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cygus
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Posted: Mon Apr 13th, 2009 08:01 am |
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ABS Alaskan-Gives you basics on generators including you must have a generator shed for cold winter climates.
Add Solar power to your truck camper-This article describes how you can build your own solar powered charging system for your camping or fishing RV/marine battery, or add a solar charger to an existing truck camper battery system.
How To Build A Homemade Portable Solar Generator-This might be more for the electronics folk. Also has some interesting ideas on what he calls Generator 2 which runs off a battery.
Mobile Solar Generator-the Wind & Sun ‘SunMachine’ provides power and lighting for outdoor events. It has been used to run: stage PA & lighting; fairground organs; radio broadcasts; sheep shearing; video projection; computers; recording equipment; tools; chargers and many other electrical loads.
Solar Generator-This simple solar generator can be made by you. Here are some simple instructions on how to do this.
The Sustainable Village-A very large list of self sustaining power generators from wind, solar, hydro and more.
U.S. Power Grids & Automatic Power Systems-Seems to provide a lot of information on various major power systems for home, work and travel.
Building a solar generator
How to construct a solar generator out of used auto parts and plumbing supplies. The generator is able to produce ten times the energy at half the price of solar panels.
Demand for solar power is rapidly heating up (see “New Solar Technologies Fueled by Hot Markets“).
Matthew Orosz learned that reflective parabolic troughs can bake bread. His solar generator, cobbled together from auto parts and plumbing supplies, can easily be built in a backyard.
A parabolic trough (taking up 15 square meters in this case) focuses light on a pipe containing motor oil. The oil circulates through a heat exchanger, turning a refrigerant into steam, which drives a turbine that, in turn, drives a generator.
The refrigerant is then cooled in two stages. The first stage recovers heat to make hot water or, in one design, to power an absorption process chiller, like the propane-powered refrigerators in RVs. The solar-generated heat would replace or augment the propane flame used in these devices. The second stage cools the refrigerant further, which improves the efficiency of the system. This stage will probably use cool groundwater pumped to the surface using power from the generator. The water can then be stored in a reservoir for drinking water.
The design uses readily available parts and tools. For example, both the feed pump and steam turbine are actually power-steering pumps used in cars and trucks. To generate electricity, use an alternator, which is not as efficient as an ordinary generator, but comes already designed to charge a battery, which reduces some of the complexity of the system. And, like power-steering pumps, alternators, including less-expensive reconditioned ones, are easy to come by.
As a result, the complete system for generating one kilowatt of electricity and 10 kilowatts of heat, including a battery for storing the power generated, can be built for a couple thousand dollars which is less than half the cost of one kilowatt of photovoltaic panels.
“You can’t afford something that’s designed for solar. You have to buy something that’s mass-produced for something else — that way the cost is reasonable,” says Duane Johnson, owner of Red Rock Energy, in White Bear Lake, MN, who developed and sells thousands of the inexpensive LED-based sun-tracking devices Orosz uses to orient the solar concentrators. Most of the devices are used to position photovoltaic panels, he says, but some people are using them with old satellite dishes to concentrate heat and make steam. Sales of his devices have been growing 25 percent a year, a rate similar to that of the solar photovoltaics industry.
Repurposed auto parts aren’t the only way to go. Amy Sun, a graduate student in MIT’s Media Lab, has designed an inexpensive system that uses heat from a solar concentrator to drive a type of turbine. Rather than making complex, difficult-to-manufacture bladed turbines, Sun turned to the Tesla turbine, which consists of simpler flat disks stacked like records on a central shaft. The disks are carefully spaced to allow steam to flow between them. As the steam flows, friction between the steam and the surface of the disks causes them to rotate. “Once I have rotational shaft work, I can couple it to almost anything — an air pump, compressor, fan, mixer, grinder, sewing machine, refrigeration compressor, and, to power those very few things that are truly electric in nature, an electric generator.” She calculates that this system, which she says is simple enough for an eight-year old to make, can produce cheap power.
Of course the overall economics of these solar generator systems depend on how long they will last and how much maintenance they will require. The lifetime for Orosz’s system could be quite good, since it uses parts designed for rugged service in vehicles. It also works at relatively low temperatures that, in addition to making it safer and easier to work with, won’t strain the performance limits of the plumbing used.
“Backyard tinkerers could build it themselves. No doubt about it,” says Amy Mueller, an MIT graduate student who’s taken on a leading role in Orosz’s project. “Matt’s dad has one of these that we built to heat his Jacuzzi.”
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17169&ch=biztech&a=f
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cygus
Administrator
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Posted: Mon Apr 13th, 2009 08:06 am |
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GUAlliance
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| Joined: | Wed Jul 1st, 2009 |
| Location: | Cyprus |
| Posts: | 4 |
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Posted: Thu Jul 9th, 2009 12:02 pm |
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This is just what I was looking for!
You have some great subjects on here, did you spread the word about this place?
It should be teeming with activity
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