How do hybrids perform so well? MPG AND MPH

THat's the same engine and transmission that I have in my (UK) Ford S-Max.

Yes thinking about it the expansion from higher pressure plus the faster, finer injection from a common rail meaning combustion is complete much earlier in the power stroke should mean better economy but it will be at a sweet spot somewhere around maximum torque and probably only a few per cent excess air.

The current situation is that owning an EV gives access to an electricity tariff, that is less than the wholesale price of electricity for some reason, in the early hours. This situation may not last.

I only require electricity from the grid for four winter months which is also when I heat my house, so the waste heat from the generator would have some value to me. If the generator converts 25% of the heat energy into electricity and the house recovers 70% of the remaining heat then one kWh of natural gas which costs me 6p becomes 0.25kWh of electricity on my current tariff worth 7p and 0.5kWh of heat worth 3p.

The capital and operation and maintenance costs mean it's probably not worth doing but if faced with a cost of a grid connection of a few thousand pounds it's a different matter.

Out of curiosity, I did a search: first hit is the Viessmann Vitobloc 200, say the 6/15 (6 kW electric, 15 kW thermal). Others available, up to 500 kW electric. Service once a year, 6000 hours, 8000 hours, in that range.

No prices to be found, though -- but surely a few ten thousand?

Thomas Prufer

Not sure if its what you are talking about but a random search turned up £4-£6,000

Viessmann lost me a job so I won't be going there.

It looks like the smallest one they seem to have stopped selling was £50k and of course it is out of the question and OTT for my wants.

An american firm that installs stand-by 48V battery chargers for cellphone sites is more in keeping.

To make up my shortfall I only need to run a couple of hours a day for

Aliexpress do, say, a 8 hp diesel engine for under 1000€ shipped: water cooling, electric start.

Solar battery systems with inverters etc. have come down a lot in price. Don't see why such a system couldn't be fed off a DC generator spun by a combustion engine? Would have the advantage that all the charging, inverter, control, display stuff is out-of-the-box ready-to-use.

And the Ford 150 Lightning is an EV that can power your house:-) This needs a charger, and the AI models tell me that there are no hybrids that support vehicle-to-home. That would be nice: a generator/battery combination that has seats and is mobile...

Thomas Prufer

I already have a 10kWh battery and another 6kWh one for emergency use and I am used to charging the latter from a 48V solar pv charger off grid. Unfortunately they are not compatible to run in parallel as they differ by one cell despite being described as 48V.

Were I to attempt it I would use a quiet spark ignition engine running off propane initially to avoid gassafe problems.

I do also have a suitable engine, 250cc 12kW but I still quite like riding the bike it is in. The difficult decision would be whether to use a permanent magnet alternator or a 3 phase induction motor rigged up to run as a generator with capacitors to excite it. Oh and how to couple it to the engine.

Looked at "DC generator 48 V" on Aliexpress.

Very odd: they sell lots of DC Generators, well up in the kW range (though the

Lots of these are findable under "free energy systems" or "free power systems"! DC generator, flexible coupling, motor (lots of DC, some AC). They seem cheaper as a perpetual motion machine set, rather than just the generator, though that may be clickbait pricing?

Some show flexible coupling shafts, some belt and pulley, some chain drive.

Thomas Prufer

Back in te days of strikes when electricity was part time the company I was in coupled up a genny to an old ford 2 litre OHC.

They welded up a frame for it. Well the Ford only lasted a week - continuous power not its thing really - and some kind of Perkins diesel was acquired. That ran extremely well and kept the lights on in the company all throughout the strikes. There is no doubt that a large capacity diesel throbbing away at 1500 RPM is ideal. Even 3000 is not too bad. It doesn't really matter what type the genny is. As long as it can do the power.

Don't forget that part of the 70% you hope to harvest is in the exhaust gasses and you really don't want that released inside the house for you to breathe in.

A long time ago we powered a remote classroom with a 10kVA Petter genset, we fitted the marinised exhaust manifold, so the coolant ran past the block then through the outside of the manifold to a radiaor.

Clever! I have seen something similar in an ancient (1950s) car my brother bought years ago. It had an air-cooled engine* with a crankshaft driven air pump to cool the engine and an additional controlled bleed from that pump blew air over a sleeve around the first bit of the exhaust pipe and that air was piped to the cabin as a heater.

• It was a 700cc motorbike engine under the bonnet

Standard for all air cooled VWs.

Probably faster than most air cooled VWs! ;-)

Tim

It certainly was! It needed 5* petrol and gave (indicated) 55mph in second gear, 90mph in 3rd and solidly off the clock in fourth (on a motorway in the days before speed cameras).

I was a real fun car to drive. Unfortunately my mother hit the accelerator instead of the brake and wrote it off in the back of a bus.