Solar power & Wind Power for residental use

[Egon]

As for the typical liberal arts student turned reporter. They have lots of emotional impact in story but sparse on the amount of technical info or accuracy.
The system shown is not a PV system. It instead heats a liquid heat transport medium to a boiler. This system has little to no super heater capability for the first stage high pressure turbine. thermal efficiency of this Rankine version of the Carnot Equation.
I wonder what they are using for the condenser's heat sink ? Liquid to air ?

I'm wondering who headed up the Scientific portion of the Manhattan Prodject. Journalist maybe?


Just curious to what this superheater does for a working fluid?

 

[KennyG]

I'm wondering who headed up the Sceintific portion of the Manhattan Prodject. Journalist maybe?


Just curious to what this superheater does for a working fluid?

A little more digging indicates it is a molten salt storage unit but I'm not sure what the working fluid is. If they have an oil of some type with a high enough working temperature (say 800 deg F) you could set up a pretty good superheat cycle. That's been one of the challenges so far is to get a working fluid that can operate at high enough temperatures to transfer to the molten sodium for storage.

 

[Alien]

Storage batteries are getting a push in Oz at present. I wish I could afford one.
Anyway, the good news is that having installed a small solar system in 2012, it has finally paid for itself. It took 3 years longer than the salesman claimed... lol
So, to date, we have produced 22266.8 kwh for a $ total of $11,133.40.
It is only a small system at 3.98 kWh but at times does pump 4 kWh. A good day we can get 24 kW but our roof is not faced at a very good angle or we would produce a little more.
We haven't touched it since it was installed.
Makes a big difference when you are retired not facing whopping power bills.

 

[Egon]

It would seem there are a few problems using wind for power generation.

 

[dragoneggs]

We installed a 25KW solar grid tied system about 3 years ago on our home (now a rental home). Here is our usage for the last 12 months. We couldn't be happier. We paid less than $200 last year for our electric bill, most of which was the monthly service fees. <img src="http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=455801"/>

Thanks for sharing, jk. Interesting to me that even for months where you had generated a positive net, you still paid a minimum. Doesn't seem fair.

 

[jk96]

Thanks for sharing, jk. Interesting to me that even for months where you had generated a positive net, you still paid a minimum. Doesn't seem fair.

I'm still using their meter and transformer plus they still send someone out each month to read the meter so I'm happy with the tradeoff. The house is on the upper level of our commercial building. We actually installed two 25kW systems. One for the house and one for the business meter. Combined our electric bill before solar was averaging $7,000 to $8,000 per year for both meters. For 2015 I paid a total of $390 for electric for the house and business combined.

 

[dragoneggs]

I'm still using their meter and transformer plus they still send someone out each month to read the meter so I'm happy with the tradeoff. The house is on the upper level of our commercial building. We actually installed two 25kW systems. One for the house and one for the business meter. Combined our electric bill before solar was averaging $7,000 to $8,000 per year for both meters. For 2015 I paid a total of $390 for electric for the house and business combined.

That sounds pretty good. I was just hoping to see a credit for you feeding the grid... assuming it was significant. Does look like a nice reduction on your bill and hope your return on investment was short.

 

[Knight9]

To the best of my knowledge the periodic table was expanded just a short while ago. Yes - new elements!

Hi Egon,

These "new elements" though are really just synthetic manmade elements. They are all highly radioactive and created by bombarding one element with another. Since we seem to be in a world where no one likes nuclear power, I don't think these will help.

 

[Knight9]

The thing that I find interesting about "green energy" and its use is the blind eye we seem to turn towards storage impacts. I love the idea of solar and wind and such to augment the grid and make me more independent. I also like the idea of local storage to allow an interruption of power when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing. This requires battery storage and everyone is looking at the Li battery as the main solution.

I tend to be generally skeptical and think along the lines of, "ya? well how good is that for the environment?" Anyone who takes the time to read anything will see that the harvesting, use, and disposition of something like Lithium is not great either. Here is a simple read from an environmental activist group called Friends of the Earth Europe but this same information is available everywhere. https://www.foeeurope.org/sites/default/files/publications/13_factsheet-lithium-gb.pdf

So when we talk about "green energy" why does the conversation never include information like this? To listen to the media or whoever, all you have to do is buy a home Tesla battery, throw on some solar panels on your roof and you did your part to save the earth. Did you really? Or did you in many ways just change from adding some CO2 to the atmosphere to adding water vapor from evaporation ponds, toxic metals to water contamination, social issues to 2nd or 3rd world countries?

 

[davesl708]

It would seem there are a few problems using wind for power generation.

Ok, I had to watch the video. This had to be the comedy channel. :confused2: