Workshop In An Alternate Homepower Environment

[Pete C.]

I've been following this thread with some interest and now have some thoughts and comments to add to it.

I may have missed something along the way, but I don't recall you specifying what type(s) of alternative energy sources you have available. This makes quite a difference in determining the best options.

As an example, if your alternate source(s) provide mechanical power such as found with water power, wind power, or a solar boiler driving a turbine or steam engine, then air power could be quite advantageous.

A source of mechanical energy can directly drive a compressor head, saving the extremely inefficient conversions to electricity and back. Compressed air is easy and economical to store in large volumes and is free from the chemical hazards of batteries. Useable service life of compressed air tanks is much higher than batteries as well.

In addition to the obvious air tools, compressed air can also be used to power things such as refrigeration if you use the belt driven type refrigeration compressors.

Those mechanical energy sources can also simultaneously drive electrical generators to charge conventional batteries for loads such as lighting. Battery charging for cordless tools is no less efficient that the charging of your "regular" battery string, as long as the charging is limited to peak energy generation times.

The efficiency of converting DC from your battery string to AC so you can use conventional appliances is fairly good with modern inverters. The conversion efficiency also improves when you use a higher voltage battery string since inverters switching higher voltages at lower currents will have lower resistive / heat losses.

Solar PV conversion efficiency is incredibly low to begin with and PV cost is high so if that is your only energy source you really do need to watch every miliamp. Of course, even with that inefficiency a solar PV panel charging batteries for your cordless tools is just fine as long as it has the capacity to keep up with your usage.

For items like welders that require huge gulps of power it's really difficult to get away from an IC engine / generator for practicality. A decent welder / generator can serve two needs and may be the most practical solution.

If you've got really good water power available you could probably use it to drive the head from an engine driven welder. A DC inverter type welder could probably be modified to accept DC from a large battery bank, but that would require you to have a fairly high voltage battery string to be practical.

Someone else posted about the differences in energy needs of a shop vs. home. They had more or less the correct idea, but got their terminology a bit out of whack. A shop has mostly high peak energy loads at low duty cycles and a home has mostly low peak loads with high duty cycles. The total energy consumption over the course of a day could be similar depending on how busy the shop is.

Pete C.

[J. R. Carroll]

consequences

No, they can do that by properly understanding and then delivering to their market. This is what they are utterly failing to do. The difference in price between a Hyundai built in Arkansas and a GM product built anywhere is much more than 1,500 dollars. As a percentage it's about half.

They do not gain any advantage with a reduced price and shouldn't try. Good value is critical in purchasing but you are talking about racing to the bottom and that is the stupidest thing I have seen in recent times. It does not work.

Just the opposite in most respects. You are smarter than this Ed.

Ed, I am unable to continue this for the rest of today but I will. I read what you have written about global markets and manufacturing. The questions and their answer are largely contained in your own work and the underlying research behind it. The need to present fresh facts doesn't exist. There aren't really many fresh facts regardless. A fresh perspective is the key, as I said. You answered, intelligently I might add, the wrong question. Your work revolves around looking like a top notch vendor. This is certainly necessary but it is also the WRONG WRONG WRONG perspective. I get paid big bucks for this Ed and have yet to see anyone who will truly embrace what I provide as a service fail to flourish . I also have enough confidence in the results that I only take equity. I also, except once and not directly, don't do "turn arounds". My advice under the turn around scenario has consistently been "Get Out and do it Now".

The five dollar ratio to costs was 6 percent and we knew that percentage very precisely.

[Ulysses]

While searching for a fan motor I came across some substantial DC motors on eBay a while back. I think they may have been blower motors for furnaces or air conditioners. What I had in mind was using a belt drive. I would think it might be more difficult to find one that has the right shaft for a saw, especially one with reverse threads. Come to think of it a DC powered saw might make it possible (or at least safer) to use fluorescent lights in a shop since it would not be running at 60 Hz.

Grainger has DC motors too.

> In considering this subject, a lineshaft approach does come to mind but

[Ulysses]

Just curious, but how do you go to the bathroom? Composting toilet? Outhouse?

[F. George McDuffee]

Unfortunately there may be no solution in the sense of "saving" GMC, Ford, American, Delta, Northwestern, Boeing, Lockheed, etc. etc. etc. All appear to be in the same situation as were the steel companies, i.e. terminal H.I.V. patients. Like the typical HIV patent, these companies sought immediate gratification at the expense of their long-term survivability, using credit to support their "lifestyle," using derivatives as their "crack cocaine."

