Newfie wrote:
You are getting electricity from your hydro unit right? And you are dumping electricity because you have more than you can use?
Newfie, I did not want to complicate too much this thread with introducing the whole power distribution challenges at MTCF. But I will elaborate since this has been a challenging undertaking and a collaborative effort of sorts where I have gotten a lot of help, just like I am now from many of you in resolving this fitting.
There is a Yahoo micro hydro group that I am a member of. There have been a couple of folks on this site who have helped me immensely setting up our hydro system, one person actually visited us in Panama. Here is the the site
http://microhydropower.net/mhp_group/Here is a blog entry I did about 15 months ago. Scroll down and you can see our hydro set up.
http://mounttotumas.com/wordpress/?p=686The pelton wheel is attached to a single phase 220V AC generator that puts out about 7.5-8 KW in the rainy season and drops down to about 5KW in the dry season. This might seem like a lot of power but this is now being distributed to an employee cabin, our workshop, two cabins and now the new lodge.
Check out the load controller photo on the blog entry that is the brain of power distribution. I imported this from New Zealand. It prioritizes power to the project and when we are not using power it dumps unused electricity into the cement tank we built. You see the stainless steel panel with 8 electric hot water heating elements? Each channel is 1500W. So when we shut down all power there will be 5 to 6 channels open dumping all 8KW into this tank of water. You need to have this set up so that at all times you have access to full power. If we turn on a 4.8KW dryer to dry clothes the load controller draws off the dump and feeds the dryer and there is constant 60hz 220v so the lights don't flicker etc.
Now with the lodge we built we are adding additional power load on to the hydro and we will exceed what we are generating if I use a standard electric hot water tank. That is the reason for the active solar set up I am pursuing.
Now, you might ask, if you are heating up water in the dump why not just use this? It is possible. the first two channels of 1500W on the dump load actually are probably dumping 3kw for atleast 18 hour a day. I want to use one of these channels and attach it to the electric hot water tank as Pop suggested, to the lower heating element, exchanging the 4500W heating element with a 1500W element. I have another electric hot water tank in one of the cabins that I would like to connect the other 1500W channel from the dump.
If you follow me so far then if the first two channels of the dump load heat up the electric hot water tanks and if the temperature of the tank reaches maximum and the thermostat shuts the unit off then I still have channels 3-8 in the dump load to dump unused power.
Just like a big old electrical grid in a city you only ever generate what you are using and you have to design your system for maximum load. Since my nearest neighbor is 4km away I can't give away power that we are not using. Instead of heating the water in the dump I could freeze water into ice blocks and take them down to town and sell them once a week but you guys all remember The Mosquito Coast movie, right? The locals already think I am kind of wacked out which I admit I am for having undertaken this crazy project so I don't need to draw more attention to myself arriving down out of the cloud forest with big blocks of ice
Patiently awaiting the pathogens. Our resiliency resembles an invasive weed. We are the Kudzu Ape
blog: http://blog.mounttotumas.com/
website: http://www.mounttotumas.com