April is project contribution month

[JohnF]

Frank;

Got all my permissions in place, Ontario Hydro is on board, I have all the costs (not too high) so now I'm in the financing stage.  All is looking good, will post pics when I get things going.

[rcavictim]

Frank;

Got all my permissions in place, Ontario Hydro is on board, I have all the costs (not too high) so now I'm in the financing stage.  All is looking good, will post pics when I get things going.

John,

Good luck!  You are apparently a lot more trusting of banksters et al than I.  This scale of project is a really big deal for an individual.

I'm going to wait until photovoltaics come down a lot more in price so as to be affordable without the kind of 'help'    you get from a bank.

[vdubnut62]

Rcavictim, you sound like my Grandaddy may God rest his soul , to my knowledge, he never borrowed a dime from a bank. I should have listened better.
Ron

[LowGear]

My two "in production" projects for this summer are the bio-diesel plant and converting the Polaris ATV to electric power.

The first batch of bio-diesel should be "cooked" this 4th of July.  You got a better date?

The Polaris will get the battery boxes installed in June and the motor installed in July.  My local welding shop has a computer controlled plasma cutter - WOW!  Electrical connections and motor speed controls may not be completed until the last of September.  Trojan flooded verses AGM units are the big question.  Information / suggestions on battery selection are encouraged. 

Casey

[Crofter]

Frank;

Got all my permissions in place, Ontario Hydro is on board, I have all the costs (not too high) so now I'm in the financing stage.  All is looking good, will post pics when I get things going.

John, how are things going with your Fit or MicroFit program? Locally there seems to be an agenda of throwing one snag after another into any progress. The municipal power park for the 10MW solar farm seems to be dangling by a thread but most likely dead in the water. The ones for local residences are hitting snags that make you wonder whether the whole production was a political posturing with little intent of actually have to spend much of the dangled money. .

Tell me it isnt so!

[rcavictim]

Has anyone like JohnF., for example figured out how much of this Ontario MicroFit Good Deal the Federal Government is gonna take away in the form of income taxes?  As soon as you have a solar power plant and are selling power to Ontario Hydro you have a business and the feds are gonna do everything they can to own it and crush it, that is how they operate. Same deal goes for your local Municipal Government.  That solar power plant represents a large investment that raises the value of your propety.  Your income taxes will shoot up just because some bureaocrap asshole thinks your property is now worth a heck of a lot more and that he deserves a piece of that action. My mistrust of banksters goes much further. I don't trust any of these bastards!

We live in an over regulated minefield.  To be forewarned is to be forearmed.

If you ask I'll tell you how I 'really' feel.   

[rcavictim]

If you ask I'll tell you how I 'really' feel.  

Ok, I will ask ..... how do you REALLY feel ?   Do tell us please!

Jens,

I wrote that in a kinda code.  It is a technique where you can hide things in plain sight.  Knowing this, if you read my post again, you will know how I really feel.  

This just in....rcavictim has real feelings and strong opinions on issues that affect the honest and hard working among us who have lived their lives trying to do the right thing and playing fair, but are being cheated in wholesale fashion by banksters, politicians and CEO's of large corporations who feel that they are more deserving and don't have to work for their reward like the rest of us.....

[JohnF]

My unit is up and running, has been producing income since July 20th or so.  Got my first cheque from Ontario Hydro on the 1st of this month for the few days in July when it was working.

As I already have a Limited Company, this is just another part of it.  I get to write off expenses (initial outlay) then report income.  It will likely be 8 years of so before I break even, so there is not an immediate tax implication.  Looking at initial returns, the system will likely generate around $14,000 in income a year, that will be taxed when the time comes at the business tax rate which is around 20%.

All-in-all, I'm reasonably happy with the projected rate of return even given the fact that the gub'mint will be taxing me eventually.

There has been a bit of a kerfuffle about the price to be paid for the output.  At the original price of 80.2 cents kw/hr the payback time was in the range of 8 years or a bit less.  I don't think the Provincial liberals realized that farmers can count and do calculations because over 15,000 applications were received.  Most applied for ground mount dual-axis tracker systems and eventually some government apparatchik figured out that people were for real - and the payout implications were staggering. The government tried to cut the rate back for the tracker systems to 58.8 cents kw/hr but eventually settled for 64 cents.  However, there was such an outcry that they have agreed to honour all submitted applications that were put in prior to mid-July - after that the 64 cent rate cuts in.  For roof-mount systems the payout is still 80.2 but of course they produce about 30% less power.  The government's reasoning is that they wanted everyone to have the same rate of return - around 11%/yr.

Having said all of that, I still feel that this was a feel-good program introduced by the Ontario government where they NEVER expected people to do the math.  They really expected that the initial up-front cost (around $110,000) would dissuade everyone except the few that could afford it.  I still don't think that there will be that many installations done, the initial cost is just too great for most and the banks are very reluctant to advance funds.

One other problem I have encountered - try getting insurance for these things!  Every insurance company I've talked to is very reluctant, I think I have a line on one right now but they are taking their time to get back to me - guess they are waiting to see if the whole damn thing falls down.

