I work in the solar industry, and I heard the 30% fed tax credit is coming to an end soon. Because of this the solar industry is in overdrive right now. Without the credit, solar is A LOT more expensive. With the right system you can run AC full blast and keep your home nice and comfy as long as the sun is shining, and with batteries it will keep working at night, and you can be completely off grid (perfect for SHTF). Build a gassifier and be the only person driving around when SHTF because there will be no gas at the pump. Better get your solar now and take advantage of that credit ASAP!
I forgot to mention the tesla fast chargers can charge lion batteries up to 80% in about 45min. They use 500v pulsed DC to charge… I’m a little unclear on the specifics. The last 20% takes longer because they slow the charge rate down. but from zero that is about 64 kw which is faster then the 24kw charger can go.
Oh and this is in the pipeline…
(they use a supercap on the charger to increase the amount of power the charger can deliver, and it is made of special materials, so I am sure it is expensive, and also they said it would be 10 years before it would be commercially available…)
Hey. CarlZ, StephenA, ChrisKY all said it.
24/7 waiting always on demand woodgas electrical power will always be about the wood consumption.
RandyL reverse this annual making wood need. AC to heating.
Northern needing lots of heat climates. My needs are 200 days with an hourly useage rate of at least 10 pounds an hour.
Another 15-20 days this will jump to as high as 20 pounds an hour. A final 100 days able to first thing in the morning 20 pounds batch burn with a same evening 20 pound batch burn.
Been doing this for 45 years. Energy savings insulation’s, downsizing, windows upgrading and better woodstoves and chimneys has reduced this wood consumption demand in half. Really no more effective gains to be had there now.
That,s 30,000 pounds of wood to fall, buck up, split, stack to solar dry; re-stack to wet season dry store annually per family, per household.
Yep I can now woodgas electrical generate too. To replace ALL of our grid used electricity would double our wood needed annually. And then as JosephH and AlexT say that wood to be generator fueled gasified to has to be additionally chunked up and be drier yet.
And as CarlZ said to use woodfuel to replace all of my driving fuel that would triple my annual wood needs.
Ha! I’d need multiple kids slave labor to keep up. Those kids will/do grow up and free themselves.
So man . . . . pick just ONE wood hog to slave yourself to at first, and then decide.
Easy.
Go out on your 600 acres. Cut. Stack and dry wood for stove wood. Sell it. Set back the money for developing. Do this a few years and imagine never being able to stop wood-swaet-slaving. Imagine 2x, 3x having to increase your wood-slaving.
After 5 years wood selling take your wood money and in your part of solar capable Texas invest then in enough PV solar to power that seasonally needed AC.
SCREW THE GOV’MINT HOG-TROUGH! If it takes grants, subsidies, rebates to get it done I ain’t going anymore. After compact florescent getting gov’mint over-sold screwed, I’ll just buy my own LED and boot-legged incandescents, thank you.
I control me. That’s the freedom. Taken. And Given.
I will not tax others for my projects. For My ideals.
Regards
Steve
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Thanks everyone for your input! Oh by the way Happy Fathers Day to all you Pappas out there! Everyone has some great ideas and a lot of information here to absorb. I am kind of leaning toward Alex’s idea and use circulation as an option instead burdening myself with having to chunk and burn, chunk and burn. I’m 56 yrs old and I’m not getting any younger. I cant really use P.V because where my cabin is located, is in a dense forest, and if I cut the trees down to get my solar then it will increase the temp in the summer to try to cool down. On a side note though I do have a question about the affects of EMP on P.V equipment, i.e. charge controllers panels ect. I think the panels would be ok, but the charge controller would have to be in some sort of farday cage. What is ya’lls thought on that. I could go solar but I would have go over to the next plot and clear some land which I really do not want to do and also it is my understanding that you loose effientcency running a longer line from your panels to the battery bank/charge controller(s) I’m still considering HHO and suppliment it with syngas if that is even feesible. Bob Boyce ran a 6 cylinder Mopar on it with HHO alone. With the suppliment of wood gas…i don’t know any ones thoughts
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Amen brother Steve THE GOV’MINT HOG-TROUGH! is just about dried up.I farmed for almost 40 yrs. and never took a dime of gov ag. money.
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Right, but if they are too close and and fire starts you are toast. You want a perimeter. There are guidelines for it, but it is basically, you don’t want a burning tree falling and being able to catch your cabin on fire especially surrounded by that many acres of woods. I was just trying to think of something fairly passive. Not because of your age, but there is time factor involved. 
I haven’t -really- looked at emp issues but I am guessing someone else has.
Since I just read it. Sunvault Energy, just announced they are making Supercapacitors out of graphene that charge 10x faster the lion batteries and hold just about as much juice, and can go through a million charge discharge cycles. They said they could make them for about 100 dollars right now, and they are hoping to drop that in half in < 10 years. Lion batteries are sitting in the 200-300 range right now… I don’t know about leakage, capacity or any other details(yet), but it is something to keep an eye on.
(I just thought I would mention it in this thread too, since you wanted to charge as fast as possible, but then you could hook up a much bigger electric motor hooked to your engine to generate electric for your use.)
