Hi Sean , not sure about that rectifier i would have thought at the ac voltage that motor is putting out then something much larger would be needed to convert to around 180 Volts dc for the Grid tie to see it , the Capacitors are needed for the 3 phase motor to turn it into asynchronous generator . if i am wrong i apologize its just my understanding from watching YouTube .
Dave
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I didn’t look at the motor output, just the form factor for the rectifier more so you could identify it in the picture. 
It is pretty close though. it is 1600v, which is a LOT more then needed. and 100 amps which again is probably more then needed. I skipped over where he looked at the nameplate of the motor.
You need to energize the magnetic field in the motor, but some motors have that built in, (there is basically another coil that energizes). It can also be done externally. I am guessing he has a motor that self-energizes and they aren’t needed.
I couldn’t follow the wiring for the caps. He has a relay (the frankenstein thing with the bolts. The thing with the cage is the power supply. I think he has one of the caps hooked to the power supply to supply it current similar to a battery. I think one might be to help trip the relay and prevent back EMF (current going backward in the circuit).
But Again, I wasn’t following all the wires that closely.
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I think since it’s an induction motor, it probably doesn’t need excitation running as a motor. Connected directly to the grid (Carefully 
) and run faster than its normal speed it will pump power back into the grid. He’s using it with a charge controller, which makes life much less exciting, but the motor needs excitation since there’s no outside current source. The capacitors connected to the motor windings get them close enough to resonance that the residual magnetism in the motor can build up enough voltage to get it generating. Here’s a guy that has done this:
https://www.qsl.net/ns8o/Induction_Generator.html
Why the resonant frequency of the windings and capacitors isn’t closer to 60, or 50 Hz I don’t know. Too many coils and too many currents all wrapped up together for me to fully grasp. I’d listen to the guy who made a couple work, rather than me, and my slightly educated guesses. Full disclosure: I did follow the advice at the link above, and got a half-horsepower motor to generate with a 2 hp Briggs and Stratton. And it worked okay grid-tied, and would self-start for free. Don’t ask about running that engine on wood- or charcoal gas .
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Thanks Kent. I got my Lister running with a 11 kW grid tied motor. The max was 9 kW pumped into the grid. Tone was playing with capacators too. I wonder if my setup would gain some if capacitors were added. It was fun though, 25 kWh generated on a dark day. Downside was the heat. I didnt manage to pump enough into the buffer for heating the house. Only cooling water was used not the exhaust, yet.
To bad playing days are over tomorrow 
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I saw similar numbers when I hocked up the Volvo via belt and pullies. Second try I installed capasitors and they did their job to compensate for reactive power and lowered the current considerably for the same useful power. However, they were slightly small and I was unable to utilize full power.
At the time, electricity was extreemly expensive and I managed to turn hopper of wood into five bucks 
Still, replacing gasoline with wood, cruzing down the road, is 3 times more profitable.
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Thanks, I will give it a try next time. Main reason for this setup is heat, power is a bonus. Driving on wood is kinda difficult for us, but if I am able to fill the EV finally can share some driving videos
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JoepK. you accurately mentioned the three sources of energy-out in your Lister IC engine as shaft made electrical power; engine coolant heat; and exhaust out heat.
Yes. Not utilizing the engine exhaust heat for some beneficial purpose is throwing at least 30% the engines fuel input energy away. Blown out into the air. And that IC engine exhaust heat is a high-grade dense energy too.
Wastful. Damn near criminal.
Using raw cut wood for the systems fuel input the best easy use of the engines exhaust heat is moisture reducing the raw live wood moisture down.
Many ways have been done to do this.
ALL Good versus doing nothing.
Steve Unruh
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Yes, exhaust heat recovery is coming for sure. And already know how to do it the easiest way, but first things first. Motor steering and electronics. Got a little disappointed that the cooling water was not able to fill the buffer. It must be around 10 kW…still figuring out where that went.
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Slightly late replying to you – I’m personally very interested in this space as I’m about to do my own micro hydro pumped storage. My analysis showed it was less economical if using tanks as opposed to ponds or dams. If you already have water storage setup in place, and especially if you’re already pumping water for irrigation, it can be highly desirable.
