exactly what my wife is into. Me? No time. I ve got a morgage
3 Likes
6 Likes
Here is a new one. water droplets creating electric. This guy reminds me of Pete Stanaitisâs presentations.
Just a random bedtime video I watched. Shows how language barriers can affect flight safety 
9 Likes
Hi All
Here is a video feed I sometimes watch on rainy stay-inside days.
I like how he/they creatively use modern casts off and mostly just free-hand tools to imaginatively make functional things.
This one is turning large building roofs rain water runoff into a water storage and self powered grow plants irrigator. Has a neat leaf catch wash diverter. Surely relevant for a residence house system.
At the ending minutes he is making up a wood charcoal silver cleaning paste. Someone please explain to me the purpose of pre-soaking the wood charcoal chunks in a toilet. ???
Steve unruh
6 Likes
Here is another YouTube channel Iâve taken to watching on rainy stay-inside days: Real Engineering.
Always good to have beyond the hypes-excitements real world realities explained. This one needs to be viewed completely trough for the problem and work around solutions.
This one explains the 2021 Texas winter problem and this years early summer Spain problem.
Ha! I do somewhat disagree with the presenters premise that wider interconnections
is the desirable solution though. That is how wider spread problems quickly propagate. The eastern Canadian and US blackouts.
A stranded steel cable will always be better than a single steel rod under tension.
âOut of many; one.â
S.U.
4 Likes
And another video on the challenges of adding renewables at higher and higher percentages to the power mix:
This all has applications to DIY electrical power too.
Big differences now I have transitioned over from straight direct powering electro-magnetic generators for the reduce fuel use inverter-generators.
S.U.
5 Likes
Irelands grid isnât very big. Because of the spinny frequency regulation, once you get over about 50% variable renewable energy, the grid has more inertia then what you have in spinny balancing. That is what happened in Belgium, they were up to like 75% solar, and werenât able to control the frequency. (they were trying to create a problem to get support for more money.)
Once you get over that 50% thresh hold, you need to start adding storage. By expanding the grid, you are increasing the capacity of the spinny reserves on the grid which allows for more variability in the grid.
You can get around it by adding more storage capacity to cover the variability.
They needed to connect to France because Wind seasonal, and it reduces the storage costs. However, they pay really high rates for electric and ng, and the guy mentioned a large number of people were installing home storage as a lucrative market.
Add to this about 50% of their new vehicle sales are now hybrids or EVs. They also donât have much for energy natural resources beyond peat.
2 Likes
All true SeanO.
There are even smaller modern suppling Grids:
Practical gets temporarily set aside in the push-rush for Wannaâ Believer changes.
Until practical considerations reach up and bite down hard.
Personal/DYI donât get caught totally without the power of the control to have some power in a Bite.
DYI household the biggest problem will aways remain the household members expectation/demands. Deluded thinking we can replace a big Grid.
Steve unruh
3 Likes
Yes, very interesting, the absence of inertia with inverters. I believe that happened in Spain this year. Almost total EU grid crashed.
Sean, what happened in Belgium?
And very interesting to see new energycompanies. Two battery systems on my way from a guy that wants to play energycompany. To get allowed to the grid you need at least 1 MW power and around 1 MWh capacity. I think he is a one man show, imagine that 20 years ago. He is selling 120 pieces of 12 kW/ 48 kWh. Interesting to see what is happening.
4 Likes
I was mistaken, it was spain. 
We donât have to replace big grid. If there is enough distributed energy and storage the grid doesnât need to be expanded. The expansion ends up being subsidized, and Canadian investors own a lot of backbone of the grid so tax money is just going to canadians.
Because home distributed energy is only counted as âefficiencyâ (it isnât worth it to keep track of), it makes it look like we are using less energy then we actually are, which makes us look better.
If the US can get to 50% RE, it is still a LOT of energy. We knew three things.
-we would fight about it using every argument under the sun as people are trying to protect their current investments.
- it is a mind boggling amount of energy, it would take decades.
- driving down the price was the most important because price and ease of use wins.
- If we are going to have EVs, then we also want an âoutâ in case of utility price gouging, the easiest is solar. 25% of EV owners have solar, and 8% of non-ev owners have solar, which is about what it has been historically. If that number holds, then we are going to get close to our 50% as the EV market increases. EVs are about 8-10% of the US market. Initially, we were looking at about 50% of the market because of my first point.
