Hello, I am considering taking a house 'off grid', and would be grateful for help with some of the following questions:
1) how easy is it to run an generator fuelled by PARAFFIN(known in the US as 'kerosene', i.e. '28sec', the type of oil used in most oil- powered domestic heating systems in the UK)?
2) how easy is it to get hold of, and run, a generator fuelled by SOLID FUEL, e.g. coal or wood or both?
3) how easy is it to run a generator fuelled by DIESEL? And surely if you do, you don't have to pay petrol-station prices? Is there a legal way to avoid paying the excise?
4) what about running an oil-fuelled generator on cheapo COOKING OIL? Is this practicable? Is it legal?
I'd be amazed if any of these ways of making electriciity was cheaper than buying it off the grid. I'd also be amazed if any of them was better for the environment than buying it from the grid. I would worry about the noise - the continuous humm of even a well silenced generator is quite wearing for those who live within earshot.
Using those fuels for direct heating is another matter. For electricity I'd use PV panels, possibly a wind turbine if I lived somewhere extremely windy.
I used to live off grid on a boat and did heating by coal and oil and electricity from PV. Cooking from bottled gas. You can get oil fired boilers that do not use any electricty (Kabola for example).
Not hard, just consider cost to buy and maintain, the storage of fuel and the noise of the engine to you and to your neighbours.
That sounds VERY hard, requiring a boiler and steam turbine. Leave that to the public utilities.
Diesel and kerosene are essentially the same but with different tax rates.
I guess legal but smelly (assuming you mean used oil) with the same noise issues as fuel oil but also problems with moisture contamination and corrosion, securing a reliable source and performing whatever filtering and purification are needed. It may also have problems of solidifying in cold weather.
You never asked about LPG/propane which is another possibility. I run a
40kW LPG generator with automatic transfer just as a backup during power failures in a place where the power does fail all too regularly.
Yes indeed - basically a steam engine, but there were a lot about in the UK until about 1950, although I guess maintenance would be a problem!
Many thanks for this info, which is new to me! This means I could get a Honda diesel generator and keep the paraffin in the kind of tank used for fuelling heating systems.
I meant buying big bottles of economy cooking oil from Asda's, as some people do for unlawful use in their cars. I think using it in a generator would be lawful (unless someone on uk. legal otherwise).
Quite a lot of kW! Hadn't considered LPG. Is it poss to get smaller generators using this as fuel?
I'll be using solid fuel and maybe also oil for heating.
Very interested in an oil-fired boiler that does not use electricity. Where does the force come from to work the water pump? Does it include a small generator to output a current to do this? (I've always thought that would be a good idea). Or does it do it without involving electricity at all??
Is that true? Wow. I've learned something new this morning... I wonder which important nugget of knowledge that will force out in order to make room ;-) Like the time I took a wine tasting course and forgot how to drive..
Perfectly legal for road use since changes in the revenue regulations:
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the price of new vegetable oil has doubled in the last 12 months or so to around =A31 / litre - so only just compares favourably with road diesel - and is totally uneconomic compared to kerosene for non-road applications.
heavy duty, diesel engine powered generator provides either main or emergency back up power for domestic, commercial and industrial premises. Robust construction, rugged yet technologically superior components and a Lister engine ensures dependability and years of reliable service.
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A steam piston engine would work, if you could get hold of (or make) one.
No they're not. You're thinking of DERV (white diesel) and gas oil (red diesel). The latter carries no fuel duty and can be legally used in a generator, though I don't know how difficult it is for an ordinary joe to get hold of. I expect marine suppliers have it.
You could mix it with diesel in a diesel generator, or use it to fire a steam engine.
All the same, hardly cheaper than electricity off the grid.
If the OP wants to save money on his electric bill, it's best to do it by avoiding electric space and water heating, electric cooking, air conditioning, appliances on standby, battery chargers on all the time, replace incandescent lamps with fluorescents - IOW all the standard economy measures.
It could work by natural convection of the water, as all central heating did before the 60s, when water pumps were too noisy. You needed large diameter pipes and put the boiler low down - often in the basement.
What you are considering can only be practical if you can use the heat produced by the engine, as in a CHP generator. The problem with small diesel generators, especially cheap ones, is that they tend to be air cooled and even the water cooled ones run at a low temperature compared to a boiler. If they run too hot the engine will fail prematurely and you will need to change the oil frequently.
To use solid fuel in a steam engine would be grossly inefficient compared to IC engines, and introduced problems with the use of live steam if you are aiming for the hoghest efficiency. This would need you to be trained and certified to operate such machinery. I suspect "forget it" is the better advice here. It would be possible to use a Stirling engine generator using the flue gasses from a solid fuel fire but AFAIR the only Stirling engine generators available at the moment work with natural gas only, cost a lot and provide very low generating capacity, typically around 1KVA.
There's no practical difference between running an engine on diesel or kerosene. And if you use a kerosene stationary engine to provide electricity for your home you can use the same heating oil as is used in boiler. However you will effectively be throwing away 60%+ of the energy content of the fuel, whereas a good oil-fired boiler is >90% efficient.
