New Power Pallet on sale

Normally I don’t post stuff like this, but given that APL (they made GEK gasifiers) have been around a decently long time now, and some of you may have wondered “whatever happened to them?”

I got this email from them today.


The 40-30-20 sales event

40 pre-orders available
for the Power Pallet PP30,
to enable lower cost supply chain in 2020.

PP30full-2ndshoot

A year ago, All Power Labs released the Power Pallet PP30 Cogen as our completely new generation of the Power Pallet. This successor to the PP20 incorporates all we’ve learned in the last decade to make biomass gasifiers ready for daily use in the world, and carbon negative power and products ready to scale for our climate management needs . Critical design changes focussed on increasing power generation capacity (both electricity and heat), reducing O&M costs across the board, and generally increasing reliability for high uptime use cases.

Units are now being shipped regularly, with new machines recently installed in:

  • Tokyo, Japan
  • Mpumalanga, South Africa
  • Parma, Italy
  • San Jose, Costa Rica
  • Malibu, California

We’re now ramping our production capacity in 2020 to fulfill customer orders and planned multi unit project deployments. Our supply chain to make the Power Pallet now spans India, Philippines, China and US suppliers, with final assembly in Berkeley, CA. To improve the cost, quality and regularity of delivery through this supply chain, we need to increase our order quantities. The route to scale for requires an ever lowering price and ever increasing value-- and getting there requires increased throughput of a standard manufactured solution.

We have come up with a campaign to book the majority of our 2020 production over the last month of 2019. The campaign provides a compelling package for our customers, and will equally enable us to close larger supply agreements with our supply partners. Booking a year of orders ahead will also strengthen the Series A fundraising effort currently in progress. Yes, we’re finally raising outside capital to grow the internal capacity of APL beyond its current limits of self-funding .

Here’s the deal. Between now and December 15th only, we’re offering special pricing and low deposit payment terms for 40 units of PP30 Cogen units. The detail terms are as follows:

  • Price - $66,550 MSRP - $15,000 discount = $51,550
  • Deposit Payment - $5,500
  • Balance payments - 40% at 8 weeks prior to shipment, remainder before shipment
  • Cancellation and Refund: 100% refund with 30 day notice.
  • Total Quantity Available - 40 units
  • Reservations are given on a first-come first-serve basis. You schedule the delivery time in 2020 that works for you.
  • Add-ons beyond the standard full featured machine (i.e. adding continuous feed and catalytic emission system) are extra

The motivation here is to encourage those with plans for multi-unit projects to start the deposits for the related machines. A deposit of $5,500 vs the usual 60% of invoice makes the deposit for a multi machine purchase, multiples less than a typical single machine deposit. And with a mostly filled queue for 2020, we can start the larger purchase orders that reduce costs and justify this price reduction.

This discount price and deposit terms are only available until December 15, 2019. Please be serious on intent to complete the purchase if you start it. However there is a 100% refund of deposit with 30 day notice, if your plans change. We are trying to make this helpful and risk reduced for both you and us.

To place your reservation, or to ask questions about the sale or PP30 machine, please contact sales@allpowerlabs. Please include 40-30-20 in the subject line so we can keep track of the sale related actions.

What’s new in the Power Pallet

For those new to APL and the Power Pallet, here are the details for the generation change between the PP20 and PP30. At launch last year we posted a full inventory of PP30 changes by subsystem, explaining motivations for each development, and what users should now expect in operation. The quantitative rendering of these changes are performance outcomes are in the Comparative PP20 vs PP30 Spec Sheet. A short summary is below

2xpp30

  • A totally re-designed filtration system that eliminates charcoal gas filter media and production of condensate. This redesign eliminates the most labor-intensive and frequent maintenance operation.
  • A larger engine and more efficient generator. Our new, high compression ratio and longer format generator results in higher power output and greater efficiency.
  • Standard enclosed genset for quiet operation and weather protection.
  • Standard grid-tie / paralleling hardware. Most everyone asks whether the Power Pallet can push electricity directly into the grid, or whether it can integrate with their existing solar / micro-hydro / small wind turbine microgrid. Grid-tie and paralleling hardware used to be an expensive option, but now all Power Pallets have this as a standard feature.
  • Standard CHP water heating, with higher efficiency. The new CHP system uses multiple stages of waste heat recovery to double the available heat compared to the PP20 with the CHP option. The PP30 makes available up to 2kW of thermal output per 1kW of electrical load.
  • Indirect heating of the drying stage. By indirectly heating the drying stage of the gasifier using recovered waste heat, we maintained the efficiency afforded by recovering waste heat while eliminating another labor-intensive maintenance operation—cleaning soot out of the drying vessel.
  • Larger char-ash vessel, and larger cyclone dust can. This allows the PP30 to run longer sessions at the same loads as the PP20.

In the year since launch we’ve refined many details of the productization and manufacturability. The core functional changes remain the same, but system polish and ability to manufacture on schedule, with controlled costs and quality control, have greatly improved. We now have a frozen design that is in regular manufacture, and progressively in larger supply chain, to enable the scaled deployments we know many of you are planning for the coming year(s).

We hope this 40-30-20 sale will help both you and APL get to the scaling we’ve all worked so hard to prepare for over the last decade. Solving gasification is hard, we’ve all learned. Many people and companies have come and gone over the challenge. It’s a blessing that we’ve been able to work with continuity on the problem for over a decade, and can keep rolling in new learning.

More improvements are on the way, now enabled by the new foundation of the Gen 2 machine. But as for today, we are very satisfied where the machine is, and are signing off on its fundamental components for growth production. We hope you can help us make this step change in our supply chain happen.

