Too many ways to skin a cat

[AKcrab]

New member here. I've noticed there are a lot of knowledgeable people here with wildly different ways of solving a given problem. I would love to get some opinions on how you would set up my proposed project.

We live up north on an island. Grid power here is .65 cents/kWh and unreliable. We are a cruise ship destination and in the summer there is a gondola they operate that causes brownouts.

Our home in the village has a grid tie solar system that we use to charge a cheap electric car. Works great in the summer with our long days.

We recently bought some property for a shop that's 2.5 miles from our house. This property doesn't have grid power and I'm ok with that. The plan is to provide our own.

The options:
Good southern exposure for solar (summer only)

Seasonal micro hydro, about 450w or so.
 
Free WVO.

I have a Witte CD gen set, and a Lister CD with electric start that needs a generator head.

To be continued...

[AKcrab]

So the idea is to use the electric car to commute back & forth between the house and shop. It's ideal because the 2.5 mile trip is too short for our truck to even warm up. Very hard on the engine and it wastes fuel.

Car is on the solar "trickle charger" at the house. When I get to the shop it would be nice to plug it into another charger powered by the Witte or lister, possibly integrate a V2H system so the car battery would power the shop when needed.

Then when I need to run the generator, the car charger would also help put a proper load on the generator and keep it happy. Especially when running WVO.

The property also has some interesting hydro potential. A nice pond site at the top that could be developed as a sort of water battery. I could then open the penstock while at the shop and dump the hydro power into the car.

[mobile_bob]

sounds like an interesting plan you have there.
and i look foward to hearing more about it.

having a hydro source would be wonderful in my opinion
not much chance for that here in central kansas, the only time
we get enough water moving fast enough it is biblical in proportions (read that spring floods).

there was a time about 25 years ago, when i was about to be single again, i had thought seriously about a small cabin, and the very real possibility that i would be driving 60miles to work each day.  my plan was to build a special vehicle that had additional battery capacity, and a hot water storage tank so when i got home i could plug the vehicle into the cabin and have power for the evening, and enough hot water to provide for my domestic needs.

figured while driving for an hour, why not have the vehicle do something else useful too.

sounds like you live in a nice part of the world.

bob g

[Tom Reed]

You do have a lot of interesting possibilities there. Go-gen at the cabin with the WVO and Witte, depending how much WVO is available is a good way to go. I do Co-gen with my Listeroid CS 6/1 via hydronic loop in the floors of my house. Wonderful heat when the batteries need charging.

I'd imagine the solar resources are not great there, but a smaller solar system is handy to have as the inverters/batteries make the core of the system and any source of power you have can be stored in them. I have 5 of the SimpliPhi LiFePo batters for our house.

What voltage and amp hour rating is the battery set in the car?

[AKcrab]

The car battery is 30 kWh. The trick is finding a way to pull power back out of the car. In Japan nissan offers a consumer vehicle to home system that allows power to flow in both directions. Works good for peak load shaving or powering the house during an outage.

Of course it's not available in the US. some other companies are working on similar tech, but they will probably require a grid tie.

Right now there is a Chinese made V2H box available for a couple grand that looks like it will work. Not a bad way to go considering a Tesla powerwall cost $7500 and only stores 13.5kWh.

I definitely plan on doing cogen with the Witte. Should be able to collect more than enough WVO here to make it worthwhile. I'm the only hobbyist in the village that cares about this stuff.

Another advantage here is we are free to collect anything from the dump. You would not believe what gets thrown out here. Outside contractors don't want to pay freight to haul leftover supplies back to the mainland. I've collected miles of wire, pipe, fittings, etc.

Just have to be patient. We call it dump shopping. Already have most of what I need to finish this project on site.

This is a great place to live, except the winters a bit dark and cool. Be a lot better with a warm brightly lit shop to tinker in

[mobile_bob]

dumpster diving is known as "shopping at the big store" around these parts.

sort of a twist on what mobile mechanics refer to working outside as "working in the big shop"

our little town lost its hardware store years ago, and it is 30 miles to get to where you can find nuts/bolts/fittings, so just about every old guy saves everything imaginable. and it kills us to throw away anything.

soon as you do is the day you have to drive 30 miles or more to replace it.

i imagine living in alaska would be even moreso

bob g