[vtsnowedin]

Back in the 70's I helped take down some windmills in the Dakotas and Montana. They were Jacobs three blade direct drive and had blades that swept about a ten foot circle. They put out 1.8 to 2.2 KW of 32 volt DC power and charged a bank of 16 two volt batteries that stood two feet tall and weighed about 150 lbs each. By 75 all the original batteries from the 30's were gone and most had three tractor batteries in series in their place. Many of the generators were still in working condition due to the excellent design that used no gears or required lubrication changes.
The modern version under the same name puts out 20KW AC and the rotors sweeps 31 feet. Just the increase in the swept area accounts for the increase in out put. If I had to go off off grid I'd get one of these and perhaps add in a bank of solar panels on a roof.
http://2jbs.com/windturbines/jacobs20kw.html

[dohboi]

r wrote: " most people worldwide earn less than $10 a day, with many earning only around $3 daily. They cannot afford or can barely access what the middle class takes for granted."

Not sure what your point is here.

In most rural locations around the world in poor areas, solar and/or wind is cheaper than getting wires strung across great distances to connect to any (usually very intermittent) grid electricity. So your monetary argument is actually in favor of distributed alternatives in these cases.

And yes, shipping is needed in most cases, but ships are starting to have sails again, and this will likely increase. Trains can be electrified pretty easily, too.

[Hawkcreek]

r wrote: " most people worldwide earn less than $10 a day, with many earning only around $3 daily. They cannot afford or can barely access what the middle class takes for granted."

Not sure what your point is here.

In most rural locations around the world in poor areas, solar and/or wind is cheaper than getting wires strung across great distances to connect to any (usually very intermittent) grid electricity. So your monetary argument is actually in favor of distributed alternatives in these cases.

And yes, shipping is needed in most cases, but ships are starting to have sails again, and this will likely increase. Trains can be electrified pretty easily, too.

I think both points here are valid. It is difficult for an impoverished third worlder to afford a major alternative power system, but if you have access to a small, neighborhood PV system to just provide lights and a few hours of internet connection a day, that can bootstrap a hopeless case into one with at least the possibility of advancing.
I remember the stories of our pioneer forefathers using lamp oil to study at night. If you can provide study time after sundown, you can change the world, in my opinion.

[dohboi]

Good points, Hawk.

[toolpush]

Tanada,



From the image attached, there does not appear to be too many obstacles for the turbines, and they appear much higher than I have normally seen on home size wind turbines in rural environment, you can't just write of the results because it does not fit your agenda.

These findings, just point out that, going off grid with wind and solar, doesn't frees you of the guilt of using fossil fuels. Basically, small wind and solar, up to not long ago, was an investment in fossils fuels,to make the tools, to produce electricity where you liked, outside of a grid connection.

We can't just forget about, that FF investment, just because we are producing electricity from renewables, especially when that payback in energy may take a very long time, if ever.

[careinke]

We seem to be limiting ourselves to solar and wind vs fossil fuels. What about compressed air produced with Trompes? Once built, it operates with no moving parts, and you can basically run all machinery, transportation, refrigeration, and electrical production using compressed air. Imagine a freezer with no moving parts and using no electricity.

The technology is hundreds of years old and played a huge role in Chicago and Paris at one time. It has also been used in mining operations to pump fresh cool air into mines, run drills, jackhammers, and even turn a generator for lights in the mine shaft.

Here is a video of Bill Mollison giving a class on Trompes where he claims limitless clean versatile energy at a "Bugger All" price. He is a very entertaining teacher. But let me warn you, when you watch it, Mollison will say some things that will strain your credibility meter. If however you research his statements, you will find them all to be true. This is a really annoying trait of his.

Published on Nov 9, 2013

Bill Mollison explains what a trompe is and how compressed air can provide limitless amounts of clean energy using technology we have had for hundreds of years.

https://youtu.be/-9NqqDL6bkk

[dohboi]

I thought Trump only produced hot air!!