Congress is currently nibbling around the edges of this critical problem by holding hearings into the possible impact on the PBGC if one or more of these companies/sectors should collapse. The problem is that it is a question of "when," and "in what sequence," *NOT* if.

Most of the underlying real assets such as physical plant, tools and dies, knowledge base, customer base, and production/operation expertise appear to be largely intact although obsolescent. However, these have been "submerged" under mountains of debt and neglect while "management" chased the latest fad, dissipating any real income while not paying stock holder dividends nor reinvesting in new products, equipment, etc. in their core/foundational business. Additionally, these "assets" have significant value only for an on-going business.

While automobile/truck manufacturing, and the design, production and operation of jumbo civilian aircraft appears to be economically viable in the United States, it does not appear the existing cadre management (and corporate culture) of these organizations is capable.

"Desperate situations demand desperate remedies" is a time-proven adage. Given the disastrous impact that the cascading failures of these major players will have on the U.S. economy/society, I propose a "super bankruptcy court" be created to establish the likely economic viability of these organizations, with immediate liquidation (Chapt. 7) [not reorganization (Chapt. 11)] of those unlikely to survive, with a 10 year suspension from any management position of the current and previous corporate executives and directors. (The stockholders have already lost all their equity, although they might not yet realize this.)

The PBGC should have priority claim on any assets for full pension funding, and any trust-fund/lockboxes established for management retirement benefits and/or "differed compensation" should be recaptured on the basis that this was an attempt to conceal corporate assets.

The choice is not between a "good" and better" solution, but between a "bad" and a "worse" solution.

[Ed Huntress]

Hyundai understands the market pretty well, too. In fact, I bought one last September, after trying out all of the Japanese and American competition. The Europeans offer no competition in that market. Any European car that's technically competitive costs $10,000 more, at the minimum. My Hyundai Sonata is a hell of a car for the money, and 'way ahead of anything comparably priced -- in other words, anything in that market.

The next day I bought a Ford Focus ZX3. It's another good car for the buck, although the bottom-end Civics probably are better overall. I just liked the handling and performance; with its 2.3-liter engine, it will stomp any Civic. I consider it a good buy, though, and not bad for an American car built in...Mexico.

What does work? Are you suggesting that GM can dope out the market better than Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Audi, etc.? How would they do that? Are they somehow smarter?

I don't think they're smarter. Since all of those foreign car makers have good American marketing people to serve the US market, I don't think GM has any greater knowledge of the market or greater insights into what people want.

So, what's left?

I thought I was until I spent a year of research in preparation for the

5,000 word articles I wrote about China trade a couple of years ago. Now I realize we're living on a heap of wishful thinking and baloney.

Any advantages we have are going away very quickly. In fact, our multinationals are shipping the advantages offshore as fast as they can. I'm waiting for the Milton Friedman dollar devaluation, but there will be hell to pay if and when it happens. The recent devaluation ain't it.

perspective

When you get some time, John, it would be good to hear more about what you're saying. It's one of the most important issues in metalworking today, if not THE most important issue.

Well, 8% was reasonably close, then. d8-)

-- Ed Huntress

[William]

How about making the share holders liable for the debt. They are after all "owners" of the companies :-)

[Jeff Dantzler]

Interesting comments by a former Fed chairman:

NewsMax.com Wires Friday, June 10, 2005

"Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker said he doesn't see how the U.S. can keep borrowing and consuming while letting foreign countries do all the producing.

It's a recipe for American economic disaster.

On Thursday the Wall Street Journal reported bluntly that "Mr. Volcker thinks a crisis is likely."

[snip]"

Rest of article here:

[Ed Huntress]

Jeez, you're brutal. I'm going to wait to hear if John has a solution that's less drastic.

-- Ed Huntress

[F. George McDuffee]

This simply echos a legal fiction. In fact 'shareholders' have almost no control, otherwise the corporations would have been forced to declare dividends rather than hording cash, and the executives would have received human salaries. While there is more than ample "blame" to go around, the major enablers were the financial institutions that handled the IPOs, made the loans, audited the books, created the "special purpose entities," managed the pension funds, etc. As such, these should be the people that get the big "hair cut" [like down to their knees] rather than the employees or taxpayers [who tend to be the shareholders when the music stops].

[MrSilly]

OMFG!! You have to be kidding me Mr Libertarian. The question is, do you spend 2 billion at home, or in China? Do you honestly think it's a good sign that we send $2 billion to foreign countries instead of spending it here at home?

We have plenty of 3rd-world states here in the USA that could use $2 billion a day. I'm guessing that you live in one of them.