At perfect efficiency a 10k gallon tank alone at 100’ of elevation will hold about 3kwh of potential energy at about $15k of cost for $5k/kwh. if you assume 30% losses and another $3k for pipe + trenching + turbine, more like $10k/kwh all-in — about 10x more expensive than a Powerwall on a per kilowatt hour basis. (edit: original poster suggested using a pool, which would indeed be much cheaper, but runs into a whole host of other challenges others have mentioned)
In my case, I already have a .25 acre pond on my hill at 100’ of elevation that can hold about 4’ of excess water with pipes already in place, so I have about 1 acre foot or 100kwh of potential power with expense only of modifying my pipes to support the turbine and connecting to my combiner setup – 70kwh after 30% efficiency losses.
Even if I had to pay the $10k it would likely cost to dig the pond today and $5k for the trenching and pipe, I’d still be looking at 70kwh for $15k, or about 5x cheaper than a Powerwall. (edit: you do usually need permits to dig a pond; usually ag uses make this straightforward to get permissions for though)
=> Tanks don’t make economic sense, but ponds do if you have elevation and acreage.
Two additional side benefits that weren’t obvious when I first started considering this. First, with ponds, this turns into just a pure micro-hydro setup on rainy periods. In our weather, it rains in the winter. So a micro-hydro setup is inversely correlated with solar generation, as my pond fills with nature-provided sky water aka rain & runoff. How much is variable, but the worst solar winter is the most rainy winter so in aggregate it is significant - the hill that fills the pond is about 10 acres, so .25” of rain after the ground saturates is about 2 extra acre feet of water that can flow through the setup w/o pumping. Second, since you can run the irrigation pump from an off-grid solar array, this is a way to add solar capacity without tripping up on net-metering solar limitations (at least superficially – you still have to connect the power up to a use case, but you can pick anything since it can be 24/7 unlike pure off-grid solar).
Finally, there’s a big beauty and ecology benefit: you can create flowing water features near your house that are great to look at and make birds quite happy.
I do agree that maintenance is far more DIY-able than with battery tech. But still I do a lot to maintain my ponds and pipes, so it’s not free.
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Joep, wood gas cogeneration, this is also one of my unfinished projects, well, it’s true that I tested this system quite well and made measurements. Here I can once again state the basic information:
- 1 kg of dry wood makes it possible to produce 1 kWh of electricity and with the help of water cooling of the condensation zone, hot gas, engine and exhaust gases, we can get approx. 1-1.5 kWh of heat for heating, the remaining energy (1-1.5 kWh) will “lost”, or it will heat the room where the system will be installed
- if you have an engine with a working volume of 1 liter, you can achieve 10 kW of power at 2000 rpm, when the entire system works optimally
- if you use an asynchronous motor as a generator, it is best to choose one that has high revolutions of 3000/min, because these motors have the smallest excitation (reactive) current
- to compensate for the reactive current, connect a three-phase capacitor, for a 10 kW motor, the size corresponds to approx. 3x40 micro Farads
- if the generator works independently, connect the capacitors in a star, this way you get zero and thus the possibility of powering single-phase consumers, for an electric motor with a nominal power of 10 kW, use a capacitance of approx. 3x100 micro Farads
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Tone, I like your scientific answers. Did you ever tell us your education background and what kind of job you hold?
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Mr Williams this a great, complete, first DOW info post up. Sprinkled with caveats.
Should be pinned up as a model of excellence.
You are good and well welcomed here as a DOer, sir.
Regards
Steve unruh
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Ai, to bad. If that are your actual numbers, I will never do any better 
. I was counting 2 kWh/ kg and 1 kW without the exhaust . Runtime was aprox 4 hrs and maybe 8-9 kWh heat. Cant measure the heat though, rough guess.
Thanks for the capacitors, i was hoping for that.
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Thank you Mr. Don, I don’t have a higher education, only a technical electrical school, …
Joep, I think we are already covering this topic too much, well, I assume that your numbers were generated when the engine was running on diesel fuel, …
You can measure the heat energy you emit into the water with a calorimeter, or you can calculate it based on the difference in temperature at the beginning and end of heating a heat storage tank with a known volume.
In the company where I am employed, we have installed a 3 MW natural gas cogeneration plant, accurate measurements of electrical and thermal power are performed here, I can say that the thermal power is slightly greater than the electrical power, maybe somewhere around 15%, I have similar experiences with my cogeneration plant, but here I also collect heat from the gasifier (water-cooled condensing zone and water-cooled gas)
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Interesting. I wuld guess the heat energy wuld be at least double. So if IC engines are say 25% efficient, and you get the same heat energy as electricity, does that mean we still waste almost 50% of the energy?
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Thermal made energy from a fuel or engine/motor can never be said to be wasted so long as it is put to at least one useful purpose.