You might also look at making charcoal, because you have plenty of brush, it reduces in volume and you can store it for long periods of time. The gasifier designs are usually fairly simple and straight forward.
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I don’t do hi heat just high cold but many of the lessons are the same. You start by reducing your losses through sunny windows badly insulated walls and ceilings leaky door seals that cuts load on your ac and is cheap and conventional. Next you tackle storage. If ac is your main load start loading up on mass that you can cool. Thick slabs, ceramics, doubled drywall and if you have space water storage(always good to have), eben an extra freezer. All of those are cheap long lasting low tech storage devices. All this is to allow you to bulk produce either solar or wood gas during waking hours and coast at night. That is the off grid secret. Late night ramblings…
Best regards, David Baillie
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Growing up we didn’t have AC, so we spent a lot of time in the basement because it was a lot cooler if we weren’t outside.
I did find out that if you keep the attic cool, it doesn’t push hot air back down into the living area, and it gives a place for warmer air to go. I use a box fan in my attic to help push air around.
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Yep.Yep. All what DavidB says in spades works for winter heat moderation as well as summer cooling.
10,000 pounds of combined ceramic floor tiles and concerte backer board in the kitchen/dining room floors stores a lot of heat or cool. Add in ~4,000 pound of the same in the corner wood stove iron, and it’s walls/floor ceramic tiles and concrate backer boards does the same. 6 hours winter nights caary over heat. 12 hours mid-summer carry over cooling. 2 story old farm house shape and I/we chimney up and out solar gain heat nicely for a never above 75F interior heating up.
Of couse that does require an open windows nighly chill down inside to at least 60F.
And there is the rub for most “modern” ljust this last 60 years new expectations. That your interior spaces will all be a finite regulated 72F, with dehimidification.
Randy L a now becoming classic engineering mistake is calculating oversizing the HVAC system when the roof solar gain areas are covered with PV solar or Green’Grow roofs.
These both convert the roof’s solar gain heating by converting this solar engy into instead other energy than just simple heat. Like do-all electricty!
Lived through the Mt Saint Helens electrical storms. Annual multiple near-hit lightning storms kills at least a tree or two a year within 300 feet of us. Living in the prime, easy, PNW area for the North Koreans to EPM try to shut down cheap from a fishing trawler rocket lofted blast.
Just layer your efforts a bit.
PV: have an older RV inverter stored back to back up the newer MMPT types.
Screw the newer high-tech battery banks. A fork lift lead acid battry-pac modual can be had new, or used. Learn to care for it and get 10+ years usable life. Learn lead-acids; and then if ever come an EMP event and you will be surrouned by out of fueled vehicles each with a lead acid battery most usable for 5 years.
Practical - yeas use some LED lighting. ALSO buy, circuts load desig then proof/use some incandesents too.
Ha! Even you nned a bith of seasonal heat right at the time you need the most lighting.
Don’t let EMP fears spoil your efforts. Just get smart.
Again easy ways to learn all of this first hand. A used cheap self contained motoer home has most all of these systems already onboard. Sized just right for a stand alone cabin. Including an AC system. Gutting out, restoring fuctions and repairing the system would teach you one of the most important “day-after” skills. How to “Use it up. Make do. Or do without”
Valuable guy will be the one who can repurpose out-of-fuels tech’s to be basic needs, useable.
Barterable skill-trade.
That backing up learning can start now.
Pixilated ultra-watts saving hobbiest’s wastes irreplacable time scratching thier inventive make-it-better itches.
That time could have been be better spent out planting, nurturing then work-sweat harverting more trees fuel woods. Personally Work toughend then, surpises, become mere inconvneces challenges. Fun actually.
Regards
Steve Unruh
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folks, my cabin isn’t really a cabin, it is a concrete (ferro crete) geodesic dome approx. 700 sq ft with 6in concrete walls and 4 inches of spray foam with another 3/4 in of concrete on top of that on the inside. .8 inch slab. fire place in the center of the dome so the chimney acts as the center support for the dome. heating is no problem. this baby is air tight. If I run A.C. it will be very efficient. I shot a 308 mag at it and it did not go all the way through the dome but I think it might have hit a piece of rebar. just to give ya’ll an idea of the construction.
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By the way Steve I like your attitude!!!
Glad you mentioned that… in light of that I agree, your A/C needs should be quite tolerable on woodgas. And I still think that you’ll be able to shut down and energy-coast for overnight periods, at least most of the year.
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The chimney will pull air out. I open my damper in the summer. If you can add a vent towards the top by the ceiling it would help during summer a lot. It acts like a teepee vent. I don’t know if you can do it and remain within building codes though.
You can make a pit of rocks or broken concrete and get the mass Steve is talking about. Make the top about 30" below ground level, and just circulate air through it for cooling. It is like a cheap form of geothermal, It is about the same as a basement without having one. You do need to have some sort of way to keep water out of it, or it can mold. With a chimney vent, and an fairly airtight space, and some wind, you probably don’t need a fan. There are designs all over the net for it.