Using cooking oil is possible but may well damage the engine. Only the manufacturer can tell you. If you want to use cooking oil in winter it will have to be either heated or converted to biodiesel by esterifcation. The process is striaghtforward for a chemist but involves handling large quantities of strong alkali and is not recommended for amateurs. You would also need "quite a bit" of kit and to register with HMCE as a fuel producer in order to qualify for the small fuel producer fuel duty exemption, although since you don't want to use the fuel in a car they may waive registration. You'd have to ask them.
Don't even think about any of this unless you can think of a way to scavenge and use the waste heat from the engine. And when it comes to a generator your sugestion of a small "Honda" diesel is inappropriate. A true Honda will cost a lot, generators in an open frame sold as "Honda" often only have a Honda motor and are incredibly noisy, usually greater than 109dbA. Regulation on these generators is poor, and you will have to put up with flickering lights even at the best of times. If you connect or disconnect a significant load (microwave, kettle) you will bown out for a time then the engine will really start to hammer as it takes up the load.
If you are doign this the minimum generator capacity you should be looking at is 6KVA, it would probably be better to consider 12KVA. You shoudl also consider an alternator/inverter type generator which is electronically regulated to give a stable voltage to avoid the brownouts and flickering. You will also need to get a generator with a decent sound suppression cabinet, which can get the noise level down below
40dBA. This may still be intrusive at night and if you have neighbours they will complain, and if you don't do something about the noise they will take it up with the local authority.
If you were au fait with what you intend to do, I suspect you wouldn't need to ask these questions. I suggest you go and learn some more about generators, efficiency, noise and CHP issues before you contemplate such an installation.
Quite. We have a house that's "on grid" but was "off" for a while a couple of years ago. To get around the problem we used a 2.5kW petrol genny. A back-of-the-enveope calculation at the time showed that the cost of fuel made our electricity x10 - x14 more expensive than from a commercial supplier. Although I can't prove it, I am firmly convinced that the generator was much less efficient than a power station - using any fuel. It also didn't have any of the scrubbing tech. that commercial power stations have, or a catalytic convertor - so it emitted a load of unpleasant stuff into the atmoshpere, apart from the CO2.
There's also the worry about generator failure. If that's your only source of power, when (not if) it breaks down, or you run out of fuel than you're stuffed. I would expect that a generator rated for continous running would be many times more expensive than the ones you get at B&Q.
Sorry, what I meant was only that the relevant issues of equipment cost, fuel storage and noise are very much the same.
28 seconds burning kerosene (used for home heating and JetA) and 35 seconds burning diesel have somewhat different specifications such that kerosene is less viscous and less prone to freezing at low temperatures but more likely to vapour lock at higher temperatures. In fact they are sometimes interchangeable and in cold weather vehicle fuel suppliers often add some kerosene into their diesel to improve the low temperature performance.
Diesel generators are available that will run on some grades of paraffin.
At the size you need, almost impossible.
Easy to get a diesel generator - I have no idea whether you could legally run it on red diesel, but it is quite likely that it would be legal.
No matter what fuel you use, it will almost certainly cost you more just in running costs to supply a single domestic dwelling than buying from an electricity supplier in the normal way. A big problem with a single genny is that it must be large enough to supply your peak load. A generator that size is very inefficient most of the day when the load is low. There are ways to overcome that issue, but the required equipment is so expensive that it would not save enough to pay for itself over its expected life.
Other things to consider are cost of servicing and whether you can install the generator in such a way that its operation 24/7 will not disturb your neighbours.
For premises that need more electricity than a domestic dwelling, there are ways to save on cost by *augmenting* the grid from internally generated power. There are generators that "bolt on" to the back end of a (very large) gas central heating system to use energy that would otherwise be wasted, for example. An on-site generator can also be used to sell surpluss electricity back to the national grid. This needs arrangements to be made - not least of which is ensuring that you do not power the grid when the mains has been isolated by the electricity company so that they can work on the lines!
In most locations, about the only cost-effective energy you can make at home is from a solar powered water heater. AFAICS any other scheme availabe at the present will cost you more than you could hope to save.
Cynic (Cynic ) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:
Yes, but given...
...can the over-size generator not be providing income by selling that surplus capacity back to the grid? I s'pose it would depend on the exact cost of generating versus the price paid by the grid as to whether it would be profitable...
Or at least, only in the same sense that diesel and petrol are the same
- y'know, carbon, and hydrogen, and all that - and while a number of motorists persist in checking the petrol-diesel similarity for themselves, most conclude it isn't, really.
My boat had a Kabola stove. This burned red diesel and was fed by gravity - there is a small float chamber with an adjustable needle valve to control the flow. The oil drips into a thing like a chip pan where it evaporates abd burns. The radators were fed by gravity (convenction). I believe yo ucan run it on buring oil or kerosene as well.
With the Kabola, about half the heat comes out of the boiler itself, so you should put that in the main room, not in an outhouse. THis is the one I had:
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