Thank you for continued interest in APL, and following the long arc of our story. I continued to be amazed how many people surface today, and start by saying, “you know, i was watching you years ago with the GEK kits, back in . . .”.

Jim Mason
Founder/CEO
All Power Labs

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Hi Chris, Great post. If you guys are really interested in a nuts
and bolts explanation of the entire gasification process, you
owe it to yourself to watch his entire gasification seminar. Oh
crap a seminar! Well, you want to know BEFORE hand what it’s
all about and how to proceed without the 2 steps ahead 1 1/2 steps
back process, don’t you! You want a gasifier to run from day one, right!
The BEST hours, yes hours, you can spend on gasification will be
watching Jim Mason’s presentation, bar none. I did before I
started my project and believe me it was absolutely worth the time !
Search “gasification basics with Jim Mason”, you’ll be glad you did!!!
Pepe

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They are way down the path of auto-magic everything, not my cup of tea. Earlier machines of theirs were pretty unreliable, despite (or because of) the automation. But, you’ve got to give them some credit, they’ve put a lot of effort into commercializing their design, which is a very hard thing to do. Given the prices they’re asking, I expect it’s a reliable machine now.

I do like the engine they’re using. They’ve got a 4.0L diesel-based spark ignition engine at 12:1 compression from Ashok Leyland, an Indian company. A commercial 1800RPM genhead on a diesel frame engine will last a very long time.

I wonder if one could source just the engine from them. Probably way beyond the budget of DIY folks here.

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Jim Mason and Company- They are the ones that got me started with wood gasification in about 2009.
Back at that time, Jim even offered FREE U-Tube manometers to interested parties. I got one. It’s still my “master” calibrator, even though I have gone to electronic sensors.
I have to admit that I haven’t been doing much lately, but I give them a lot of credit for work they did in their early days. When I saw their “Kitchen Sink” Arduino based control system, I knew I had to have one of those, but it was too expensive for me at the time. That started me down a llllooonnngg path with Arduino. A bunch of us got together as a result of that, and started an Arduino group which survives to this day.
I haven’t been to their (AllpowerLabs) website lately, but if their archives of test data are still there, I’d recommend any newbys to check it out.

Pete Stanaitis

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Pepe, thanks for the seminar tip. I sure will.
Reading helped me a lot when making pellets. It turned out is was to complex. Probably the same with woodgas, but first reading.
Thanks.

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Do you have a link to your mill. I have distributors running the Chinese mills with out any issue.

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Don t know. They are chinees. I have tree. One with fixed rollers. You can stay next to the machine for changing the bearings. The others have a fixed plate/ die. This one is better. But when sawdust comes out the factory it is a litle to dry. So I fixed something to ad water. After doing nothing for a year, sawdust was above 16%. So I had to build a dryer. That is the moment I stopped. Not that I am to lazy to build a dryer. In the mean time it occurred to me that it is diffecult to meter and automate this moisture proces. And that with a 7,5 kW press that makes 75 kg pellets an hour. If you only count time, you are making 15 euro an hour. Like I said, there are better ways to spend your time and money. Or go to at least a 50 kW press or get the 7,5 fully automatic. The last is not possible. The first should not be done in these times where we run out of fossile. So, that is why I am so interested in a sawdust gasifier.

Btw, dont believe the chinees. They want to sell. Take a look at the professional presses like Kahl etc. Do the math.

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Sorry, helping my son with math. Big excam tomorrow.
But the kg/kWh stays the same. A little bit better when bigger.
Stay away from the 3 kW. The best you can do with it, is something on a boat, if you have one.

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Ill have to check with my distributors and see how they are doing. My guy over in Norway has an all one unit. Junk goes in / pellets come out. As far as I know its been working great. But this is a higher consumption unit as it does it all in one process.

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Thats actually not that bad. 75 kgs is a lot of fuel. That hour bought you at least a day worth of power. You could not generate this much fuel with any other process for that is Ready to Run in an hours time.

Here in the US you would pay over $20.00 USD for this much fuel. So you would be making $20.00 pr hour

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Yes, 3 kW wont make 100 kg pellets. That s for sure. Maybe you can do with a low density pellet for gasification?

Otherwise it is as it is. Aprox 10 kg/kWh. Waste of energy if you can burn wood right away.

Sorry for off topic, but pellets are fun to make. That is true

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I will be using Hemp, garbage with some some woody biomass mixtures.

I want to later work on design for the smaller 5mm and possibly the 3mm pellets. Ive already tested alfalfa 5 mm with good success. Still much more testing needed here though.

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6 mm is normal over here. 3 will be more diff. Your grinderplate wil need smaller holes.
Ever had any iron in the dust. Hurts your ears, the die and rollers and your wallet.

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I can run my shop completely all day long on roughly 40 - 60 kgs of pellet fuel very easily. This is running a CNC plasma machine, 220 welder, lights and general / typical shop equipment.

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Hi matt rider is 60 kgs about 100 pounds of pellots,?

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Im just using 1 kgs = 2 lbs. but this is not an exact conversion. Close enough for my correspondence though.

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Ok thanks Matt, my google search had me close too what you were measure by.

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Any idea on the cost of electric too run a decent speed running pellet mill, per 40 pound bag or hours of ? how many bags’ hour ,Thanks matt.

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If we use what the Chinese manufactures claim. Your looking at 3kW input. Rule of thumb 3 lbs pr kW you get 9 lbs of fuel consumption for a net 200 lbs pellets produced. So not very much.

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Im having a hard time with the difficulties, as there are tons of videos showing those Chinese mills running, they dont seem to have any issues and they crank out the pellets.

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