Dumping extra power

[trailerguy]

I put up a small Ametek genny to charge a bank of 12v batterys. I purchased a charge controller which is supose to dump the power when the batterys are full. What are other folks putting the excess power into? I'd like to use it for heat, but I'm not sure what to use. It seems like the voltage would vary and I'm not sure what to use.

[tesla man]

i would suggest two ideas, one radical, one easily implemented..

1) easy:

hot water heater excess electrical dump- use  a hot water heater, and wire the elements in series (to raise the resistance)

place the hot water tank BELOW a larger storage tank (for a thermosiphon effect) heavily insulate both tanks,and then use the hot water for either showers, etc, or hydronic heating. I belive, they refer to this as a "wind furnace".

the best part of this design, is that the heat is very effective stored in water, one can heat anything.

i have a friend here in Oregon that heats the floor of his garage/shop this way..nothing like working under a vehicle, with the floor being the warmest part of the shop..

2)  "radical" /challenging:

generate hydrogen gas, store in high volume, low pressure tanks.. we convert many lawn mower engines to run on H2, and then will be hooking them up to electrical generators ( inexpensive: car alternator; more expensive: AC alternators)

we burn the gas in the engine, and recover the water heat, in an exhaust gas> to a water heat exchanger.. hydrogen will become the stored energy form of the future, you can EASILY generate heat (combustion) and electricity (fuel cells, even small ones)..it is extremely versatile.

I belive the world energy, will soon be based on off-shore wind farms, generating electricity, and manufacturing both hydrogen, and pharmaceutically pure oxygen, from sea-water..this will be the back-bone of the  hydrogen economy..imagine energy that will fall in cost, as supply increases, with CURRENT technology ( no rocket science here)

combustion of h2 is great inside of an IC engine, the engine stays very clean, oil degrades extremely slowly ( compared to gasoline) and the exhaust can supply both heat, and the purest, sterile water! THE EXHAUST, IS CLEANER THAN THE AIR THAT ENTERS THE ENGINE  intake..

we will never run out,... h2 is the most common element in the universe.. it can only get cheaper, and easier to manufacture, as the technology evolves, in the future..

be a part of the future, take your wind generators, and make H2..you will be the historical pioneers..

but, then again, might as well build a wind furnace first, you can use that, today, while you experiment with H2..

[harrie]

      I have a 12 volt system, and use 12 volt lights as a dump load. One of the lights is a spot light that is aimed at the geney that is on a 60 foot tower. Its kind of a waste of power, but it looks neat at night. You can also use some kind of a heater, such as a old parabolic coil element heater, or hot water tank with 12 volt elements. I have found that in order to get any kind of substancial heat from either, would have to be a day that the wind is between 20 to 40 miles per hour. I use a 60 amp tristar diverter that works great.

Harrie

                                                                                     

[wdyasq]

Please tell us more.  Especially about running engines on H2.

Thanks,

Ron

[richhagen]

I have three systems, two at twelve volt and one at 48 volt.  For now, on the 48 volt which is solar only, the controller is opening the circuit when the batteries are full.  I am going to add a diverter to pre-heat water with the extra heat at some point down the road.  One of the 12 volt systems is solar only and it also opens when the voltage hits a certain point.  For the last one, I dump the power once the batteries are charged into resistance heating using both 5 watt power resistors and nichrome wire.  I recently obtained some more wire and am planning to build a better, safer dump heater for this system.  That system also has a charge controller on the solar part that will open that part if the voltage becomes excessive.  It never does though as the resistance heating pulls the system voltage down by consuming more power than the total generation can supply.  For the summer I can dump the heat outside.  Again there I'd like to add a water pre-heating option to the system for the summer as well.  Rich Hagen

[tesla man]

our original experiments with H2, we used a propane conversion kit, that will allow the lawn-mower engine to run on either gasoline, or (twist a valve) it will then run on propane..(that is our goal, to able to run the engine on a wide variety of fuels: gasoline, H2, propane, methane, etc.. (methane is highly desirable, as it is a very easy bio-fuel to manufacture, probably the easiest simplest to self-manufacture)

to run the gasoline engine  on H2, one can actually run the engine at the stock gasoline timing, but it is preferred to operate it at exactly top dead center (the ignition timing) Hydrogen burns at approximately 7 times faster than gasoline, thus igniting at top dead center is the best timing.

