We have had a sunny March so far. Good for solar. Don’t know if it’s of any interest, but this is my electricity situation right now. Orange is sold production to the grid, yellow is “free” consumption and blue is total consumption. Ran the splitter and chunker some during the day and wife some laundry, hence the spikes in consumption.
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Wow, nice!New system 15 kWp if I remember correct? We have 17,5 kWp total, 5 sets, panels mony poly and age from 10 to 2 years old. We peaked at 7,5 kW.
The blue peak in the top right is the EV plugged in.
Green is solar delivery to the grid, blue is usage. We can use the grid as a battery overhere. Super, but a form of subsidiary and about to change. Nevertheless, investments are doable to go off grid. The missing piece is woodgas for the 4 dark months.
Good for you JO, smaller system, more to the north and still more output.
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Jee , Tone you have more muscles and hair then me! Your arms are thicker then my legs.
Funny to see that farmer power always wins from the gym power.
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As always the last few % of self-reliance is the hardest part to ashive. Don’t think I’m prepared to go that route. Batteries would be required and only maintaining the ones in our vehicles is a pita. An emergency generator on woodgas would be nice though.
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You already have the gasifer systems J.O.
In your two different vehicle systems. THAT has been my nose rubbed DOW lesson.
Just buy the engine-generator and air-box convert. Operating the hours untill one of your vehicle system would heats spin down.
“Honey. We need to run the generator. So we must go shopping into the village first.”
S.U.
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I dont doubt you are not prepared, piece of kladdkaka for you.
Me? Not really nessecary but possible. I think to go Victron, less trouble, battery is 10 kW prismatic and waiting to be installed, BMS from Daly but might change to some intelligent one. Now it is possible to get a dynamic power contract. That means high and low prices during the day, even negative prices. That means you get payed to take power off the grid. I am just investigating this and I think here is some money, just dont know eaxctly how. It is a new product on the energy market and available for consumers…to be continued.
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Haha, that might not be a bad idea afterall 
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I know what 10kW means, but the rest is Greek to me. I’m quite old fasioned and not very keen on owning equipment I can’t fix myself. Even only solar panels was really pushing the limits for me, but one way to prevent savings to go down the drain with the inflation.
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Tone looks like Marcus Aurelius, Stoic Roman emperor haha.
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Haha, if I remember correct we are from the same year. For me greek too, only learning fast. All projects come together now. It will for you too. Government wants it all electric. My motto is, go with the flow, so I have to learn. And really like it. Free energy for ever, at least it will outlive me.
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Thought you Swedes might like to know what one of your home boys is doing among the alligators.
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I would probably try to use a venturi to suck oil in, and maybe one of those primer types of things for start ups. I don’t know how to calculate the draw though. I am sure there is a way to get in the ballpark. I guess you could put a needle valve on it. You need to be pretty careful a small leak a spark could make it a bit hot to handle.
But I don’t think you will save any money using propane, since it is related to oil prices. It is a byproduct of oil and ng, and I am sure the cost of that went up as well.
To be perfectly honest, the new 80v electric chainsaws look pretty darned powerful, It is way down on my list of things to get but it is there. I don’t want to do much more then a couple hours of cutting without a long break anyway. 
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Hi Sean. I’m not interested in using propane to avoid gasoline. I’m just always looking for alternatives in case gasoline were not available to use. Surviving here would not be possible for me without a chain saw. Long term storage of gasoline is difficult even without the ethanol. I find that I can’t leave gas in my saws for even a couple of months before they get real finicky and hard to start. Using fresh fuel normally prevents those things. I have a 56 Volt Echo saw and It’s great for a lot of things but it’'s not going to put all the cords of wood I go through in the stacks.
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Tom,
There is no substitute for road motor fuel. The good news is we will never run out of gasoline. The bad news is you may have to give up your streaming TV service to be able to afford gasoline. You will cheerfully pay $20 per gallon if it means keeping wood in the stove. That’s cheap compared to moving somewhere like Alabama. So you will complain, but you will pay.
Now, here is something you apparently do not know. Gasoline exists as a liquid below 50F. Inorder to stay a liquid above that temp, it has to be constantly evaporating. So, just like your radiator system, you have to keep gasoline under pressure. So store the gasoline in pressure tight containers. Look up Reid vapor pressure. I think it’s 10 pounds per square inch at 70F. It’s higher pressure at higher temps.
Long term storage is in pressure tight containers below ground…like the root cellar.
I spent a lot of money on the electric golf cart so I could go cut wood in the bush with something other than gasoline or manpower. It’s no joke, I think all these rainbow and unicorn people are coming to a rude awakening, now that they discovered that their Subarus aren’t powered by Elon Musk Memes.
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You are right Bruce. I did not know that and I did look it up so for everyone else’s education I’ll post it.