Really, though, isn't that just another variation of hydro? With its many familiar advantages and disadvantages? Perhaps I'm missing something?

toolp, it has been known for quite a while that small wind turbines are mostly not very efficient and don't have eroei above one. But large ones do have much better eroei.

Perhaps you could clarify what point it was that you were trying to make.

[vtsnowedin]

We seem to be limiting ourselves to solar and wind vs fossil fuels. What about compressed air produced with Trompes? Once built, it operates with no moving parts, and you can basically run all machinery, transportation, refrigeration, and electrical production using compressed air. Imagine a freezer with no moving parts and using no electricity.

The technology is hundreds of years old and played a huge role in Chicago and Paris at one time. It has also been used in mining operations to pump fresh cool air into mines, run drills, jackhammers, and even turn a generator for lights in the mine shaft.

Here is a video of Bill Mollison giving a class on Trompes where he claims limitless clean versatile energy at a "Bugger All" price. He is a very entertaining teacher. But let me warn you, when you watch it, Mollison will say some things that will strain your credibility meter. If however you research his statements, you will find them all to be true. This is a really annoying trait of his.

Published on Nov 9, 2013


Bill Mollison explains what a trompe is and how compressed air can provide limitless amounts of clean energy using technology we have had for hundreds of years.

https://youtu.be/-9NqqDL6bkk

We have been over this before. A trompe works but requires a great volume of water falling from a great height. So the power is not "unlimited" but is restricted to the volume of water available and the height of the cliff you can find to drop it from. To get compressed air at 40 psi you need a drop pipe 100 ft high and there are very few sites where water comes at you from up stream and then can drop a hundred feet and if you had such a site and water supply you could make more power by dropping it through a hydro/electric turbine.

[vtsnowedin]

Lets do a little cost analysis.
Take that 31 ft- 20KW wind generator I linked to above.
Installed cost is $110,000 without subsidies. Lets estimate a useful life of ten years with zero salvage value and that that $110K covers all energy and commodity costs to build and deliver it. Net cost $11,000/ year.
Estimating the site will turn the generator just 25 percent of the time would yield 43,800KWH/ year out put. 11,000/43800 = $0.251/ KWH which is not bad considering that I'm paying $0.21/KWH retail for electricity now.
Now consider that the cost of electricity will surly go up at least at the rate of inflation and that the mill may well last twenty years and not just ten.
So not a slam dunk but not necessarily a bad investment either. It all comes down to future inflation in energy costs and the durability of the unit.

[Timo]

This may be a rather off-beat question, but it is an important aspect of a project that i'm working on, or rather, trying to develop, and i don't know where to go to try to find the answer. So, here's the question: how much electricity does the average household use on a daily basis in your average semi-developed nation in SE Asia? I presume it's much less than electricity consumed in westerns and Pacific 1st world nations, but how much less?

2nd question: if the average household in Thailand had the use of their own rooftop solar PV panel(s), what proportion of their total daily electrical needs would/could be met by that system on their roof? I realize there are a lot of variables to that question.

3rd question on a totally different topic, but is related to my project: What is the annual cost of remediation and removal of plastics and garbage from our oceans?

Obviously, there's more to my idea than what i'm letting on in these questions, but the answers to these questions are very important toward the development of my idea, and hopefully, a pilot project to test its widespread feasibility and benefit.

Thanks for any help anyone can provide.

[dohboi]

I think part of the solution going forward is thinking about what kind of power is needed and what kind of source provides it. The less energy is converted from one form to another, the better it is preserved. The rotational power of wind in many cases and especially in small-scale applications is better used directly for tasks that require circular or back-and-forth movements, conveyed directly mechanically rather than with an electrical intermediary. Pumping water is an obvious case, and is what most windmills in the midwest and west once were devoted to, iirc.

