easily put down and taken out if needed.

My own well type septic drain field has held up very nicely for 40 years largely because we manage our septic tank operation pretty carefully. I hope to keep it that way. The last thing I need is for the county people to come around and take an interest in that stuff.

Well lots of speculation here ........ maybe when my current air sourced heat pump dies ......

Ed Weldon

Thinking of a pellet mill producing 38mm x 89mm slugs. Auger a metered deposit to boiler pot and auger out ash producing an unmanned steam system.

Is there no size limitation allowing something to slip under the radar?

When you are talking about building a product for sale to the general public it doesn't make sense to try and fudge something that does not meet local codes and safety regulations. Especially if the customer is likely to have an inspector come in and have a look. In many cases homeowners must have a sign off by building inspector or similar before the insurance company will give coverage.

I am not talking about a one of a kind DIY home brew.

If you are talking about doing something illegal way out in the back woods and never plan to call in an inspector. Yeah sure, then its done all the time. What do you think the green thumb boys do for their grow op setups? But we aren't going there are we?

frost line 18+ feet

Who said this was going into a commercial application? Its a private residence. The person lives close to some saw mills where he can obtain scrap wood. And being in the north which has been devastated by Pine Beetle kill, there is so much dead wood still standing on the stump there is no shortage of fire wood.

In northern BC the logging companies must also replant the cut areas. But with the slump in soft wood trade, there is less cutting and thus less replanting. Meanwhile the dead beetle killed trees are still rotting on the stump and the blight is spreading.

Tree hugges get short shrift around here. You still see a lot of Tee shirts being worn with the text "Save a tree. Wipe your ass with a spotted owl" .

Every spring this region is invaded by a young work force of tree planters. These are for the most part university students looking to earn their tuitiion money. I doubt many of them are 'tree huggers'. If there was no cutting they would not have a job. but they are planting new trees to replace old.

I got so pissed by the spotted owl legislation, ranted and posted so much about it; my family bought me one of my very own, stuffed.

I sympathize (he says shifting from foot to foot) as I have heard the same from everywhere - at the same time I had a very good relationship with my zoning authority last place I lived - very customer service oriented. But brand new office that actually ran off of developers and home owner fees - so maybe they remembered who the customer was.

As for inertia...it IS a natural defense against constantly changing winds from Washington (in our case) AND the environmental lobbies (who think we should all live on air) AND the industries....and I would call it ALL a bunch of nonsense.

Except.

I have watched small firms with dynamic ideas come into aviation. They think we are all stodgy. Reactive, uncooperative, etc. But if your dynamic idea doesn't meet the safety requirements we have all paid for with tradegies, I really DON'T care that we aren't fitting your business model. But it undeniably does raise the bar, not for ideas but for small firms.

As for the small business with the truly great ideas? You would be amazed what a total factor of great is actually required to get investors interested. But that is the only way I know to get over the testing hurdles and costs.

But having watched the number of rooftop solar systems abandoned by the firms that created them, I have mixed emotions on how high the bars should be. In aviation we recognize that the lifetime of an installed system may exceed twenty years, and we want that firm around twenty years to support it.

Ooops, nearly forgot

Canadian incentive calculator page - might help?

http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/corporate/statistics/neud/dpa/policy_e/programs.cfm

Thanks Edignan for the interesting calculator. BUT! it really doesn't help much for the small homeowner.

The last entry was for improving the system to reduce payback period. In very small print it say the program only applies where cost savings are >$50k Yeah right.

Speaking green political or otherwise. Many people try to go green but there are limits. I live in a modest sized house that is very well insulated. All our light bulbs are the curlicue energy savers except for the porch light which has to be tungsten filament because the energy savers simply will not ignite in cold weather. Our appliances are all new energy saving design and 'approved' by whoever as being energy saving. The original insulation is supplemented to the extent we sometimes do not turn on the heat even in winter. We heat with free wood but only burn 4 cords per year. Some people I know burn 4 cords per month or so. When I work I do so from home so do not waste fuel commuting. Our total electric bill is only $80 per month. The only item that is not done is the windows. I simply cannot afford the $5000 expense to install all new windows in order to qualify for a partial rebate. Even if they rebated it 100% I would have to pay the cost up front and that isn' an option. Nor is getting a loan since with no permanent work I do not qualify.

I'm not complaining, simply pointing out that some of these so called "going green" programs are only of use to those who least need it. Those who most need it seldom qualify because they have to low an income to take advantage of the programs. What good is it having a fully paid for survey to find where energy savings can be had if the cost of implementing the energy saving measure is too expensive; even with rebates.