if the engine has a LOT of carbon built up, it may cause problems running on H2, since any "hot spots" of the residual carbon deposits, may cause pre-ignition. but running the engine on H2 for a while, will actually remove all the carbon deposits! running an IC engine on H2, will eventually clean all carbon ( from hydrocarbon fuel) out of the engine,,it cleans as it burns! (the H2 as a "fuel")!

currently we just got a small supply of special gaseous fuel injectors ( for H2, propane, methane, etc), we have just operated the engine with a an electronic fuel injection of H2 ..it ran fine! and that was with stock gasoline timing! we are now in the process of designing an electronic ignition timing circuit, to adjust the timing from gasoline, to the optimum for H2.

at the moment, we are trying to design an intake manifold, that will allow two fuel injectors: one for liquid fuels ( gasoline, alcohol, etc. ), and one for gaseous fuels ( propane, natural gas, H2, methane, "wood gas" etc)

we hope that we can control both the timing of the fuel injectors, and then have electronic ignition timing of the various fuels..one for gasoline, another for H2, etc..

one fascinating idea, is to run the engine on dual fuels( say propane, with a small assist with H2, as H2 is the "easiest " to ignite, the spark will ignite the h2, and that will then ignite the "other" fuel..think of it as "h2 ignition assist".. in the case of a fuel like alcohol ( notorious for being difficult to ignite at low temperatures,as it does not evaporate very well at low temperatures( say 35 degrees Fahrenheit , or below)

our goals are unique, we hope to establish an "open source" (public domain) research lab, that focuses on technology that "enhances human survival", and essentially focus on a alternative energy technologies. this lawn-mower engine > electrical generator > hot water heater (from the exhaust) tool is to be run INSIDE  a greenhouse, so that all the heat from the system, will assist in keeping the greenhouse warm...

we are now working on a web site, and hope to have the projects carefully documented, and step-by-step videos, plans, etc. we hope that the more individuals, and small businesses can manufacture these, the better off, all of us will be.. by making it open source, the work will evolve very rapidly ( like the open source operating system, LINUX.. we are borrowing this model..)

we think that this web site is the one of the best around!   if we are even half as good, we will be happy!

I  have concluded, that these wind generators, will be the backbone of a self-sufficient energy system..one either uses the electrify directly, or can store it :  either in a battery, or when there is ample wind ( and the batteries are charged) > dump the excess into H2 production.. the main point is the wide diversity of the system, but the H2 can be considered as another type of "storage medium", like the battery, or the wind furnace..

 a couple of web sites:

http://www.clean-air.org/

( The American Hydrogen Association (AHA) is a non-profit association )

http://theepicenter.com/tow02077.html

http://theepicenter.com/tipoweek.html

( Converting a lawn mower into a generator.

The 4th in a series on emergency power and generation )

we need to think of alternative energy systems, as a MATRIX, of inter-lapping systems, so the Synergy of the entire matrix, is greater than the individual components..

[wooferhound]

If I made my own hydrogen, then how would I store it ?

[electrondady1]

in his book "the hydrogen economy" jeremy rifken felt that the enevitable switch to hydrogen would be decentralized, that individuals, very much like the members of this forum , would begin to utilize this fuel first. that giant wind farms, whether on land or sea were simply an interum solution.on the path to a decentralization of our civilization. i recomend this book to anyone. infact i lent my copy to my bank manager!
on an imediate level, how can i use hyrogen now? the molecule is very difficult to store.it might be wise to try to consume the hydrogen as soon as it is created. by the way,, the process of electrolisis heats the elctrolite anyway so infact the two seperate systems you speak of could be one and the same.think of a hot water heating system, radiators, pipes, pumps etc. now instead of a hot water tank utiizing the current, an inline electrolitic cell .the electrolite, a sodium hydroxide solution, is heated as a by product of the electrolitic process, and is pumped through the system to cool it.every body's happy and warm.!