[Duane Bozarth]

No fiction, fact. All you have to do is to get a majority to agree w/ you, go to annual meeting and vote w/ you, and you can do whatever you want...

[Pete C.]

I believe the theory here is that the US is supposed to be producing and exporting "intellectual property" with value that will offset the value of the "hard goods" we import. Unfortunately this is not working since we are also exporting our capacity to generate "IP" with all of the overseas outsourcing, and we don't have an exclusive on the capacity to produce "IP" to begin with.

What we'll end up with is a bunch of lawyers feeding off of each other in the downward spiral as we end up with no capacity to produce anything for ourselves and consequently no money to import what we need. We'll end up rather like the undeveloped parts of the world are now.

Pete C.

[Ed Huntress]

Well, here's a guy who agrees with you...or he did :

"We live in cheap and twisted times. Our leaders are low-rent Fascists and our laws are a tangle of mockeries. Recent polls indicate that the only people who feel optimistic about the future are first-year law students who expect to get rich by haggling over the ruins.and they are probably right." -- Hunter S. Thompson

[wmbjk]

Wind driven compressor -> storage tank -> air motors? Could be OK if one had a really windy site, lots of surplus pressure vessels, and a plenty of rotor diameter. To get an idea of the diameter versus work produced, check out the size and pumping rates of Bowjon well pumps.

Mechanical drive all the way to the pump? That would work well with a large mill, when the wind is blowing, and be as efficient as these

But in that application there's the advantage of easy storage for when there's no wind.

Which is why the conventional rotor/alternator is so popular with home power users. Ours is similar to this one

Battery charging for cordless tools is no less efficient that the

For the usual home power setup, cordless tools are no more and no less advantageous than they are on-grid. Unless the power setup is very small, the double conversion isn't worth trying to work around.

That depends. On very small systems, it's often true. Our setup isn't huge, and costs about as much as a medium priced SUV. The idle loads are about 100 Watts 24-7. That's a waste versus convenience/practicality issue, and it's a long way from watching every milliamp.

Not necessarily. Home welding tends to be short duration. The hardware to supply that kind of power is actually affordable, and if one is designing the power system from scratch for what most would consider a normal home, then the extra inverter capacity isn't a big deal. In our case, for the house loads alone we could have gotten away with a single SW4024 plus a transformer for the 220V loads. Instead we used dual inverters, which eliminated the need for the transformer, and provided sufficient power for most anything used in the usual home shop.

Welder generators aren't a good match for backup duty, or even for backup charging. Their advantage is portability for welding, and they're only best (in the home power context) when you need high amps for short periods. For any application that needs longer run times supplying small loads, something like the Honda EU series is far better. After a few years of living off-grid, like many others I found that a DC backup generator that works independently of the inverter/chargers is nice to have. The one I built drives a $5 scrap Delco 27SI, and only produces about 2000 Watts. When there's no sun or wind, we can do nicely on about 4 hours run time per day, at a charging rate that's similar to when the other sources are on line.

Like some of the other comments in this thread (line shafts for instance), that suggestion may be feasible. But unless one has way more time than money, conventional methods are more practical.

That was probably me you're talking about, and my terminology was quite correct for our setup. Occasionally our shop energy use is higher than for our house, but usually it's the other way around by a big margin. Normal power tool energy consumption in a home shop is lost in the noise of an all-electric home's consumption. Welders, plasma cutters, chop saws, table saws, planers, etc. are all high power, but relatively low energy because of their short run times.

Keep in mind that we're talking *home* shop here, which I consider to be small projects by one person. Many off-gridders go the route of putting a high percentage of their loads onto propane, leaving much less for the actual power system to do. For them, shop energy consumption may indeed cause the need for a much larger system, or the pain and cost of running a big generator. But we're very nearly 100% solar/wind powered. We don't even have propane, and fuel use for backup generator and the welder/generator combined isn't much different than what some folks consume in a season of mowing a big lawn with a garden tractor.

Here are a couple of my projects from my off-grid shop. I only needed the engine-driven welder a few times, mostly for its portability.

top 40' of a 65' free-standing wind generator tower (in progress) tower nearly finished and erected cactus transport

Wayne

[jeff]

The only poetic justice to this is that legal research is now being outsourced to India as well.

[J. R. Carroll]

Let me offer you a little encouragement in the interim Ed. 65 million dollars per year worth of manufacturing will be back in the US from Korea beginning in October of this year and the customer involved will be able to reduce their price, improve their margin and put a little sugar on it for me and my guys. The meeting ended an hour ago and before you ask me where we found the capacity let me just tell you that we did, and we did it without pushing any capacity envelopes.