Our neighbors had a geodesic shaped house back in the 70s, it was a pretty cool design. Our other friends had one of those pits, but they also reversed the flow in the winter with solar hot air panels. They opened the doors in the middle of winter with 8" of snow out because it was too hot in their house.
Steve is also correct solar panels can help shade a place, but there needs to be a gap for airflow behind them, as they do get hot.
Oh while I am thinking about it, for running solar a long way, they usually convert it to ac, or pulsed dc to run it long distances to reduce the resistance so you don’t need to have the thick cables and high voltages needed for a pure dc system. Microinverters use this principle, and they take care of some of the shading issues too. Wind has used it for years.
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I have never had air conditioning but if I did I’m sure I would need a lot of motivation to get me out of the house on days like today .
It is almost 7PM and the temp is near 100F plus the high humidity . If one spends the day out working in this heat it sure makes you sleep good at night . 
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My wife has always wanted me to find a job down in the south. I always tell her were northerners we belong in the north… I say trust me but she just don’t listen. She has this vision of the south that it’s always 70 and sunny with 45% humidity LOL.
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She’s thinking southern Michigan.
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(and no 6" roaches err palmetto bugs)
Well RandyL you dfined out your actual woodfuel needs well now.
You have lots of onsite wood available. In a remote location you will not be occuping year round.
Exactly the same circumtances as any only seasonally used hunting/hiking/vacation cabin.
The known evoled solutions for these for engine/AC fuel will be what to work for.
Here I will shock you.
All engine fuels Are; or should be considered aging to useable, organic.
The very best long storable and flexible to use fuel is propane/Liquifued Petroleum Gas. Why? Because it can be easily compressed, heat removed, and then condnesed down into a non-corrosive energy dense liquid.
Compressed methane cannot be feasibly liquifed and strored without cryogenic $$$$ refrigeration. Same with the woodgas fuel componets.
LPG will last as long as you can keep steel tank, lines, valves intergrity. THIS is the “organic” part to it.
ONLY fosisil coal could be cheaper and longer useable fuel energy stored. It’s “organic” use downfall is using it the heat and supheric acids degradation it does to you equipment.
Long term storage of either pump gasiline, or deisels are well know and easily seachable. AT best 1-3 years fir gasiline. Dependine on the actuall desel engine 2-5 years on the deisel.
Solar as you’ve relized has an “organic” degradation to it with the hails stroms you all can get annually. Most hail damagded car I ever drove had Texas licence plates.
Micro-wind? Yeah. Will it be there functionable from annual storming and tornadoes? See . . organic.
Micro-hydro need ANNNAL floods damaged, sliting clogging maintnces. See . . .organic too.
Wood is Good; because most all events except for wildfires tend to help you get useable wood down at ground level.
Pre-cut up wood though sitting, waiting has a tendency to be four/six/eight legged bug eaten up here badly starting into it’s 2nd year. Two legged human critter packed off. Ha! Have both of these happen to me a lot up at our mountain river cabin.
And even here in the home valley by the fourth year sitting woodshed stored wood then garrantted to be so spider infested it is bite-time, injected antibiotics one person in the household at a time.
So . . . suggest you do what I do. Develope the means in equipment and experences to turn wood into shaft power. Have a limited stock of wood fuel on-hand, used, refreshed ANNAULY. Just like .22 shells stocks, canned foods, etc.
Set aside, store the means in axes, bowsaws, crosscut saws to be able to needs-must make wood fuel quietly ever come the need for that quiet-no-more-easy chainsaw fuel time.
Of course do have chainsaws too.
Ha! I’ve got three differnt sized gasoline and two diferent electric chainsaws.
But then I am know to be redundancies “three guns” anal.
Regards
Steve Unruh
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Ya’ll can correct me if I am wrong, but if I remember my physics correctly, those types of refrigerators are using a very slow evaporative process to cool a very small air space. Using a small heat source instead of compression to create an environment for the refrigerant to evaporate limits you considerably in the amount of “cold” you can make–or rather the amount of heat you can extract. We ran into a similar problem with a direct solar freezer we made back in the 80’s and again with a propane refrigerator we tried to juice up more recently. Some of our problems had to do with cycling that process. I think you would not get much cool air out of such a system. I could be wrong, I’m sure most of you know more about it than I do. Billy
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My wife is from Houston so I’ve spent a good bit of time there, and the heat is worse there than it is here in AL, but it’s not a whole lot worse sometimes. Your AC needs depend a lot on the house. My wife has a pretty nifty system of opening and closing the house—and believe it or not, lighting a wood stove in the summer to dry things out-----that helps us not need the air conditioning. Another thing that contributes to this fact is that every construction dumpster I drive by gets raided for the scrap bag of insulation cutoffs which end up in my attic. If we tear down a house or scrap a mobile home or a deep freeze or a water heater, the fiberglass all ends up in the house somewhere. Over time you get an R-50 for free. It works quite well, but everyone’s sit is dif. People lived many thousands of years before AC though. I love tech but I often wonder how many of the things we worry about now will actually be an issue when it all falls apart. I know when I have lived in different third world countries, it is amazing how fast your perspective changes on what you consider needs and what become luxuries. What’s more amazing is how fast they change back when you come home.
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