However, without having any interest in batting this ball around, I am not convinced that there is not a future where gasoline won’t be available to me even if I’m willing to sell a kidney to get it. Let’s just call it the zombie apocalypse and the one gas station I can currently get to without going ten miles is out of gas and no trucks are bringing more, or the station is just out of business. My particular brain set says prepare for all possibilities. No one has to agree. I hope I can always get gasoline, but I can’t make it myself and it always has a limited shelf life. I have a large propane tank and in the world there are a lot of 5 gallon propane tanks sitting under barbecues. You probably figured out by now that I’m one of those prepper wacko’s. I know there are chemists on the site. What type of oil would blend with propane and carried in it to lube a 2 stroke cylinder wall?
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Hey Tom,
The bit about storing gasoline was something I took to heart in spring of 2020. I squirrelled away about ten 55 gallon drums of the $.94/gal hi octane from the Rez. I think I have partial drum still out there that I cannot get to. It can be done and you can coast for a bit. That was my point, we just have to mitigate the high cost for awhile.
Let’s say you really are going to run propane on your chainsaw. I assume you will have some sort of vacuum regulator attached to the handle feeding gas to the air filter? Is it possible then, to fill the gasoline tank with the low ash two-stroke oil and use the carb to meter it in…you know turn down the mixture screws?
I know this isn’t the same thing, but search up Lanz Bulldogs running on producer gas. They are the only two strokes I have ever seen that run with gas.
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Okay, but propane is a byproduct of oil and NG production if those aren’t available then propane isn’t going to be available either.
To be completely honest, you are better at looking at methanol. Which is one of the distillate liquids of wood or otherwise known as wood alcohol.
Which Tom’s post reminded me of because it is used as racing fuel.
Or even straight up ethanol, the E85 only has 15% gas because of starting/timing issues running on ethanol.
Whether the chainsaw can handle it or not is another issue. And there may be a market for an engine that can handle it.
If you are going to distill wood, then it is almost easier to set up a generator to run on wood gas, and convert that to electric to fill your saw battery rather then go through the distillation process.
I have been complaining about the rainbow and unicorn people NOT buying the electric cars for a decade. Even if they all would have just jumped on the Bolt PHEV, they would be halfway to their goal. You can do a LOT with 35-50 miles of range. . But they came up with the excuse to not buy them by supporting the all-electric ones so they could wait which compounded the production problems because right now we are waiting for battery production to come online. And Tesla folks were drowning out the PHEVs because they were all stock holders.
So great they can get a Tesla when it can actually be produced at a price they can afford it, instead of buying half the solution 10 years ago. When which by now, means they are in the market for another car anyway and a lot of them STILL don’t have anything electric.
But that also plays into battery production, since if GM was selling 500k Volts a year, they would have increased battery production a lot sooner. Their first factory comes online sometime this year, but I am guessing most of that production for the first year or two production is completely sold out with commercial vehicles, but it isn’t online to help today.
And on a similar note the v8 lovers, put hybrids in the ‘eeww they are electric’ category, so people backed away from them to protect their ‘image’. Which if you need a v8 (and there are a lot of use cases) the best then you CAN do is to push hybrids to get people who don’t need a v8 to lower their consumption to keep fuel prices in check.
</venting rant>
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Excellent rant Sean! I actually don’t know if you are right because I have not been following what is going on. I am, however, chasing down all the big block V-8s and kids with gas hogs. Gas hogs are cheap right now. Diesels too! Well… they will be. I better shut up, I don’t understand how a super duty that’s 20 years old is still worth $10,000.
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On the make my chainsaw run on propane I am with TomH on this one.
Here’s why:
“Use it up. Wear it out. Make do. Or do without.” This is the very relevant old farmer way. This is what got folk thru the Great Depression period. This is far different form the 1970’s “Reduce. Reuse. Recycle”.
The gasoline fueled saws are Here&Now. At their peak of capabilities’ developments. And this tech giving the users the very best portable, useability.
The Project Farm guy I like; ain’t using the best-in-class gasoline chainsaws in his electric saw comparisons. He can’t. Be no comparison if he used my Stihl MS260-Pro.
Propane is the current worldwide no-grid, unreliable-grid supplied fuel. Just look at the international rural living videos.
I am betting propane will be the Gov’Mints for-all, last supported, delivered out fuels. Hmm? Gov’Mints and Militaries do not use it. Squeezing producers for what they do use, somethings got to be done with the gaseous portions, eh. Just flare burn off while civilians are cold, with no lighting or cooking heat will get them fragged.
This only two years old Dell computer of mine is now at best down to 1 hour usage battery capability.
I’ve advanced cordless drill-driver from year 1998 Sears 12VDC → 2004-5 Makita 14.5 VDC → to just this year a new Milwaukie three tools set 18 VDC.
All will high tech battery’s age out and fail. Corded converted I can 12 volt (14.2 volts charging) operate them all.
And I do have a rare breed PM 12vdc 1980’s era little chainsaw.
A Stihl mid-range 115VAC corded chainsaw.
Out in the woods I’m still using gasoline, gasoline, gasoline. Not having gasoline I can see better using one of these three on a carry tank of propane.
Versus the goona" be a hole in my pocket to battery replace 48-80 volt lithium battery special.
You go for it TomH.
Steve Unruh
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