I realize this is a small sum in the grand scheme of things but you know what they say -it does add up. I also have to say that pulling something like this off is better than sex -it lasts longer as well. I will probably be bouncin' off the ceiling for a day or two at least.

[Pete C.]

Should be comparable or better efficiency than a wind driven generator charging batteries. In either case you're capturing and storing the intermittently produced power for later use and a more convenient rate. A compressor powered by water or a solar steam generator would work well also.

Various electric utilities have been experimenting with compressed air storage as a way to store power from excess generating capacity during off peak times for use later during the peak times. They also do this with pumped hydro, but CAS is far more practical than pumped hydro in a homepower environment.

No, not mechanically driven. The refrigeration compressor would be belt driven from an air motor. The thermostat simply opens the air valve when it needs to spin up the compressor. Again the ultimate source of power does not have to be wind, and in fact with CAS it's even easier to combine energy captured from multiple sources. No need to worry about charge controllers when you're simply pumping air into a big tank.

potentially wasting captured energy during peaks. There is no such limitation with an air tank, unless it's already at max capacity. Air tanks are also a lot less expensive and lower maintenance than battery strings. By combining both an electrical generator and an air compressor on the wind plant you can better capture peak output.

The efficiency of directly utilizing the energy of the compressed air for mechanical applications is also higher. Instead of capturing wind energy, converting to electricity, storing in a battery, converting to AC, converting to mechanical energy with a motor, converting to compressed air with a compressor coupled to the motor and then utilizing the compresses air to fire your nail gun, you eliminate four conversion steps.

I know, but someone posted elsewhere in the thread that charging cordless tools was horrifically inefficient.

This is where you really need the hybrid system. You run the inverter to power your conventional appliances. When you are not running the appliances you turn the inverter off. You run your lighting and TV and whatnot that are your much higher duty cycle items from DC and avoid the conversion.

Perhaps your home welding is less than mine. I've got a Miller Syncrowave 250 that I love and it can see quite a bit of use on project weekends. I'm thinking your inverters would gag at the 240v 100a gulps the Syncrowave takes, even if the typical gulp is only about 10 seconds duration. On a big project those 10 second gulps add up to quite a few minutes.

I'm on-grid, but having recently moved to an area with much better solar and wind potential I'm investigating options to take advantage of those sources.

I didn't really intend the welder / generator to be used for backup to the regular power system. I really meant it more as an option for powering larger shop tools.

If you want to make it a bit more efficient in this capacity you can build an automatic transfer switch so that when you are not drawing a load from the generator to operate say a 5 hp table saw, the capacity can be diverted to a charger to add some extra power to your regular battery string.

Modifying a DC inverter welder which are pretty inexpensive these days is likely the most efficient way to get quality welding capacity from a home power system. No line shaft required, and no need for oversized inverters or load shedding.

Shop = big gulps, house = long sips :)

Well, my home shop which is just for me, includes a Bridgeport mill, a metal lathe, the big honkin' TIG welder mentioned earlier, a CNC router,

60gal compressor, 10" table saw, an electric forklift and a host of smaller items like sawsalls and grinders.

This is of course partly attributable to my preference for metal projects which tend to require bigger tools and more power tools than woodworking.

Nice projects. Someday I'd like to do that. Somehow it seems to cost more to live self sufficient off-grid than it does to just pay the utilities...

Just out of curiosity how do you make a living?

Pete C.

[Cliff]

The neocons have a planned fix for this. Default on Social Security (worthless junk bonds, like T bills) and force the new money into stocks & T bills ... where, if needed (and it will), it is all handy to be taxed again ....

Australia used to tax unrealized capital gains. Stock went up? Pay taxes on it ... they still may for all I know .....

[Scott Willing]

Yes and no. :-) We have a simple sawdust bucket toilet that sits beside a commercial composting toilet, now retired. I'm going to tear out the latter and build a nicer bucket toilet when the time is available.

Long story, but the commercial toilet is, IMHO, a waste of money. (Fortunately, wasn't my decision; came with the house.) A bucket toilet is superior to it in every way.

Most so-called composting toilets, including this one, are actually evaporating toilets and don't compost per se.

There are two of those here, also retired.

We have shallow groundwater, and an outhouse is an potentially nasty polluter. Actually septic systems can be just as bad - so many people manage to pollute their wells with those too. Above-ground aerobic composting is the way to go IMHO.

-=s