Build my own power station

[Clive Arthur]

A little civility, perhaps.

Cheers

[tabbypurr]

CO hazard

NT

[Andrew Gabriel]

It was done - Whispergen and another I forget made domestic boilers with 1kW electricity output. They weren't viable and the companies abandoned the domestic products when the development subsidies were withdrawn.

A set of 4 or 5 major domestic boiler manufacturers then setup shared research into this field, but I'm not aware it resulted in any products.

[newshound]

+1

[newshound]

Is this a first, you and TNP in agreement!

:-)

[newshound]

That was my belief, glad to see it confirmed!

[newshound]

As I said elsewhere, a turbocharger turbine is somewhat comparable. But they run at getting on for 100,000 rpm. Gearing is never going to be an option, but perhaps something like the Dyson "digital" motors might be adaptable.

[news]

Does no one remember the calor totem from the 80s. It supplied the electricity needs of three households but the achilles heel was engine life was only about a year, 1100cc FIAT I think.

I'm not sure why the various Stirling units failed, they were about

1kW(e) and 9kW(t), British gas were going to install 3000 in Manchester but pulled out, the NZ company that made them still exists. They were supposed to offer the life of a freezer and the utility of a gas boiler all for around six times the cost of a traditional boiler.

I've actually run a 1kW(e) Honda generator in the evenings for two years with no issues until it got stolen from the caravan, so engine life need not be a problem but matching size to demand is.

In the 90s installed a 10kW(e) Petter genset based chp at a remote classroom and the electricity cost about the same as the diesel used plus the operation and maintenance costs so not worthwhile if grid connected, just under 20% efficient because it was sized for peak loads and ran at 10% most of the time which was inefficient.

My old boss now installs wood pellet chp which back feed the grid, they have one that's been online for 2 years, but that all hinges on a generous feed in tariff.

Conversely the National Trust have finally gone overboard for wood energy and in qualifying for RHI have removed a number of oversized chip boilers and replaced by new, these are for heat only, at one property where a micro hydro electric scheme has been replaced rather than backfeed the grid they have opted to use excess electricity to power immersion elements in the thermal store.

AJH

[news]

15 years ago we ran a LS60 apu on woodgas briefly, it worked but my colleague estimated a gas turbine would not be viable as a genrator prime mover less than 300kW(e)

AJH

[news]

Sounds about right, one was a free running piston and the other used three cylinders and a swash plate IIRC

AJH

[Andrew Gabriel]

Cars (of that type) are only designed for 3000 hours use. That gets you to roughly 100,000 miles at an average 30MPH.

The development was funded by the likes of Eon, British Gas, etc. The products vanished when the development funding ceased. I think this was probably down to them never being economic to sell without hefty subsidies, due to inefficient energy production in small units for domestic use.

I installed Aircon at home 12 years ago. It was for cooling my main living area when working at home, but I actually use it in reverse to heat the area in winter when working at home, rather than heating the whole house. For first few years, I had it on a power meter, and using it as an air-sourced heat pump cost very little to heat the room all winter, vastly less than heating the whole house all day with gas central heating just because I'm working in one room. It only gets used for cooling a few days a year, but for heating, probably 50 days a year.

[The Natural Philosopher]

In the 1973 power cuts where I worked had a generator., It started with a Ford 2 litre but that died within days, and a Perkins 2.5L diesel was welded in its place. That got us through.

Car engines are not designed for continuous moderate to high power output, but commercial vehicle diesels are.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

There's a very big difference between normal start stop driving and running at constant load, on an engine's life.

If it really were designed for a 3000 hour life with normal use, I'd expect many times that with a generator. Presumably with the engine running at somewhere near maximum torque, so therefore efficiency.

[Andy Burns]

I had a quick search ... the "bluegen" microCHP unit is a washing machine sized gas-powered fuel cell, runs silently 24x7, produces

13MWh/year of electricity and 6MWh/year for H/W, qualifies for FITs.

Except it costs £15k, with a £3k installation grant available, then a mandatory £500/year servicing contract plus 12MJ/hour of gas ~ 3.3kW ~ £870/year, oh and the aussie manufacturer has gone bust, but they still seem to be offered for sale in Europe and the UK.

[AnthonyL]

I'll keep an eye on Ebay to see if one comes up cheap.

[Andy Burns]

I think you were asking about Ratcliffe the other week? I happened to drive past on Friday and the coal heaps looked very well stocked and neatly raked over ... suppose the bulldozer drivers have to do something over summer?

[harry]

You'd have to find some way of lubricating it too. some sort of oil resrvoir and pump.

[news]

Sounds like the guarantee of parts for 10 years with my new cheap Indesit washing machine, only valid if the parts are fitted by an Indesit engineer at £109/hour.

[news]

Yes but the running regime was better suited to longer life. Modern engines are much better, especially with synthetic oils, I scrapped a transit engine with 100K miles on the clock after the timing chain broke and there was no discernible bore wear.

Also bore wear is relative to mean piston speed, so running an engine slowly would extend bore life. I know a chap in Reigate that runs a lister 6.5hp rated at 650rpm as a chp unit and these thing last indefinitely.

When I handed my pug 206 van back it had 305k miles on the clock and no signs of giving up but that was over 13 years and only equates to running constantly for one year at 34mph.

Nowadays with lithium ion batteries it should be possible to optimise run time by charging batteries either side of peaks and running on them for minor loads.

It's not a new thought: in 1974 I worked on an estate adjacent to the owner of a remote cottage which was powered by a Lister startomatic genset. The owner was a producer for the BBC and had connections with the electricity research station just a few miles away. One of the engineers (I only remember his name was Stuart) installed some traction cells and a French sine wave inverter (it was somewhat better than the monostable oscillator switched power transistor we had built at college during the strikes of Heath's government a few years before) to reduce the hours the engine needed to run and that was in the days when TV's were CRT and consumed 200W, with modern kit and LED lighting the loads will be less.

Yes I remember you posting about it, I recommended the same for an office we had in a portacabin adjacent to the main office. It was heated by resistance heating but the boss would not approve the outlay.

I don't know why the NT didn't opt for something similar with their excess electricity.

AJH

[newshound]

Yup. Probably not a ring lubricator :-)