[imajester]

There was this guy when I worked for a summer at Virginia Power, they hated him.  He setup two water reservoirs on his property at different elevations.  In the early morning hours when electricty was cheap, he pumped water from the lower reservoir to the upper one.  During the day, when electricty was more expensive, he generated electricty by letting the water flow back down to the lower reservoir and sold the electricty back to Virginia Power.  They hated it.  I wonder if there is a way to do the same with excess power, use it to pump water to a higher potential energy when you have excess and then use that potential energy when there is a demand.  Could be via a water tower or maybe just ponds at different elevations on your property.  On the 100ac I just bought there is a nice area that has a very steep elevation of about 200 feet.

[electrondady1]

that guy in verginia makeing money from the power company, it a little like puting a geni on the town water supply . if you have the space and the elevation, windmills could pump water into upper level ponds .nice if the same pumps could be used in reverse to supply current.

[jimjjnn]

In Colorado here, Exel Energy does the same thing. During peak times they have an upper reservoir that they generate electricity for use. During non-peak times they pump water out of the river in Glenwood Canyon up to the reservoir for storage. I believe this plant is the Shoshone generating station(Not positive tho on the name).

They reverse the turbines that generate to act as motors and the water turbines pump uphill/ I would love to see this operation, but I don't think that the have any tours through the plant

[jimjjnn]

It is the Shoshone Plant. Originally it was set up with a tunnel upstream about 2-3 miles with a small dam of about 20-25 feet.The water goes through a 12-16 foot tunnel with a drop of 287 feet. There are 2 generators with a capacity of 15MW. This plant was built in 1906 and originally used only the water diversion tunnel which gave it a much lower power output. Since the started pumping water uphill, the capacity was increased to 15 MW.

[trailerguy]

That's all interesting stuff, but it really doesn't address my situation. Am I correct in thinking that when the voltage dumped by the controller, away from the battery bank, would likely not be 12v since the Ametek is a 40V motor/generator? It seems to me that the voltage dumped would vary with the wind speed? I see small ceramic 12v heaters (150-300W)with a fan for cheap on e-bay, but it seems like high voltage would burn the fan up? There must be a way to turn the excess voltage directly into hot air heat? I want to keep the batterys full for later use by an inverter and just turn the extra power into heat while the wind blows.

[electrondady1]

hey there trailer guy, people around here do get excited. i might be wrong but i think you could try a heater but with ought a fan motor. maybe even a base board heater.

[Psycogeek]

indeedy if you use totally unregulated power , as long as it is sure to be under 120V (for the US) , you could feed it into any resistive heater to waste it.

resistive heater is just a WIRE that gets shorted out (so to speak)  they are made with ni-chrome wire which puts out heat well without turning into a metal blob :-)

with resistive heating, your input would be relative to your output (mostly) even if your voltage was Way low for the source, or even if it was AC. as long as it does not go over.

the motor would be a completly different matter.

Baseboards work like that with no motor, and simple heat expansion thermostats

a few car heaters put in series (so you dont go to high)

one of them "Radient" heaters, that looks like a reflector light fixture doesnt use a fan. (saw them at costco)

an old hotplate (to start a fire with)

a high wattage shop light (psudo radient heater)

DISCLAIMER: all of the above is just simple resistive loads, they can use mondo power, and i dont know your system well enough to determine that you wont fry something. hopefully you do.

[tesla man]

thats the beauty of the wind furnace, any voltage ( ie. unregulated) can go to the heating elements, and they can then convert the heat to the water, for storage.

usually the heating elements are rated for 220 VAC, so by wiring the two of them in series, you have a rated voltage load of at least 440 VAC, you can input any unregulated (even un-rectified) voltage to them, as long as it was under the 440 VAC, and 10,ooo  watt rated load..

so go ahead, and dump the excess power into the "wind furnace", heating element- load, it should be able to easily handle anything you wind genny can put out directly, no need to convert, or run through any other device, it will take the unregulated, wildly fluctuating output, of the wind genny..

as long as the wind genny has a "overpower protection" (unfurling in the strong winds, etc) it should work fine..  

