VW Generators

"Move over Golf, how about a VW home power plant?

Like its cars, can Germany's smart grid network of Volkswagen mini-generators win over Britain?"

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Move over Audrey II, this is a real power plant.

Reply to
polygonum
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In message , polygonum writes

So why no mention of the running life of a gas powered piston engine and the replacement cost/routine maintenance?

Also, what do they do with the *waste* heat in summer?

4-5 years? >
Reply to
Tim Lamb

"The system has the backing of the German government, which is pushing Lichtblick?s model ? and a similar venture between Honda and meter maker Valliant ? because it thinks switching to decentralised power units will make it possible to shut down its nuclear reactors by 2022."

Steaming great dozy muppets.

Lets take out zero co2 emission plant and shut it down in favour of a hydrocarbon based one even less efficient than any other we already have!

About the only thing they have in their favour is they can be used to try and balance a grid made unstable by all the massively expensive and unreliable renewables.

Reply to
John Rumm

Your usual drivel. Still living in the Lala land of the past. You can't get your head around a new concept can you?

This has been on the cards for years. They will only operate at times of peak demand and low electricity output. There will always be a need for gas fired plant, this is just microgeneration and is more efficient in that the power is used locally and the heat in the home. The idea works perfectly because home heat is needed in Winter when PV power output is down. All part of the Smart grid" system too. It will come to be the standard instead of gas boilers.

Nuclear power is finished in sensible society. It always was a false path, invented as byproduct of the nuclear weapons program. Inefficient, expensive and dangerous.

Reply to
harryagain

"Since May 2014, LichtBlick has been unable to offer any more 'ZuhauseKraft werk' combined heat and power systems. LichtBlick had developed this innova tive technology together with Volkswagen since 2009. Unfortunately, we were unable to reach an agreement with VW as to the commercial future of the bu siness, something we would have really liked to have done."

Oh well, throw some more Brown coal in the boiler Manfred

Jim K

Reply to
JimK

You were doing so well (reasoned argument) until you spoilt it all in that last paragraph.

It's true that the current crop of nuclear power stations have been cursed by the Cold War legacy but there remains the undeveloped LFTR technology, first looked at by the military over 40 years ago as a potential means of keeping a fleet of nuclear bombers aloft for weeks at a time until the penny dropped regarding ICBM technology refined from the V1 rocket program by Germany towards the end of WW2.

I suggest you goggle LFTR before you discount nuclear fission power as the immediate solution to the world's energy crisis for the next

300 to 10000 years.
Reply to
Johny B Good

Harry was happy with his 41p or whatever FIT payments. Don't make him feel sad...

Reply to
Tim Watts

We can simply tell who wrote that without even looking at the author

... soo very predictable...

Reply to
tony sayer

I had to google "FIT payments" (I'd seen it before but couldn't remember the context) and landed up on this page:

Just out of interest, I tried the calculator using 'ballpark figures of 8KW generator head running an average of 8 hours a day during the 'heating season' to give a total annual generation figure of 11680 KWH which. at 75% export produced a total income and savings figure of £2,200!

No wonder you urged me not to make Harry sad!

However, since governments worldwide are unlikely to percieve nuclear as the new incredibly safer greener way to both power and save the planet for at least another decade or two, I don't think Harry has too much to worry about just yet. :-(

In the meantime, micro CHP seems to be a 'No Brainer' solution to replacing a >25 years old CH/HW boiler that's come to its end of life.

If I've interpreted that £2,200 figure correctly, I'd be looking at an effective ROI payback period of just one or two years. Just how much does a 2 litre petrol engine from a scrapyard cost these days? Honestly now, anyone got any idea? Also, more to the point, how much would an 8 or 10 KW genset head cost?

Reply to
Johny B Good

In article , Johny B Good scribeth thus

Prolly 300 to 600 odd quid in good nick..

Anything from £1200 to £5K ...

Mind you the generator might not be the one that you'd want to run 24/7 and the engine might be a tad more noisy that you'd like to run at home...

There is an element of some sense in the idea but I reckon you'll still need a mains connection one way or the other..

Reply to
tony sayer

Bit of light reading for you. If you're capable of understanding it that is.

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Reply to
harryagain

No you are right it makes no sense at all.

Bollocks. The most efficient IC engine based genset is less than half the efficiency of a combined cycle gas plant even including the distribution losses.

Dangerous how? its always killed less people than solar and wind per TWh, and order of magnitude less than coal.

Its the only ultimately viable solution so you will need to get used to it...

Reply to
John Rumm

Author worked as a researcher for many years. researcher as in read stuff but did nothing herself. And it was for greenpeace and introduced by 'arry so we can safely assume its biased and ignore it.

Reply to
dennis

Ah. You don't understand it do you Den? Hardly surprising.

Reply to
harryagain

Viable is exactly what it's not.

Reply to
harryagain

Viable is what it's not.

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Reply to
harryagain

Aye, our little 2 kVA diesel is just a tad noisey but rather than than no heat in the middle of winter and ice has brought the lines down.

Uur set burns about a litre of (red) diesel per hour, so approx

80p/hour. A litre of diesel contains about 10 kWhr of energy. I doubt our peak load is a kW so overall efficiency is
Reply to
Dave Liquorice

It's always been obvious that renewables + energy storage would be pretty nifty, but without storage not a lot of good.

Just possibly, by pushing it all down to the individual level, something can be done to improve the situation before Putin (or whoever) turns off the taps.

NiFe anyone?

I see a lot of firewood logs stacked in city centre basements; maybe some think a problem is already developing.

You can exist (I won't say live) with 4 watt LED lamps turned on only when a sensor detects a human presence in the room, you can look at the internet via a Raspberry PI and a tablet, and two or three layers of clothing and a cap on your head will allow existence without heating. (Your wife will leave you for someone with more purchasing power, but a

40 watt electric blanket will make up for the heat loss at least, while other expenses might even decrease :-).
Reply to
Windmill

That sounds about right to me.

I'd hope to be paying the lower figure for a 4 pole 1500rpm 50Hz generator head.

I've got a suitable basement location. It's where the existing Mexico Super 100 boiler lives at the moment. Obviously, I'm planning on running the engine at a nice sedate pace of1500 rpm inside a suitable soundproofed enclosure. It's literally only meant to replace the function of the original boiler. The 20% surplus electricity is going to be dumped into the mains supply connection.

Basically I'm turning the current boiler's 79.2% efficiency (20.8% loss) into high value electric energy (turning the efficiency equation on its head so to speak).

There'd be no sense at all in running a micro CHP generator _without_ a connection to the grid otherwise you're going to have a problem storing all that surplus electrical energy - the grid makes an excellent storage facility.

From the viewpoint of the PSUs, it's far less problematic than home PV generation since it contributes to the grid during peak demand periods rather than during low demand periods. The mains gas consumption remains pretty well unchanged eliminating the "Robbing Peter to pay Paul" factor.

I expect this type of co-generation would be favoured the most by the PSUs but they don't have any say in this and it seems the eco green bollocks has decreed that the FIT rates be the least favourable of the lot for CHP.

Reply to
Johny B Good

Isn't 2kW the maximum size for CHP?

You don't expect to be allowed to DIY install this "CHP" generator and get the FIT payments, do you?

Reply to
Andy Burns

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