New Alernative Energy Title

[timsvb]

Seems like the discussions on again. I have a bit of interest in Renewable energy. After a messy relationship, took off to try & lose myself (as opposed to "find myself",cos i new where i was & didn't want to be there.)Parked up in a very remote coastal place in Australia for three years. Place i was staying at was an old Harbour masters house. No electricity,sheme water or gas. Rigged up solar panels and inverter. Split battery bank to run 12v lighting & used inverter only for essentials like computer & low wattage appliances.Was a bare bones setup.Even made a methane gas setup to convert pig poo to gas,ran stove, fridge & instant hot water off it. Now I'm back in the big smoke,haven't forgotten the experience, but the constraints in the city make it nigh impossible for inventiveness,not withstanding doing things safely,of course.Like a dollar for every tree hugging nutter I've met,though. Once took the toilet paper out of the loo when I visited one particularly nasty greeny who gave me a serve about buying milk in cartons. Bottles don't travel well nin a vehicle on bumpy roads, told him to wipe his a..s
with his fingers & save the trees.
Just thought I'd share that with ya.

 

[killivolt]

Seems like the discussions on again. I have a bit of interest in Renewable energy. After a messy relationship, took off to try & lose myself (as opposed to "find myself",cos i new where i was & didn't want to be there.)Parked up in a very remote coastal place in Australia for three years. Place i was staying at was an old Harbour masters house. No electricity,sheme water or gas. Rigged up solar panels and inverter. Split battery bank to run 12v lighting & used inverter only for essentials like computer & low wattage appliances.Was a bare bones setup.Even made a methane gas setup to convert pig poo to gas,ran stove, fridge & instant hot water off it. Now I'm back in the big smoke,haven't forgotten the experience, but the constraints in the city make it nigh impossible for inventiveness,not withstanding doing things safely,of course.Like a dollar for every tree hugging nutter I've met,though. Once took the toilet paper out of the loo when I visited one particularly nasty greeny who gave me a serve about buying milk in cartons. Bottles don't travel well nin a vehicle on bumpy roads, told him to wipe his a..s
with his fingers & save the trees.
Just thought I'd share that with ya.

OMG, you didn't even give him one sheet.

Principle of the one sheet theory.

Take one sheet fold an tear out the center an save. Take the sheet with the hole push it over a single digit use this digit to wipe. Use the sheet to clean the digit.

The center piece is for the nail.


kv

Edit: Teaching him Law of Conservation.

 

[Mr RB]

Hence proving that humour still occurs... Even when there are NO whackos to stir up a thread.

I personally don't mind the humour, and I also like reading about alternative energy schemes in ALL their forms, not just wind and solar. Thermal gradients, solar thermal oscillators, ocean powered, human powered etc etc. It would be pretty boring if the only thing allowed on the alternative energy forum was "what type of regulator do I buy for my solar panels and what size batteries?"

 

[timsvb]

Oh well. I'll try to be serious. I'm an electrical apprentice and trying to wean myself into electronics, cos I need to.Every thing I touch has some sort Form of elctronics in it. Got a very basic knowledge of electronics, like I know they replace a lot of much bigger heavier electro mechanical devices. Starting to get an interest,but a lot of the concepts are way beyond me at present. Having said that, some of my questions may be dumb and I can take a few quips,but like to learn and experiment.
Question: Have some 350F 2.5v booster capacitors.Wouldn't mind using them as a battery bank to run a small 12v pump for water feature in the garden.Got about a dozen or so.Can some one give me an idea if they will be ok for solar and how to make a regulator for them and how to hook them up.Yeah I know it's solar panels and battery regulators again,but with a twist.(not too far sideways though.) And are capacitors a viable proposition for renewable energy supplies.Could capacitors be used as part of an inverter circuit as well as storage instead of batteries?

 

[dknguyen]

Oh well. I'll try to be serious. I'm an electrical apprentice and trying to wean myself into electronics, cos I need to.Every thing I touch has some sort Form of elctronics in it. Got a very basic knowledge of electronics, like I know they replace a lot of much bigger heavier electro mechanical devices. Starting to get an interest,but a lot of the concepts are way beyond me at present. Having said that, some of my questions may be dumb and I can take a few quips,but like to learn and experiment.
Question: Have some 350F 2.5v booster capacitors.Wouldn't mind using them as a battery bank to run a small 12v pump for water feature in the garden.Got about a dozen or so.Can some one give me an idea if they will be ok for solar and how to make a regulator for them and how to hook them up.Yeah I know it's solar panels and battery regulators again,but with a twist.(not too far sideways though.) And are capacitors a viable proposition for renewable energy supplies.Could capacitors be used as part of an inverter circuit as well as storage instead of batteries?

You could use capacitors, but it'd be similar to trying to use RAM for all the storage in your PC. They still have very low energy density and high cost and large size compared to batteries. THey do have high power density though. Supercapacitors are trying to bridge the gap.

For solar charge applications it's a waste- the advantage of capacitors is they charge very quickly. Solar cells can't provide the power levels to make use of this advantage.

 

[smanches]

Even if you were to use them all for a 12v bank, that would be 700F.

700A for 1 second
20A for 40 seconds
1A for 700 seconds

Not a lot of power when compared with batteries. Just sucks that batteries die after a while.

 

[timsvb]

Thanks,Guess I'll have to buy a gnome,sit in the garden,an talk to him about reinventing another part of the universe.Were good concise answers though.Gave me a better understanding than the books I've been reading.Those caps came from the featherig motors of a huge 5MW wind turbine.They use them to drive motors to feather the blades out of high winds and when servicing the generator.Back in the box for them till I learn more.Thanks again, and I'll try an make more sense of my study now with that info.
Cheers Tim from OZ.
Hey there Smanches
So, bein a bit lazy here, any chance of lettin me know the formulas you used for these calcs,so's I can do a bit of homework on them.Very early days in my electronic quest and some of my books don't really relate to me.I gotta work on a diverse amount of gear,and my trade doesn't cover a lot of electronics.

 

[smanches]

It was very crude, not really that accurate in the real world. 1F = 1 coulomb @ 1v. 1 coulomb = 1 amp/second.

I just realized I made a mistake anyway. Divide all those numbers by 12 (the working voltage.) Thought they seemed a bit high.

 

[timsvb]

It was very crude, not really that accurate in the real world. 1F = 1 coulomb @ 1v. 1 coulomb = 1 amp/second.

I just realized I made a mistake anyway. Divide all those numbers by 12 (the working voltage.) Thought they seemed a bit high.

Yeah, neat gettin a one line explanation anyway.Cheers,that goes into my notebook.Thanks again.Guess that puts me on another page, and out of this topic for now.Bye to the tree huggers.
Tim.

 

[Pommie]

Shouldn't that be "multiply those numbers by 12".

Mike.

 

[kchriste]

Since he'd have to put at least x5 350F 2.5V caps in series to run at 12V, there'd be only be 70F per string. I don't know how many 350F caps he has in total.
Personally, I'd just forgo any batteries, size the solar panel to run the motor and only have the water feature run when the sun was shining. Who is going to be out there at midnight enjoying the waterfall anyway?

 

[Mr RB]

The midnight water worshiping hippies!

 

[bryan1]

well ya see I what i mean by this forum becoming a joke, even this this thread has been hijacked. I agree with Rolf S.W.H Solar Wind Hydro for the new forum name. This should keep the HHO and GTI freaks away and yea make a forum dump for those type of threads. I started this thread after a good reason why I shouldn't put my RE projects in here and basically I will stand firm.

My 2.2 cents

Bryan