Listers !!!!!

[greengrass]

I have monitored my electricity meter and on average my familiy burn through 16units of electricty a day.

Can I ask the totally open question

Is there any way in which I can hope to achieve 16units a day in a surburban house with wind and solar with
a grid tie?

[KenB]

Greengrass,

You are unlikely to generate 16 units of power per day from either solar pV or wind in  UK suburbia. 

I know someone with a 2kW solar array  (which cost £16,000, but with £8000 Clearskies grant)  and he gets nothinglike 16kW per day - especially in winter.

Suburban wind, is a non-starter,  not even worth considering.

You should first address your electricity usage, and make all the usual savings, like low energy bulbs, turning things off, doing away with inefficient appliances and generally being able to account for every unit you use.  I did this and got down to 8 units per day - and that includes running an office from home for 10 hours per day.

With the vaguaries of small scale solar and wind, I have chosen the next best renewable,  to heat and power my suburban home.

It's a 1951 Lister CS 6hp diesel engine running on waste vegetable oil.  You can find details elsewhere in this forum or at my website:

  www.powercubes.com/listers.html



Ken

Suburban Surrey

[nicnaim]

Greengrass,

Sorry if this is off topic, but I've just been browsing Ken's web site for the last 30 or 40 minutes, excellent stuff, despite his claims to be a novice.  I'm intrigued to know how close you can be to a neighbouring property without causing a nuisance/breakdown in communication, with the noise from the lister?  Your layout is clearly more suburban than urban.

Regards

Nic

[KenB]

Nic, Greengrass,

The Lister is fitted with an effective silencer. 

It is run at half speed, and 1/3rd power, and it is enclosed within an acoustic housing, made from dense 25mm plywood, and this in turn is inside a double skinned, insulated workshop - just being constructed this week, to replace the old shack.

It is about 10m from any neighbouring properties, and I do not run it outside normal working hours.

Running at this slow speed gets fuel consumption down to less than 400ml per hour, and the electrical output of about 750W is much better matched to my household requirement.

I am currently investigating the possibility of directly driving a 2kw permanent magnet windturbine alternator, and selling power back to the grid using a G83/1 approved inverter.



Ken

[nicnaim]

Ken,

Thanks for the information.  Unfortunately I think the size of my backyard and the distance from neighbouring properties would probably preclude me from this type of generation, even during the day unless I could find a very effective means of silencing it.  Really enjoyed reading about your set up though, thanks again.

Nic

[Ivan]

Probably worth actually visiting a slow-running silenced lister set up - I am sure it is quieter than you think.

[greengrass]

All,

I have looked at engine generated power in the past.... but as of know its on the back burner.
I bought a cheap diesal generator that I'm prepared to ruin and was going t run some veg oil into the diesal
mix to see what happened.... comment on that??

second..... reverse my question a little .... do you think I could build a wind farm in a field and generate
enough power for the house???

how many turnbines.... I was thinking lots of 200W machines  am i barking mad

[Ivan]

The diesel generator would more than likely work well on veg oil (but don't come running to me if you break it!!) The pumps on single cylinder generators tend to be very simple and pretty robust. You might have trouble starting, but if it is electric start, this is easy to overcome.

The advantages of the big Lister engines are 1. water-cooled so easy to recover the waste heat. 2.slow speed - more time to recover heat 3. slow speed-low noise (and 4. reliability)

Yes, you could generate all you need from wind turbines, if you have sufficient wind, but bear in mind that wind is an unpredictable resource, and when there is no wind, you cannot generate any power, regardless of how many turbines you have.

Ivan

[peter999]

Greengrass

     I have a Kipor KDE6700TA single cyclinder diesil generator 5KVA that i run on a 50/50 of dino desil and bio desel, it runs find if not a bit lumpy evey now and then. (smells great, always makes me hungery though!)

When ever i fill it up i add about 1/4 bottle of REDX diesel injector cleaner, this seems to help it start in cold weather.

I do not use it a lot, a few hours a week as its rather noisy and the neighbours are not talking to me after getting planning permision for my 1KW turbine so i do not want to upset them any more, i brought it more to play with the biodiesel and as a back up genny.

regards Peter

[greengrass]

Ivan and all,

NIce comment .....    100*0 is still 0 when there is no wind !!

As for shoving something other than diiesal in the gen that projects on hold for a while.

Technical question.......

Lets assume I have 5 200W turbines of the sort Navitron sells.
How would I connect them all together...... would they all need seperate battery banks or power into
one larger bank.....
I assume then I could grid tie into the house ?

Thanks

[Ivan]

Each wind turbine would need to be on its own charge controller, but these can all feed into a single large battery, which would then be used to run an inverter


Ivan

[greengrass]

Thanks for that.
in your estimate lets carry on with the theory of 5 200W turbines.
What size battery bank would be needed?
I assume theres no maximum but is there a minimum?
Thanks

[Ivan]

Assuming you have a 24v system, I would suggest at least a 600Ah battery bank.....preferrably more.

[greengrass]

OK,

Im still picking any ones brains that care to comment.
As with a lot of us Ive bought bits and pieces over the years some without some real expense
and re-jigging I'm at 12V at the moment.

Does any know of a 12V grid tie inverter that might work with both solar and wind or
am I asking just too much !!!!

G

[stephen]

On the subject of noisy Listers…have a look on you tube. There are a number of videos that show you how quiet they are.  I think Andy from homebrew power (our new member. Welcome Andy) also has some video on his site.

Stephen