[tesla man]

small amounts of H2, can be stored in an easily constructed HIGH VOLUME, low pressure storage tank, these  are very easily constructed, the volume of the tank can dynamically change..

imagine a two 55 gallon drum welded together (vertical), with the top off (open) filled with water..

 a second set of drums  (as long as they are slightly smaller, and can fit inside the outer "tube" (the two 55 gallon drums),  this is also made with one open end, but now, it is INVERTED (open-end down) inside the outer tank, (now the inner tanks closed end is now the top, or up)..

you simply add a few valves on the top ( one for gas out, the other to vent all the air out, and a little water, upon first using the tank, )

we simply close the gas - out valve ( first) then open the purge valve, and let the inner tank fill with water, and sink to the bottom of the outer tank, the entire inner volume is now filled with water, ( no air-oxygen), then the purge valve is closed, we now have inner tank, at the bottom, filled with water, and NO AIR..

with a gas out let, positioned under the inner tank, we simply let whatever gas "bubble up" into the inner tank, as it filles, it will rise..

after it reaches the surface ( the outer tank and water, is simply part of a gas -trap), one can place weights on the top of the inner tank, and that will become the "resistance" of it rising higher..we now have pressurized gas, stored in a high volume, low pressure tank, and that the volume/pressure will adjust to the amount of as inside..

when ever we want o use the gas,we open the "gas-out" valve, and the tank will slowly sink, as the gas is used ( th volume decreases)

the weights on top of the inner tank are the main trick: they "compress" the gas, as it tries to rise up, and out ( remember h2 is very much lighter than air, it rises strongly, actually any gas that build up in the inner tank will rise out of the water..)

or for the technically astute, they have the other option of  constructing a metal hydride storage tank, they are EXTREMLY safe.. for home power they are ideal, as they are very heavy ( a tank of metal powder), since you do not transport he tank ( it is stationary) it is ideal (two of these tanks can be used as a dual heating/ cooling storage elements)

for home power these options are very feasible ( transportation makes the entire task far more challenging)

[Vernon]

My idea would be to use a second hot water heater in series with your present unit, it would heat the water and if it was hot enough .. the normal unit would never turn on.

Converting to the higher voltage is not a problem, the circuit below shows the basic topology. A transistor is driven by a variable pulse with signal. When the transistor is on the inductor charges and takes energy from the 12V system. The pulse width determines the energy by E=L di/dt. E is a nominal 12V, L the inductance in Henrys, t is the time the pulse is high and solving for di gives the change in current .. in this case from zero to X. With X amps flowing the inductor stores energy expressed by 1/2 LI^2 joules. The transistor turns off at the end of the pulse and the inductor discharges into a capacitor (not shown) that is across the the hot water heater and through the heater element. The voltage across the cap will settle at the value necessary to transfer the power, this is a form of step up regulator/inverter. A high voltage transistor should be used perhaps an IGBT that will withstand the high peak collector voltage. As an alternative, if your hot water heater has two elements one can be used for this scheme. A temp switch should dump some water if it gets too hot and of course a controler must be built to generate the pulses ...

[thunderhead]

combustion of h2 is great inside of an IC engine, the engine stays very clean, oil degrades extremely slowly ( compared to gasoline) and the exhaust can supply both heat, and the purest, sterile water! THE EXHAUST, IS CLEANER THAN THE AIR THAT ENTERS THE ENGINE  intake..

Not so.  The exhaust of an ICE run on hydrogen contains nitrogen oxides, which are a principal constituent of smog.  Because the hydrogen burns hotter than a petrol-powered engine, there are more nitrogen oxides.

Although liquefied hydrogen generates much more energy per kg of fuel, it doesn't generate nearly as much energy per litre, because liquefied hydrogen weighs very little.  Stored as a compressed gas, the situation is even worse: a kilogram of hydrogen occupies over twelve thousand litres at atmospheric pressure and temperature, so if your compressed tank is at 2000 atmospheres and fifty litres in size, it still only stores eight kilograms of hydrogen: probably enough to get you from one filling station to the next.  

