Stand Alone Solar Power Generation System

Why don't you sell the excess power to nearby houses? Is third party sale of power banned in your country?

Hello Seoul Man.

If any of your peak load is used to heat water, pre-heat it in an insulated reservoir with your excess at off peak times.

What is your peak load doing?

Jim

Hi Hyubwoo,

It would be a shame to "waste" any excess supply and I would suggest:

Heat sinks. e.g. solid state storage heaters, (bricks) or, water (cylinders/lakes)
(and such) to absorb and store the excess, as heat. Solid state ones are
less trouble; water ones, may be pumped some distance.
e.g. general heating, green houses, animal feeds, etc. etc.

These could be switched in and out of circuit as required. (according to load)

Alternatively, location allowing, the surplus power could pump water up to a
higher level, and then release it to generate power (hydro) for peak demands.
Doing this would enable you to reduce your generating capacity, (less equipment)
or; increase the number of users carried by your supply. (efficiency)

Hope this helps.

jt.

I had nothing when I started, and I still have some left.

From: Tim Hawley Master Mech.

What you need is a Charge Controller before the battery connection and a System Meter after the battery to feed your DC to AC inverter. Any power that is not used or stored will be metered and delivered to your local power company as a credit.

A stand alone unit will not be able to store any un-used power unless it is stored in and auxiliary backup battery before it goes to the inverter.

See link below for more details:

http://www.homepower.com/basics/solar/

Good Luck, Duck!

Guys, my understanding of a "stand alone" power system, by design and name, pretty much implies he is not going to be hooked up to a utility to sell excess power to.

The most cost effective, although probably not most efficient way to store and deliver over 100kw of power from a solar setup would be to use excess electricity to make hydrogen, and then burn the hydrogen in a modified gas powered 100-250 kwh generator or 2, or use the hydrogen flame to heat water for a steam system at night.

The next option, since your spending lots of money on solar anyway, would be to build a solar concentrator. These basically focus lots of mirrors and melt salt or another chemical, into a liquid, and have water lines run through the liquified extremely hot salt. Water in one end, power out the other, attatch outlet to nearby steam engine or steam turbine, and create power all night long.

Hydrogen?

got any comparisons worked up?

that would lead you to believe your method is cost effective?

"The most cost effective, although probably not most efficient way to store and deliver over 100kw of power from a solar setup would be to use excess electricity to make hydrogen, and then burn the hydrogen in a modified gas powered 100-250 kwh generator or 2,..." I said most cost effective and NOT most efficient would be hydrogen. I do beleive that a simple hydrogen setup would be the cheapest way to make,store and use excess solar panel power, for a stand alone system. I may be wrong, a ton of batteries may be cheaper. Or pumping a million gallons of water uphill while the sun is shining might be cheaper. But, we are looking at 100kw of power to be made. I just think a system of floating barrels of hydrogen, like a home biogas system works, coupled to a converted gasoline genset, would get him his first 100kw of power down the wire the cheapest. Making and delivering 100kw of power gets to be a quite expensive set of batteries and inverters.

From: Tim Hawley Master Mech.

Hello Garth,

I believe your right!

ageniusforhire, is far off from the truth, but this is what american consumers a lead to believe from government officials that never even replaced a spark plug in there family car.

I took this information from a link:

Hydrogen (H₂) releases energy when it is combined with oxygen; however in practice, production of hydrogen from water requires more energy than is released when the hydrogen is used as fuel. Free hydrogen does not occur naturally, and thus it must be generated by electrolysis of water or another method. A reduction in carbon dioxide emission connected with hydrogen fuel is directly achieved only if the energy used to make hydrogen is obtained from non carbon-based sources. Nowadays (2010) the majority of hydrogen produced on earth comes from fossil fuels.

In the context of a hydrogen economy, hydrogen is thus an energy carrier, not a primary energy source (see nuclear fusion for an entirely separate discussion of using hydrogen isotopes as an atomic energy source). Nevertheless, controversy over the usefulness of a hydrogen economy has been raised by issues of energy sourcing, including fossil fuel use, climate change, and sustainable energy generation. Also, the net efficiency of hydrogen as an energy carrier is lower than currently used methods, and leads to more energy waste.

Some futurists promote hydrogen as potential fuel for motive power (including cars and boats), the energy needs of buildings and portable electronics.