That steam locomotive railroad engine wastes out a lot of thermal energy.
Now put that fuel to steam in a building system . . . . see? Many possibilities then.
I figure J.O.'s in-a-basement wood fueled water heating hydronic system is at least 70-80% efficient at not wasting out heat.
My in-room center wood heating stove the same.
Yours too Kristijan.
Ha! Any way we could make any amount of electricity off of these would be an added bonus.
A plus add on the side of fuel use efficiency.
Automotive? Toyota Prius’s have used SS vacuum thermal storage bottles for engine coolant for the last two generations. For less energy to get back up to full working temperatures.
BMW seriously did try set up hot engine exhaust electrical generation.
Of course every fuel usage system will have a primary priority.
And some like handheld, as in a chainsaw; power; lightest weight; means no other thermal made uses are practical.
But most??? Possibilities abound.
Try harder.
Start cooking your lunch on your charcoal tractors as they are working at least. Take thought how/where when done-working, they will be parked to benefit from the systems cooling down heats bleeding off.
Steve unruh
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Yes Tone, diesel/veggie oil. Numbers are double compared to wood, percentage is the same. Mmmm, I build a kWh heat and a electric meter into my heatpump. COP was 2.8 at best, as expected and turned it of when down to 2.6. Gonna use that heatmeter and see if I can do better and recover 50% heat. Still a loss of 25%/heating the shop/barn, but better then 50% loss.
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Well sure Steve. One of my favourite sayings of yours is something like “energy is only wasted if you waste it”. Read it years back in one of your posts and I apply that trugh out my life ever since. But my question is can we realy not harvest more thain those 50% of energy from the wood, in cogeneration?
I mean lm not placing a generator in my livingroom… or even basement.
About efficiancy… someone plese correct me but l read modern gasification boilers reach 90%+ efficiancy but this makes zero sense to me. Whats this? 90% of woods energy?
Lets not forget that burning most fuels produces A LOT of water/steam with a huge energy capacity. This condensation energy can not be harvested in most real world scenarios so l gurss those efficiancy ratings ditch this? Just focus on the efficiancy of harvesting the actual obtainable energy?
Since on the topic of efficiancy. Indoor burners consume a lot of air. No, thats a understatement. A HUGE amount. Thats indoor air that has been previously heated to ambient by the same device. Its a self canibalising act. I used to hate this! I set pipes for outdoor air to feed to the stove when l built my house. I only used this for maybee a week. Now it just eats up indoor air. Yes, l may loose maybee 20% energy, but man, the air inside is always fresh and crisp, things dry quick, and even drying laundry for 3 young kids preety much non stop there isnt but a trace of moisture even on the old windows, and its a bargain lm more thain willing to pay
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That’s true, in the calculations the makers of the boilers use there is no taking this in account and therefor if you do condense the flue gas and harvest that considerable amount of energy you can get well over 100% efficiency. This is a norm used by most boilermanufacturers.
I leave the how and what from industrial condensers out so I don’t bore you guys unless someone wants to know.
It would be nice to easily harvest this ’low-grade’ energy somehow at home though, a lot of energy is out the fluepipe heating the crows.
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There you go Kristijan; exactly my point.
On an individual basis “wasting” a percentage of the wood fuel made heat for in-house air change dehumidifying is a direct use HUGE benefit.
Thank-you-very-much. No electricity needed.
All of the prove-by-numbers systems are artificial contrived Games.
Very nesassary to get Big-Money/Society (even in the Soviets) investmentmets support.
A central-out electricity generator to supply All.
Yeah. One way to do it. Complex. Multilevel. Specialists at every level. And then needing participation from the majority of the All. Forced.
Kristijan, you cook. You bake.
Now a fancy cook needs the refined separated out fine percentages to make their fancy cakes and such. These cakes sold/supplied as occasional treats. So great efforts by the cake flours suppliers to up the percentage yield on fancy cake flour. They will never, ever get a high percentage.
Now take the same wheat kernels and make whole grain breads; porridge . . . and near 100% effective use. O.K. Nourishes.
Pizza pies and pasta’s seems to be a more reasonable middle ground usage instead to me.
And you now know well how to intuitively factor in the I-Made-It, personal-freedom factor.
You’ll never see this in the mathematically precise presentations. Set up to impress others. Convince them to support you. The YOU; should be supporting you. I am adamant about this.
A harsh judge. Nature is harsh too. Direct and very pragmatic.
Your You, supporting you, and family; is very admirable. Gives me hope.
Regards
Steve unruh
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