Micro CoGen.

As has been mentioned, pre-mix is very low on cement. Fine for non critical stuff but I would not use it to hold up expensive panels. Pre-mix is also relative expensive compared to combining the individual bits yourself. Fine for small quantities but a bad choice if you need any quantity. I would suggest to look at getting in a concrete truck - better concrete, a hell of a lot easier on your back and you might be surprised if you calculate the total cost of getting it delivered vs bags.
The stuff delivered with the concrete truck is a known quality and will give you peace of mind when you got some bad weather coming in!

Quote from: AdeV on November 28, 2016, 06:47:20 PM

What language are you working in? OO is one of those funny things, you'll suddenly have a "Eureka!" moment, and will wonder how you ever didn't get it in the first place... At least, that's what happened with me, about a month into working with Visual Basic 4 (the first "proper" OO version of VB).

Python is the poison of my choice at the moment .... but the "Eureka" moment has escaped my grasp for the time being.
I am not spending a lot of time on this at the moment but rather it's a hobby that gets played with when I feel like it. It might take me several months for the lightbulb in my brain to switch on. On the bright side, there are a lot of resources and very little need for writing code from scratch which is a great thing
I have a pi connected to my home wifi and access it via remote desktop so it is very easy to bring up the pi window for some play time whenever the mood strikes.

Quote from: veggie on November 29, 2016, 03:13:57 PM

Jens, what Language and Program development software are you using in LINUX to write programs on the PI ?

Sorry about the delay in responding, I only check in here when I happen to think about it ...

So far I am not using much of anything. I use a linux distribution called OpenPlotter on the pi which is very much boat oriented (which is my current vice) but allows for all kinds of nifty controls based on sensor input, all done via graphical interface.
I am also playing with Python but do not use any program development software as such at this time.
I am in a very steep section of the learning curve on Python's object oriented stuff as I have never done OOP before. My Thumper project was set up with a STAMP system for temperature measurements so this is a big step up for me. I have done programming in a number of languages but nothing object oriented until now.

I am currently knee deep into pi and it's yummy
I concur that this is probably the best choice in a lot of instances for more involved controllers and there is an awful lot of code out there that you can use as examples or combine to make a franken pi. I agree that power issues are important to be aware of before you get yourself too much engrossed.
With the pi3 having a gig of ram, 4 usb ports, ethernet, wifi and bluetooth, it is ideal for integration and interaction. The learning curve can be a bit of a Mount Everest experience though. I am currently stuck trying to understand (from example code) how object oriented programming works in order to put a simple temperature gauge up on the screen.

Good luck !

Similar idea as Butch ... have a normally open valve, electrically operated, on the pneumatic cylinder. If power is present, the valve is closed, if power is absent, the valve opens. So, if an error condition is present you drop power on both the air actuator valve and the release valve and presto .... I think ....

Quote from: BruceM on August 09, 2016, 04:55:28 PM
About $30 year for house/domestic HW heating via backup propane in Dec. and Jan..  5600 feet elevation in AZ.

NICE !!!!!

Have the new electronic power meters not made their way to you yet? The power company has the capability to look at your feed on an almost continuous basis. As far as I know they don't do that yet but it is definitively on the horizon. It would be foolish to try this unless you have the old meter (for how long?) and have a real desire to live in government housing and to eat government food.
Power companies also use statistical methods to trace theft and these will likely reveal your setup as well.
Since you can never feed more than you consume over a billing cycle (sure way to get the electrical inspector to show up), why not just spend a few dollars extra, generate DC and feed a lithium battery bank. Power some of your circuits from an inverter and anything that draws heavy current (stove) you leave on the grid.
Yes, there will be a significant hit for the batteries but then you will be completely legal and don't have to grow eyeballs in the back of your head

Why are you asking the question ..... we all know that the economics of generating power is iffy at best. If you are generating heat and the power is a by-product then this is a viable way of using that.

That's really a shame but the writing was on the wall long ago. As mentioned, batteries are the way to go (Lithium only).
You guys in the US had a sweet deal for a long time. Up here in Canada we had only a fraction of the subsidies and with all the grid tie red tape it never was economical to do anything but battery storage.

Having said all that, I am surprised to hear this rant from Hawaii. I thought all their power is diesel generated and the powers to be would welcome solar.  Maybe they are concerned that the distribution grid business could fail completely leaving them in a big pickle ?

Quote from: glort on June 18, 2016, 05:30:37 AM
My next " experiment" is too hook some solar panels to a Standard electric water heater and put that in front of the regular heater so it is fed warmed or preheated water. If the solar brings it up to temp, the regular heater will never kick in and if it isn't how enough, the regular heater will bring the water up to temp but be working on water that is above mains temp and therefore save power.

I wonder about something like an IBC container surrounded with household batt insulation and encased in something like cool room panel and heated externally and fed with a circulation pump. Might be able to fire it up with the oil burner once a week or so and have the solar electric keep it at a useable level.  I have a tiny water heater atm so I would really enjoy some Loooong hot showers!