Proponents of a world-scale hydrogen economy argue that hydrogen can be an environmentally cleaner source of energy to end-users, particularly in transportation applications, without release of pollutants (such as particulate matter) or greenhouse gases at the point of end use. A 2004 analysis asserted that "most of the hydrogen supply chain pathways would release significantly less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than would gasoline used in hybrid electric vehicles" and that significant reductions in carbon dioxide emissions would be possible if carbon capture or carbon sequestration methods were utilized at the site of energy or hydrogen production.^[1]

Critics of a hydrogen economy point at the following facts :

• hydrogen is not freely available
• hydrogen is a gas at most temperatures, and particularly difficult to handle
• hydrogen is more dangerous than most substances; equipment owned by consumers would have to be checked periodically
• hydrogen production requires resources, and ultimately leads to energy loss.

Hydrogen has been called the least efficient and most expensive possible replacement for gasoline (petrol) in terms of reducing greenhouse gases.^[2][3] A comprehensive study of hydrogen in transportation applications has found that "there are major hurdles on the path to achieving the vision of the hydrogen economy; the path will not be simple or straightforward".^[1] The Ford Motor Company has dropped its plans to develop hydrogen cars, stating that "The next major step in Ford's plan is to increase over time the volume of electrified vehicles".^[4]

Recent publicity describing the use of low cost materials and manufacturing processes^[5] challenge the popular critique. Hydrogen (renewable hydrogen) can be produced from renewable sources, thus enabling the intermittent and excess power generated to be stored for applications in transport, homes and businesses, thereby making off-grid wind and solar sources economic.

The term hydrogen economy was coined by John Bockris during a talk he gave in 1970 at General Motors (GM) Technical Center

My Best Regards, to all...

ageniusforhire

is suggesting using hydrogen as an energy storage medium.

He readily admits that the efficiency is low.

maybe he has a cheap,dirty & safe system of storage, with the barrels/water he alluded to.

My question is does he have any supporting data?

From: Tim Hawley Master Mech.

To Garth,

I agree, we'll see...

WAITING...

AGFH

I'm with you. Yes, it probably would be more "EFFICIENT" to follow some of the other ideas put forth, but I've always been a proponent of doing it with what I have, rather than NOT doing with what I don't have, and can't, or don't want to (at least by the available methods) obtain. And not trusting the people with the gold to allow me to do my thing with the gold they loan me, while they do their thing with the power I produce, I don't want to talk to the people with the gold, to borrow it.

So, your solution makes a lot of sense to me. And the material necessary to product fuel is readily available in most places. Shoot, if you can't use hydrolisis and water, user animal excreta and direct solar cooking. It won't be hydrogen, for the most part I wouldn't want to smell a gas leak, but it WILL be cheap, readily available, and it'll put your genset on line all night long from a reasonable sized flock/herd/what have you.

I like solutions that are most direct from energy of one kind to energy of another. And I'm more than willing to lose a few percent of the available energy in order to get in business earlier. I can't eat what I can't produce (nor can I sell it) while waiting for the better bet to come along.

It's an interesting concept, I haven't read or heard of hydrogen being used for storage in this way.

how about a more direct conversion?

Follow the link below to a previous discussion

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/35244

you're not talking about long term storage, but still safety is going to be a serious concern

Hydrogen House link on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEdQRVQtffw

10 1000 gallon propane tanks filled with hydrogen hold the equivalent of 56 gallons of propane. How many 1000's of gallons of storage would it take to back up 100kw? how much hyodrogen would migrate right through the walls of the tank per hour?

Compressed hydrogen permeation is negligible. In respect to ten 1000 gallon propane tanks I haven't a clue as to how much hydrogen this is nor what psi is it stored at . . . What we do know from the owner's claims from the youtube video posted above is that he has a 20kW system for his house and that this hydrogen will last him around 3 months, so leaking doesn't seem to be a problem for him either.

Honda has a car that holds 3.9 kgs of hydrogen at 5000 psi that produces 100kW and can go 240 miles. So store your hydrogen however you like, hydrogen tank, propane tank, or in your honda's fuel tank, but frankly storing 100 kWh of energy in batteries or by sending water uphill to recapture the energy later doesn't sound sensible to my non-engineering brain. . . . then again I am still trying to figure out why he trying to store enough energy for twenty houses.

From: Tim Hawley Master Mech.

Hello hyubwoo,

What is your budget to design and build your stand alone solar power generation system?

The solar output you are describing is quite large.

Is it possible to sell back the un-needed power you produce?

Have you considered a solar panel to heat water and use your un-used power to run a pump for water circulation?

Please respond we need your input.

Best Regards,

Tim

Do you have a hill, mountain, dam nearby? if so then see

Tianhuangping Pumped-Storage Hydro Plant - Power Technology

I'd be curious to know for how long 3.9kg of H₂ can produce 100kw. Surely not for a whole hour. The "hydrogen house" appears to be a highly subsidized demo project. Interesting, but I don't think it would "pencil" for an average consumer. For one thing, the average consumer doesn't have that much acreage.