Sawing and other milling is another obvious and long used purpose for such rotary sources of mechanical energy.

Re-purposed and re-engineered human-powered bicycles are another option for mechanical energy sources, now being used in parts of Latin America iirc.

...

Speaking of centralized energy: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edi ... e-35882883

Scotland has closed its last coal power plant.

Hugh Finlay, the generation director at ScottishPower, said: "Coal has long been the dominant force in Scotland's electricity generation fleet but the closure of Longannet signals the end of an era.

"For the first time in more than a century no power produced in Scotland will come from burning coal.

vt, yes, thanks, that's my impression of the situation, though of course what volume of water would have to fall from what height would presumably depend on how much total energy you wanted to get out of the system.

Timo: #1--Don't have stats on SE Asia in particular, but on average Latin Americans use about 1/4 the total energy of US citizens, though I don't know what part of that is household energy and what part is transportation, for example. I would think that the average for SE Asia would be a bit or perhaps substantially below that.

#2-- Yes, the variables are too vast to answer that as a general questions, I would think. Lots of apartment dwellers presumably have essentially no access to space for solar.

#3--essentially none right now that I know of. If a system were devised to clean up this waste, it would again depend on all sorts of variables having to do with how much of the ocean you wanted to cover, what size particles you wanted to include, how much you would try to protect sea life of various sorts in the process. Interesting questions to consider, though. If you find any estimates anywhere out there, do let us know.

[Tanada]

Tanada,



From the image attached, there does not appear to be too many obstacles for the turbines, and they appear much higher than I have normally seen on home size wind turbines in rural environment, you can't just write of the results because it does not fit your agenda.

These findings, just point out that, going off grid with wind and solar, doesn't frees you of the guilt of using fossil fuels. Basically, small wind and solar, up to not long ago, was an investment in fossils fuels,to make the tools, to produce electricity where you liked, outside of a grid connection.

We can't just forget about, that FF investment, just because we are producing electricity from renewables, especially when that payback in energy may take a very long time, if ever.

Toolpush I was responding to the passage you quoted in your earlier message. I am quoting it below and highlighting the relevant section so you understand what I was responding to.

Real-world tests of small wind turbines in Netherlands and the UK

Two real-world tests performed in the Netherlands and in the UK confirm our earlier analysis that small wind turbines are a fundamentally flawed technology. Their financial payback time is much longer than their life expectancy, and in urban areas, some poorly placed wind turbines will not even deliver as much energy as needed to operate them (let alone energy needed to produce them). Given their long payback period relative to their life expectancy, most small wind turbines are net energy consumers rather than net energy producers.
The machines face two fundamental problems: there is not enough wind at low altitudes in a built-up environment, and the energy production of a wind turbine declines more than proportionately to the rotor diameter. Wind power rules, but small wind turbines are a swindle.

Seems how I was responding specifically to URBAN wind turbines intended to provide off grid living arrangements for residents of URBAN areas your picture of small turbines in a rural location has no importance to the point I was making.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Lets do a little cost analysis.
Take that 31 ft- 20KW wind generator I linked to above.
Installed cost is $110,000 without subsidies. Lets estimate a useful life of ten years with zero salvage value and that that $110K covers all energy and commodity costs to build and deliver it. Net cost $11,000/ year.
Estimating the site will turn the generator just 25 percent of the time would yield 43,800KWH/ year out put. 11,000/43800 = $0.251/ KWH which is not bad considering that I'm paying $0.21/KWH retail for electricity now.
Now consider that the cost of electricity will surly go up at least at the rate of inflation and that the mill may well last twenty years and not just ten.
So not a slam dunk but not necessarily a bad investment either. It all comes down to future inflation in energy costs and the durability of the unit.

You don't mention anything about maintenance or operational costs at all. Are such systems purely "set it and forget it for the long term"? If so, that seems rather unusual in the world of man-made things with moving parts that operate outside. If not, those costs (including all labor for things like inspections, etc) need to be accounted for.