Hydrogen vehicles have huge fuel-tanks: like this...

http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/growth/gcc/projects/in-action-cryoplane.html

Liquefied hydrogen tanks leak boiled-off hydrogen, which is why the pictures of the Space Shuttle waiting to launch always have that cool fog rolling out of them.  That fog is boiled-off hydrogen.  Imagine an underground car-park full of cars all boiling hydrogen out into the air.  Imagine someone going out into the car-park for a smoke.  Imagine the whole building flying through the air...

Which leads me on to the other point: beware of how dangerous hydrogen is to store.  Working with domestic gas is dangerous enough if you don't know what you are doing, but hydrogen is far better at leaking, even through sheet steel, because the molecules are so tiny.  And, since the hydrogen you generate at home will have no smell, the first you will know there is a leak is when your shed roof blows off.

I imagine hydrogen will be used for industrial storage of electricity, and for aviation - but you don't fuel an airliner and then park it in a hanger for two weeks.  For all the hype they are offering you, hydrogen seems like an utterly impractical fuel for domestic use, except maybe piped in at around atmospheric pressure, and heavily tainted with ethyl mercaptan, so you can smell it.  You might cook with it, but you won't fuel your car with it.

And, for now, the hydrogen for those hydrogen-powered cars that they are promising you comes from petrochemicals.  That is, they take petrochemicals and throw away half the energy - and that's hydrogen.  Why do you think the oil companies are backing this?

[electrondady1]

this is the first i've heard of elevated nitrogenoxide emisions using hydrogen as fuel.also i am skeptical of your data on the combustion temp being higher than conventional fuels this goes against previous information i have read.  i.c.engines can be run on hydrogen but there is less energy released(i beleave because of lower combustion temp.) so to achive similar power outputs , supercharging or turbocharging is required. every one is already burning hydrogen.. remember , natural gas, our cleanest burning fuel, is called ch4, there is one carbon molecule for every 4 hydrogen molecules. all the other fuels we use just have increasing amounts of carbon. i don't beleave there is any conspiracy by the oil companyies to get us using hydrogen , if any thing , the opposite is true. at some point i will use hydrogen as a fuel suppliment but storing it in inverted floating metal drums wont work when its -30c outside

[wdyasq]

Why do you think the oil companies are backing this? - although I can't blame oil companies for all our energy problems (the word Politician comes to mind), Hydrogen does burn at a higher temperature than oil derived products.  It is a problem to store, it creaps through most materials.  Engines must be hot or the burning hydrogen goes back into water and causes a vacuum - or at least it did in mid-70's when I played with it.

In an internal combuation engine the burning hydrogen and oxygen will also burn a little nitrogen, combining with the water, forming nitrous and nitric acids.  This condenses and runs into the oil pan.  I'll leave it there but that's not the end of that sequence.

'Back-fires' are extreemly interesting and don't do much for the integrity of the gasoline carburator need to warm the engine to operating temperature.  My experiences and memory have faded with time.  Some of them dealing with 'H2' were vivid enough to require mellowing.

Ron

[Phil Timmons]

Really interesting thread, this is.

Jumping back to the original question, I see two possible answers that I do not think were mentioned in the list.  Since you are already in to the storage domain, I suppose you jump to an additional battery bank (yeah, expense) when the primary was full.  

Another answer depends on just how much surplus you generate and your "remoteness."  If you are generating much excess -- can you sell it to the neighbors?  We are looking at doing that.

[trailerguy]

I installed the charge controller this afternoon. THe ametek was feeding about 3 amps today.I guess I should have read the directions ahead of time.It actually is attached to the battery bank, instead of the incoming charge lead from the genny. So the higher voltage of the genny is held in check by the resistance of the batterys. And the extra power is bled off the batterys. I watched the voltage of the batterys build to about 15v when the controler came on and dumped the power, then when the battery voltage dropped to about 13.5v the controller shut off again, letting battery voltage build again. I found a Ni chrome wire resister that was built for use with electric trailer brakes to dump the load into, it gets toasty warm without turning visably red hot. When I have more time I'll find something else to run with the extra 12v power.

[mcgivor]

Another for of gas that most people forget about is vaporized gasoline.  It is easy to make and use on demand, it would be better for a stationaly engine.  As I have not been able to spend time on making a "thottle" for it.  If you e-mail me I'll explane how to do it.