The way I see it, the wood heat helps keep your electricity bill down. The central air will disperse your wood heat and assist since it’s thermostat metered. On our Trane units we can set a really high Cool Trip or whatever you would call the threshold to make it set out cool air.
Now that you can sell to the grid, any savings you’ve made will just be a benefit to you monetarily and conveniently to your neighbors. I’m a big proponent of home solar, can’t stand seeing it take up perfectly good grazing or farmland when you have all these roofs to mount them on!
Jo, you’re a traitor, I thought I’d see a wood gas-fired electricity system, and now this … I’m kidding, don’t take offense, congratulations on your investment.
Depending on how they turn out you’d better start come up with names. My father used to name his after neighbouring ladies according to their “carecaristics”
You are now your own electric company with more than one way to produce it. This is great in times of need for your country. Very good timing on your part. I am very proud of you JO.
I spent 35 years making Hydro power in Operations at two 1000 memegawatts plants on the Columbia River. It was very satisfying years of work for me.
Bob
“Big boy toys”
I keep telling wife now, she can only turn on the lights when the sun shines and the electricity is free. She rolls her eyes and tells me she wish we never installed the panels if this is the way it’s going to be in the future
Most out farm animals where named for there purpose, I had a cow named ribeye, dad had one named prime rib and my first 2 pigs were named biscuit and gravy chickens we just called the roosters fried and the laying hens breakfast
Our children always used to ask who’s on the plate - Johan, Pelle or Filippa. The bull or lamb they played with during spring or wife’s old riding mare.
Welcome to my world. I had a guided tour for my wife , now she knows where the electricity and heat is coming from. She is ok with all that as long as she can simply turn the switch , turn the thermostat and nothing smells/smokes/stinks. Mmm, tricky part to build a gasifier without the last.
Ha! Ha! We’ll still love you anyhow J.O.
Good use to put your plant shut down settlement money. Into real hardware. We all are waiting for the Thermal Electric Generator cells to mature enough in durability to do direct woodstove/furnace to electric power making. Very risky to invest in kW levels there yet.
For your wife . . . she is a nurse, yes.
Here, many winter locked into shorted hours of sun, and clouds, fogs and mists fight SAD too much of the year. Seasonally Affected Depression. A newer name for that now.
The cure is minimum of 10,000 lux’s of near natural spectrum lighting.
Back in the incandescent lighting bulb that would take 1000 to 1500 watts to do.
The short compact fluorescents phase that dropped to maybe 500-600 watts. They self-heated and were position installed sensitive to live.
Now converted over to 40, average of 7.5 watt compact fluorescents it is only 350 watts if all 40 are lighting.
350 watts loaded output barely will keep the Honda 2000 watt Inverter-Generator running and warmed up.
So tell your wife for your good metal health you poor out-of-work fellow, you need your moods lighting.
I’m too old to start a new program like generating my own electricity. Besides, I can’t give up entirely on wood. Biden has everyone jumping to electricity for everything but changing babies diapers. The power company contacted me to put in a solar farm on 37 acres of my land. I guess they are going all over trying to get places for solar farms. A few miles west of me they cut down two square miles of pine trees and cleared the land for a solar farm. If “sleepy Joe” is concerned about the climate so much he would outlaw cutting trees. They will do more for the climate for a longer time than switching everything solar farms. My opinion is; “all the climate problems are traced back to over population of mother earth”. It is much easier to blame “ozone holes”, or carbondioxide, and most recent methane gases than to face the real problem. I guess China tried to limit births, but as I understand it they went about it for the wrong reason. So you younger guys keep following the governments problem of the month. I’m just riding the tide to the end. TomC
I still smile when I think about rolling a 100 megawatt generator and put it on line. Bringing it up to 100 megawatts in less then 2 minutes. The turbine is generating over 135,000 horsepower. It was a different kind of SWEMegawatt and I had 10 of them at the two hydropowerhouses. In 14 minutes we could go to full load on all 10 units. It was quite exciting at times.
Retired from all that now. Good memories. Now new memories to make. DOW
Bob
When the banks are taller then the shove handle, it’s the most bittersweet time of the winter. One good blast from Canada and the drifts would be 8ft deep. Or…it could hit the thirtys and I could walk the snow crusts pruning the tops of the apple trees. It all depends.
The shovel and I went for a walk following the trail of a snowmobile that didn’t come back. I found it resting against a tree. About 20mins of light shoveling made a ramp to run it back onto the top of the snow. Then I engaged in some very American behavior, namely burning hi octane gasoline in a noisy and fruitless manner, all the while, grinning unashamedly. Fun is fun.
Duke Energy used to hold an incentive program to install panels on roofs of homes and businesses. Solar “farms” just make me sick to my stomach, ruins entire habitats for animals. Out there in Death Valley it’s displacing tortoises and other animals with the miles of solar panels. Windmill fields depopulating insects and birds.
I dont think the cooperative my mother is part of does grid tie solar however, but I’m okay with just generating for a battery bank. One dream project of mine is to build a water tower and have the well pump powered by direct solar and just tops it off as it goes, or shuts off when it’s full.
If I bring a little philosophy and mathematics into electricity generation , … there is a heating season of about half a year when there is a need to heat the house, during this time there is also a small production of electricity from solar power plants, but the consumption of electricity is high during this time, so countries should encourage production from energy sources that can be used in winter, and that is wood. In this way, the fluctuations in the grid production would be reduced and the waste heat would be used for heating. But there is no incentive and little interest for this purpose , as it involves a lot of work and dirty hands , modern man wants convenience without effort , …
The reason for it is because we are running out of oil, and the high energy prices keep screwing up our economy. There are a 100 ways to generate electric.
As far as the trees, they are about 2% efficient at converting the light into energy.
As far as your fields, they can install them in a way, that you are essentially fallowing the land for the 30 or however many years the contract is for. Thus whoever owns it next can reclaim it as farmland and it should be better soil. A lot of farmland has depleted topsoil. They also have the panels on risers, to accommodate grazing underneath, but I don’t recall you having animals.
I just read an article on how many fights there are about installing utility scale projects because of the ‘land usage’ but then I go look at the urban sprawl and that seems to be fine with people.
Hurrah! Tone that is the goal of many of us here.
MicroCoGeneration with site grown wood as the input source.
That seasonal needed heating with wood as you and J.O., TomH. and a few others do, gets you so tantalizing close.
IF you could just convert more directly a small percentage of the heating woods released energy as shaft power, or directly as electricity.
Mini-steam is out once you seriously look into the modern boat systems. Costs. Safety. Multiple Maintenace points.
The tease of modern mini-Stirling systems . . . Costs! And they really want too high of a DeltaT for any real power.
TEG’s m-a-y-b-e some day.
So woodgas into small IC piston engines it is.
And past the speculations it just is not practical or safe to woodgas generate in a wood space heating system.
Now IF you have the good hardwoods to be able to made the surplus and rob in-stove/in-furnace made charcoal . . . just m-ay-b-e.
Matt Ryders current direction change.
Oh, I forgot about DaveDownUnder (d100f Dave & Brian). He does make nearly all of his electrical generator charcoal fuel in his bulk wood stove. Gum wood?
… I’m kidding, don’t take offense, congratulations on your investment.
