Here in Manitoba just across the line from Ontario we pay just under 8 cents Canadian per kwh. Manitoba has abundant hydro making up most of the power generation. I believe that’s the cheapest electricity in North America. And export significant power to Ottertail power in Minnesota through one of the most technically advanced transmission lines in North America. Ontario also privatized hydro under a previous government, and surprisingly private enterprise has under invested in infrastructure renewal and built in a profit margin… 
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Garry is that with delivery and taxes or just consumption?
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I don’t think you can pull the air through. Might be better off to start with a design like this:
http://www.farm2000.co.uk/farm2000.co.uk/F2000_Batch.html
it is basically a whole bale boiler system. You just drive the bale in since it is already compacted. You can DIY it, in fact the first one I saw was like 30 years ago, and the guy was using it to heat his chicken operation. You might actually have better luck tipping the bale on its side, then putting a hole in the middle like the sawdust stove.
Plus a metering charge, the bills I have before me show $7.82, and 1.4% provincial tax, 5% GST, for a principal residence, full 8% provincial for revenue property.
Hey gary so all in total bill delivered by kws used comes to?
My last home consumption bill was for 1,580 kwh, $141.62. (Electric heating)
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Wow that’s cheap. With rural delivery and taxes I end up at about 23 cents a kw…
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Yeah, I wouldn’t be using electricity like this if it cost 3 times more. On the other hand it makes Manitoba about the hardest market for alternative energy. However, this power is over 80% green, which is encouraging. In rural areas grid reliability can be a significant consideration for self sufficiency. If you want a transformer on a pole for a new hookup it’s about 30 grand, which tips things heavily towards off grid. MB Hydro is systematically removing the rural grid as farm sites are abandoned, sad to see though good for the bottom line, especially given that they provided power to every farm as a major social benefit in the 40’s and 50’s.
Here’s an abstract confirming the value of fluidized bed gasification, and providing a potentially valuable tip regarding the sand.
From a brief look at abstracts it seems that straw gasification should have quite good potential.
“My last home consumption bill was for 1,580 kwh, $141.62. (Electric heating)”
Wow, that would be a 400.00 bill here in “medium density” Ontario.
Dave, have a look here:
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_a
You can see we’re paying almost double what it costs in California. In fact, there is only one state that pays more than us, and that is Hawaii, even Alaska is cheaper than Ontario!! Plus, we don’t even know the impact of the new carbon tax on our bill yet (other than it’s going to be even more expensive).
Dave, I think what I have in mind is essentially a TLUD, just with a moving column of fuel. I work in a shop so the steel end of the project will more or less be free.
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Gary, Ontario Hydro went broke and became Hydro One and they do distribution only. OPG makes the majority of the power and was up till 2014 still public. The Libs announced plans to sell off the lions share (60%) last year and I think liquidated 10% worth in 2015. We will eventually end up with an unholy alliance between government and corporate ownership with the private ownership having the collective final say on everything. The Liberals also saw to it that the Ontario Ombudsman had much reduced oversight to represent the public interest going forward.
It’s easy to see how we could very likely end up with a corporation calling the shots, and the government backing them with the force of law. Same thing that happened when they privatized the 407, if you don’t pay the toll to the privately owned operator of the 407, the Province will not renew your plate.
Hence, here I am on Dive on Wood😄
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Gary, I’m not too knowledgeable about fluidized bed. That link said that the oxygen required for stoich was 4.28:1, and that for gasification they supplied 7-25% of that presumably using air. Would this amount of air be enough to fluidize the sand? Or is is standard to use some type of inert gas in addition to the air to fluidize the bed?
Looking at the table you linked to please remember they would be quoting in us dollars so multiply by 1.35 for canadian rates. I like this link here
http://m.huffpost.com/ca/entry/11107590 ignore the article but it prices out 1000 kw in different locations; more honest representation. Anyway you look at it owner generated power is catching up as rates climb everywhere.
That article was bang on the money!