It is MUCH more efficient to heat the water directly through solar and if you go with vacuum solar panels the hot water generation keeps going through the depest winter. Hot water can also be produced (amazing as it sounds) on overcast days!

For water heat storage you might want to think about building your own tank, EDPM (?) lined. An IBC container is not enough capacity for anything useful and is only good to something like 65C (that's off the top of my head and likely wrong but it's well below boiling). There are good write-ups on the web for tank construction and it is surprisingly simple and straight forward.

Sorry for the thread drift .... now back to our regular scheduled programming of bashing bots ....

Quote from: buickanddeere on May 28, 2016, 06:58:25 PM

Quote from: Jens on May 28, 2016, 01:45:04 PM
It's good to see that people are still hanging about.
I have moved on and spend a lot of time on my sailing hobby but also end up putting various doctors kids through university (up here in Canada it's mostly free thank god). My shop looks like I hoard (well I do but ....) and there is no enthusiasm (at the moment) to do anything about it. Thumper is sitting in the engine room, neglected, rusting and with rat crap all over it but I still have some hope of eventually resurrecting things.
I only have microcogen linked on my boat computer so it only gets checked once in a while.
On the bright side, my boat has 700 Ah of 12V storage in lithium batteries and I am loving it. Eventually the plan is to add solar power and I can see a day coming when the house will get solar power and a very large lithium bank.Chances are that's when Thumper gets revived to use for both heat and electricity. Any thoughts of grid tie are truly dead.
I am excited to see what happens when Tesla gets their battery plant going. Hopefully the US dollar will be affordable by then.

Location ?

Victoria, BC, Canada

It's good to see that people are still hanging about.
I have moved on and spend a lot of time on my sailing hobby but also end up putting various doctors kids through university (up here in Canada it's mostly free thank god). My shop looks like I hoard (well I do but ....) and there is no enthusiasm (at the moment) to do anything about it. Thumper is sitting in the engine room, neglected, rusting and with rat crap all over it but I still have some hope of eventually resurrecting things.
I only have microcogen linked on my boat computer so it only gets checked once in a while.
On the bright side, my boat has 700 Ah of 12V storage in lithium batteries and I am loving it. Eventually the plan is to add solar power and I can see a day coming when the house will get solar power and a very large lithium bank.Chances are that's when Thumper gets revived to use for both heat and electricity. Any thoughts of grid tie are truly dead.
I am excited to see what happens when Tesla gets their battery plant going. Hopefully the US dollar will be affordable by then.

A couple of random thoughts:

I found that preheating of veggy oil was not really required once the engine was at operating temperature. First of all the injector pump is quite warm and, more importantly, the injectors can easily heat the oil as it comes in. On the other hand, I found that fat crystals could easily clog the filter in my setup as the oil at that point was fairly cool.

I was struggling a lot with soot in the exhaust. I had all kinds of theories including the rings not seating well since I never cross hatched the cylinder walls. My current theory is that I was running the engine at too high a load. I was running at somewhere between 90 and 95% of maximum. There was no sign of blackness in the exhaust gases. I suspect though that there was unburned fuel which caused soot in the exhaust system even if it was not visible in the exhaust gases. I ended up having to do regular cleaning of my exhaust gas heat exchanger.

I am no longer running the engine so haven't got any recent observations.

I found that if your fuel is veg oil based, a filtering run once a year is pretty much required. Even in sealed tanks, I would get a layer on the bottom of polymerized product and that can plug up a filter in a matter of minutes (if you are picking up from that layer).
Another way of dealing with the issue - pick up fuel from higher up in the tank and then, when time allows, re-process the left over veg oil with incoming new oil to filter out contaminants.
Yes, some higher melting point product can gel up but the easiest way around that is to have the fuel filter next to the warm engine. Ofd course one assumes that your fuel stock itself is not sitting at -30C

Quote from: dkeav on August 08, 2015, 10:03:48 AM
Maybe trying to source a couple packs from hybrids at junkyard?

You REALLY need to know what you are doing if you are going to do that. A lot of times the cells are not standard voltages, the chemistry might be more volatile in order to bring up capacity and as far as I know these packs use very sophisticated battery management systems.

Quote from: veggie on August 07, 2015, 08:11:37 PM
So, where does a guy get 700aH worth of Lithium batteries ?
Veggie

http://www.balqon.com/store-2/#!/Yttrium-LiFePO4-700-Ahr-Battery/p/11906026

Mine are anolder version without Yitrium (haven't got a clue what that stuff does)
At the time the Canadian Dollar was still around 90 cents US, they were listed at $700 per cell and I got them for a bit less than that. They were sold as new but I suspect they were old stock and possibly installed before. I did do a capacity test and they are close to rated capacity.
Having said that, I believe you need to be aware that purchasing from Balqon is a bit of a risk based on other peoples experiences. I had no issues though. I took the risk because it was by far the best price out there.
You need 4 cells to make up a 12V pack.