I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just wondering how accurate such an analysis is. Like for example, the 25% wind blowing enough to operate the generator estimate might vary RADICALLY depending on where the site is, which would of course radically change the numbers.

[vtsnowedin]

Lets do a little cost analysis.
Take that 31 ft- 20KW wind generator I linked to above.
Installed cost is $110,000 without subsidies. Lets estimate a useful life of ten years with zero salvage value and that that $110K covers all energy and commodity costs to build and deliver it. Net cost $11,000/ year.
Estimating the site will turn the generator just 25 percent of the time would yield 43,800KWH/ year out put. 11,000/43800 = $0.251/ KWH which is not bad considering that I'm paying $0.21/KWH retail for electricity now.
Now consider that the cost of electricity will surly go up at least at the rate of inflation and that the mill may well last twenty years and not just ten.
So not a slam dunk but not necessarily a bad investment either. It all comes down to future inflation in energy costs and the durability of the unit.

You don't mention anything about maintenance or operational costs at all. Are such systems purely "set it and forget it for the long term"? If so, that seems rather unusual in the world of man-made things with moving parts that operate outside. If not, those costs (including all labor for things like inspections, etc) need to be accounted for.

I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just wondering how accurate such an analysis is. Like for example, the 25% wind blowing enough to operate the generator estimate might vary RADICALLY depending on where the site is, which would of course radically change the numbers.

Yes of course there are margins of error and I was just taking a first look at it to further the conversation. . The old 30's era Jacobs were very low maintenance except for the batteries but these modern ones have some gearing and hydraulics in their mechanism so a periodic visit to the top of the tower to add or change oil is probably necessary. What would that cost? $300 to $600 a year? I don't know. And as you say siting is key.What works well on the prairies of North Dakota or a seashore bluff top would produce a lot less in the suburbs of Washington D. C.
I happen to have a hill top about 500 feet from the house that would make an excellent site if it ever comes to that.

[dohboi]

Looks like a beautiful spot!

[vtsnowedin]

Looks like a beautiful spot!

Yes but on a winters day the wind cuts like a razor. Coming from the right of the picture the SW wind has a thirty five mile reach from Mt Killington.
My house sits down over the bank behind the tractor and the worst of the wind blows right over it.

[dohboi]

But do you get good sunrise or sunset views?

Does the high wind make it hard to grow things up there?

[Timo]

Dohboi, i'm trying to develop point-source reduction of the transmission of plastics and garbage to the ocean by issuing personal solar energy credits as an incentive to properly dispose of household wastes. If a person is rewarded with free energy for his household in exchange for his garbage, no waste flows into the ocean, less ff energy is needed for normal household use, the city and countryside and waterways are cleaner, tourism is enhanced because the city, countryside, waterways, and the ocean are cleaner, and the family getting free energy via solar is financially better off. If the costs of garbage remediation in the ocean can be partially transferred to solar credits to prevent that garbage from flowing into the oceans to begin with, everyone wins. Oh, the last benefit is the introduction of a new market for solar energy to an area that currently cannot afford it.

[vtsnowedin]

Now consider what a free standing power producer that requires no fossil fuel to keep running would be worth in a post peak and post grid world?
Short answer is a lot more then $0.25/KWH . A KWH of electricity is equivalent to about 15 man hours of manual labor so might be worth $200 post collapse.
And that money you invested would have disappeared by inflation if you kept it in the bank or in stock shares.
If it really hits the fan a wind mill will be worth more then gold as you can actually do useful things with it.

[vtsnowedin]

But do you get good sunrise or sunset views?

Does the high wind make it hard to grow things up there?

Excellent sunrises. Have to go west to my camp ridge to watch the sunset. An even better windmill site.
I've had field corn on that field thirteen feet tall but the growing season is short with not enough growing degree days to ripen many things. Great strawberry ground and good for potatoes.