Didn't realize, our incentive programs go deeper, but are shallow for how much they help.

We took our propane bill from (I cannot say it) to about a cord and a half of hardwood a month. Sure helped.

And I got the same window problem. The place was built when propane was very cheap, so I'd need 50K to replace all the damned glass with more efficient - with a bit of re-design thrown in. Plus the house is stucco over adobe, so I ~want~ to do windows because you have to redo stucco after, but I can't afford stucco right now, and it keeps the water out.

Early '70s "garden bath" sunk two feet into floor the size of a king bed with a wall of glass beside it - facing north. Don't think hot water tank ever was big enough to fill it.

While looking for the electric power rate for the locality of the prospective customer I discovered one of the energy alternatives explored by the power utility company was a gas fired whispergen. The idea being you heated the house with the propane fuelled stove/furnace and generated your own power with the whispergen ( stirling based generator) But naturally this technology is now locked up by the big corporations. I have bene trying to get hold of a whispergen by itself. After some early technical warranty problems whispergen pulled the product from the Notth American market. When I last contacted them they informed me thay would not be selling directly into the North American market.

So once again we have a situation wher appliances using only the expensive fuels are available to the North American consumer.

Back tracking to an earlier thread I subscribed to on wood fired boilers I found reference to a top lit updraft gasification burner with a manufactured cost targeted at $10 - $20. Further browsing showed a continuoous burn design suitable for house heat boilers. The fire box was fed by a screw auger similar to what is being used in some pellet stoves.

Wood in raw form is free but now local legislation prohibits wood fired heaters -except for pellet stoves. And you guessed it. Pellet fuel prices has doubled over the past year. Last year we could buy pellets at $100 per ton. This year is $200 per ton. Never mind that the company built yet another pellet mill just down the road. There are now around 45 pellet mills in BC from what I have been told. These pellet mils run 24/7 and consume so much sawdust they can't get enough from nearby sawmills. Now they are trucking in saw dust from a hundred miles away. One local sawmill is even contemplating grinding their cut and dressed lumber they cannot sell into sawdust for pellet production. Seems like every time we find a low cost source of energy the bureaucrats find a way to outlaw the low cost method and force us to use a higher cost method.

Hmmm

I hadn't heard about the whispergen, but had been hounding SES for one of theirs. Nothing so sneaky as gov't corps binding them up - they have pre-sold so many to California Edison (the electric) that they can't spare any. I actually

In New Mexico (and Arizona) were have no-burn days, but then not only pellets, but any EPA "furnace" is allowed.

SO...

One "might" pick up one of these for pellets, have the inspector out, then swap out the guts that eat logs instead...I'm just saying .....I might know someone did that with a fireplace insert, maybe

I was wrong - I love those guys! (whispergen)

I'll go halves - we'll open a shop in Mexico, do 60Hz conversions, and grey-market them into Canada and the US.

You take the Canadian non-distributorship and I'll take the US non-distributorship

60 Hz ??? Huh? the units I saw charged battereis and then you got the AC from an inverter.

Since Whispergen is somewhat closemouthed about technical details, I am guessing but speed control may be problematic due to ambient temps and burn rate etc.

Lacking acurate speed control it would be difficult to maintain accurate frequency control of a direct to load alternator. Honda's very popular Eu series gensets use an inverter for the same reason as well as a throttle down feature to save fuel when no load exist.

Mind you; if current pricing matches the former 2004 price these things have a payback period as bad as solar panels. But at least they do work in the dark.

Last price I saw was around $11,000 per unit.

Ther is a Swiss company making pellet stoves married to a Stirling engine ( not whispergen) they were doing field trials and planned to go to market in 2010.

Charlie,

How much could you lower the fuel burn of your diesel gensets if you could load it at a constant 80% - - 85% and shut it off in between runs. Maybe your loading is such it is fairly well loaded in the first place.

My wife's uncle runs a 10Kw genset to drive a 2.4 kW charger and occasionally the the deep well pump. Because hs doesn't listen to anybody he declined to get the 120V / 230V transformer recommended by the well pump installer. So he has to start the 10kW genset to run the 3kW 230V pump. Yeah I know. Not very efficient.

Elnav-

These are generally 100 to 250 kW sets, running 24/7, peak load is typically at about 5-6 PM at typically 75% rated capacity. We used to switch to smaller gen sets at night, but found that, due to the lower efficiency of the smaller units, we weren't saving any fuel (the larger gen sets, of course, use less fuel when not fully loaded). It seems like a perfect application for a solar installation (peak consumption roughly corresponding to peak insolation), but the economics just aren't there- the size of the systems are prohibitive...