4 Likes
Just an idea. Most fresh water systems for citys use water towers, which are in fact energy storage devices. Perhaps these water towers could be used to supply brief bursts of energy to the electric grid. Has anyone tried something like this?
Rindert
1 Like
Again I have to agree with everything you written SeanO.
My comment, âDeluded to think we can replace big Grid.â was about all forms of DIY home made power.
One of the closest to achieving this that Iâve followed had been BC Canadian: Offgrid With Curtis Stone.
In my household I tell all that I can replace the power of any of the wall plug-in circuits. But not all of them when the Grid goes down. And I will not even attempt of DYI electrical power any of the 240 circuits except the Deep well.
So . . .
The wife acquired a small wall mounted cloths handing dryer rack; insisted I mount up for her.
This years Exchange student is a 15 y.o. gal from Taiwan.
So I bought both a wall electric plug-in quick water heating kettle. No more tea kettle on a 240VAC, 3000 watt stove top burner.
And I bought a new wall plug-in four person rice cooker. No more using the same 240VAC 3000 watt kitchen range burner either.
Huh. Back to sweating-in the winters firewood. Wife does not question that. Insists on it.
We still have two old wood fired kitchen stove set back. And three various wood heating stoves.
And she now for the last year has been driving her Toyota Hybrid. Collecting two warning faults now. Discovering just how many more before finding exactly when it will insist to take it to the dealer for resolutions. Learn; before ever, the Long-Without, needs. Tesla, Lucent and others with subscriptions!!?? That is nuts.
Ha! And I was just gifted a whole sack of BlueRay DVDâs recordings. I own the entertainments and informations. No asking please, please, please. They canât be hacked. Player locked out. Just need at most, 500 watts of 120VAC.
Just like my 10 shelves of in-real-by-God, paper books. Just need some illumination. Safe, clean, electric illumination for me.
S.U.
7 Likes
Rice cookers are great. The instant pots have the rice cooker sensor in them.
It looks like Ann Arbor is just to install a new grid.
Ann Arbor's sustainable energy utility aims to build the electric power grid of the future alongside the old one
You have a good case for an Automatic switching panel, then it starts up the backup generator, and prioritizes what circuits get powered based on available power, so it will do a rolling black out to lower priority circuits if say the well pump kicks on.
5 Likes
Here is a good shout out to this Nathan Dickeson fellow Iâd criticized for his woodgas-for-engines ignorances:
He is right. Going back Rural is the choice I made. And some of my family and ALL of my friends have made. But as can been read in the 22 feedback comments . . . not right for everyone.
Iâve puzzled much about this ongoing human insistence of; âfor everyoneâ; âwe must allâ.
All diverse pegs must be shaved down; and pounded forced down into some god-kings-brainiacs dictated round holes.
MaâNature knows the truth of it. Diversity in all things is the depth and stability for sustainability.
And that can be somewhat messy. Cluttered.
Is that the truth of it?? We are dictated to by compulsive, obsessive, neat-freaks??
S.U.
5 Likes
It turns out that someone has looked into using existing water towers as inertial energy storage devices for the electric grid. This is someoneâs masters thesis at the the University of Missouri. He explores bulk energy storage where I thought to only supply brief bursts, but theres a lot of good information here.
Rindert
1 Like
Honestly, it would work better for energy recovery to run the pumps rather then some storage device. IE make them more efficient rather then use them as a battery. similar to regenerative brakes on hybrids or evs. And they might already do that.
they do use like sewage treatment plant motors and pumps to help grid regulation because you can slow those down during peak periods.
1 Like
In this video they started out talking about a lightening arrestor that tripped off and took the Texas grid down. What do you do about a sudden interruption like that? You need âinertial generationâ something like a hydro turbine maintained at speed using minimum water flow until an algorithm decides to draw power from it and simultaneously opens a valve to increase water flow and maintain rotor speed. The duration of this event might be only a few milliseconds, but it would do a lot to stabilize a grid.
Rindert
2 Likes
Ok here is my contribution to the non wood gas generator .
Dave
3 Likes
I thought it had something to do with ED medicine.