I wish I could pay my hydro bill with USD, but unfortunately, I work here in Ontario and earn CAD.
Owner generated power is probably just about there on the solar front if a guy was savvy enough to put his own system together and had a lot of years ahead of him to make it pay. I think someday the province is going to have a revenue issue on the generation front, maybe that’s why they want to unload it.
Just like a local city councillor a couple years back suggesting they put meters on rural homeowners water wells to generate revenue, so we might someday pay taxes on wind and sunshine if too many folks bailed off of the grid.
Those 1000 lb straw bales run 25.00/ea, and if you take several loads, 20.00/ea. My typical hydro+gas+heat costs in a month are ~550.00/month, that buys roughly 27,500 lbs of straw. I could burn almost 1000 lbs per day and still break even! I don’t think it get’s any cheaper than this. Just a matter of figuring out a system that will work in real life.
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yeah, that is kind of why I was trying to point you towards the rotting straw. You can get it done quickly, and it buys you time to get something working for the other stuff. 
You can put together your own solar panel system. (I thought ontario had some sort of tax rebate for them?) There are programs for like your cell phone that will help you plan your system. then you can order online. The panels are less then a dollar a watt now. If you can install them yourself, you can save a huge bundle, and even more if you can make your own mounting, and such. i would imagine like canadian solar panels would be cheaper in canada, and possibly inverters as well. I think the US has a tariff on Chinese solar panels (which I don’t think are as good but…) , and schneider electric bought xantrax a while back. If you do it yourself, you might be able to get a good system for under 2 dollars a watt and have a significantly faster payback period. The cost of a turnkey, utility sized fixed panel system is averaging 1.25/w right now in the US. Most of the cost is permitting, planning, labor, etc.
Y
I have no direct experience with fluidized bed gasification, I am only aware of it conceptually. From the little I have seen or read I would assume they mean the bed can be fluidized with that percentage of air and achieve gasification. The straw is going to be quite light relative to the bed, so it seems plausible that fuel is metered in to manage gasification at an appropriate rate, the fluidization is in a way a separate design issue.
There must be some technical issues with it, if it was simple there should be more systems. Then again, with energy and fuel as cheap and accessible as it has been, maybe the incentive wasn’t there.
A swirl burner could be the simplest combustion approach, very little technical challenge once the appropriate design is established.
As you say, the field of efficient straw combustion seems to be pretty unexamined. It sounds like a fun area for experimentation, the fuel is over abundant, extremely cheap and easy to get, dry and ready to burn, processing minimal.
Regards,
I don’t think it’s that cheap up here, but it doesn’t need to be when it costs .25/KWH to buy it off the pole! There was a program “microfit” where a homeowner could put up to a 10KWH array and the province would give you a 20 year contract to supply them with green energy and pay you $0.80 KWH. No, that’s not a typo, almost a buck a kilowatt! Did I mention our hydro costs have really soared? Lol!
I looked a little into the rotting piles. My house was built in 1870 and still contains some “era-specific” insulation technologies from back then (ie little to none). I’m going to stick with a plan that can really kick out the heat. The rotting piles don’t seem to last too long or get too hot. I need to heat from late Oct to early May, and on the order of 10,000 lbs worth of wood pellets per winter.
Biggest thing is that gasification opens the door to transportation which rotting piles would have trouble with😄
Hey Garry, I feel it’s going to work one way or the other, I’m hoping a powered fuel charge will help alleviate a lot of problems related to gravity fuel flow and ash/clinker. Power in from the bottom, ash discharge out the top, air injection right in the middle of the fuel bed via a hollow auger stem. As long as airflow through the fuel can be figured out, there might be a good chance of success. The airflow I hope can be managed via the size of the straw particles and size should be limited only by the auger’s ability to push it, and my auger is 6.5 diameter so I have a bit of latitude.
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I agree, the straw is a ready fuel source, and there seem to be multiple ways to approach efficient feeding and combustion, just a question of getting in there to see what works, and how well.