The larger units (over 10kw nameplate) are a different kettle of fish and I don't know much about them except they get a much lower price for the power produced.  There is a 100 acre installation up and running in St. Eugene about 40 minutes away from me and another one of similar size going in just a few miles away.

[Crofter]

Glad to hear you have made out well and all operational. Yes I think they were caught by surprise on the level of response. You are right that most people wont be able to get the funds together or tolerate the frustration of actually whipping the cart through all the obstacles to the finish line. Insurance has been one of the problems here as well as mortgage holder involvement. The municipality here formed a company to finance and umbrella the operation for property owners and that has further complicated matters with another layer of legal encumberment.

Yep, the big boys pay lawyers to cover their backsides from every possible angle and the cost of doing so eventually ends up being absorbed lower down the food chain; dont let that surprise you!

Alternative energy is not cheap and it will not be quick and easy to turn on when it comes time to replace oil. Imagine your payback time if you were simply getting the base rate per KWhour!

[rcavictim]

At the original price of 80.2 cents kw/hr the payback time was in the range of 8 years or a bit less.  I don't think the Provincial liberals realized that farmers can count and do calculations because over 15,000 applications were received.

Holy bovine batman ... that sure beats the 8 cents/kwh you get here for anything you put back into the grid !!!

Jens,

I'll bet you could never actually get paid 8 cents.  You will never see any money.  The power company will continue to make you send monthly cheques to THEM and the power you gift them gets credited off your account up to the point where you are at zero.  Gift them any more and you kiss it totally goodbye. They still kill you with the other line items which for me can be 800% of the usage component.  $120 power bill for which $20 is electricity used at whatever cents per kW/h.  On that bill the delivery charge is about $80.  I wonder if that is because the wires are stupid and they continuously deliver electricity to the wrong addresses?
Hell, they can make any darned excuse they want, they are in almost total control and know it.

Does this piss me off to the extreme?  Well, enough that I have spent four years now physically killing myself making a large enough wind turbine so I can tell Hydro to take their meters and shove them up a place where photovoltaics will not function.  In case anyone is curious, I got a lot more done on it this year and have finally started fabricating the four large airfoils (5 feet x 21 feet each) out of all steel.  Palmer Putnam would be proud!

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:i0J3ITDbAsoJ:www.wind-works.org/photos/Smith-PutnamPhotos.html+putnam+wind+turbine&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca

[vdubnut62]

Steel?? Egads man! How are you gonna hoist 'em up there?
Ron.

[rcavictim]

Steel?? Egads man! How are you gonna hoist 'em up there?
Ron.

I have an electric wire rope winch crane up at the service platform which can lift the bottom blade mounting plate to it's home position.  To keep the 2/3rds of the blade mass above this point vertical during the lift I need to add ballast below the blade which will be a specially made jig that bolts to the bottom attachment plate.  The blades are expected to weigh in the 200+ lb. each range.  The same technique was used to lift the four upper rotating radial arms into place two years ago.

I don't like the weight factor (scary centrifugal forces and massive amounts of stored energy which has to be stopped quickly in an emergency shutdown), and hope to be able to afford lighter materials perhaps a year or two down the road to make an improved and lighter set of airfoils with.  I'm going with steel now because it is what I have been able to acquire on the cheap.  The trusses are the same 4-1/2" x 0.125" wall x 21 foot long each irrigation pipe that the tower is made of.  They weigh 100 lbs. each and are very strong.  The sheet metal comes from two above ground swimming pool surrounds found at the local dump. That is 0.020" thick, continuous 47-1/2" wide roll, folded seam edges, satin finish and paintable. That find saved over $1000 in sheet metal purchase!  Unfortunately I could not avoid a purchase of about a half a million pop rivets!    Anticipating this job I bought a pneumatic riveter at Princess Auto when on sale a couple of years ago.  I used it for the first time making the radiator airflow box for my Changfa  power plant project last winter.  That is one SWEET tool! Ka-junk.

[vdubnut62]

I wish you didn't live so doggone far way...... me and my red neck would come and bug the Devil out of you.
Maybe you could teach me a thing or two, that is if I'm smart enough to learn.
Ron

[rcavictim]

Here is a shot of my jig while welding the attachment stub arms and plates to a blade truss.  This work got done last week.  The second photo is current and is a view down from the service platform which shows the generous footprint I have been able to achieve on this totally mobile, self propelled tower.  There is a screw jack at each of the six stabilizer stations.  When these jacks are cranked up off the ground the tower is remarkably stable.  I spent much time this summer reinforcing the heck out of the outrigger arms and the attachment points for the six jacks.

[rcavictim]

I just hope that things are still 'remarkably stable' after you have the blades installed. That is a LOT of surface area !!!!
If I were in your shoes, I would install sensors in the outriggers to measure load as well as wind speed sensors. I would then watch VERY carefully what these sensors would tell me at various wind speeds.

Did you see my shoes?  If you were in those you might not want to stand right at the edge of the service platform like I did to take that picture.    I hear you about your concerns and believe me I have given this years of study and thought already.

Well it won't be so stable in a wind with the airfoil blades installed and only the small footprint of the tracked crawler to hold it all up straight, and it wasn't designed to be.  That is what the outrigger jacks are there for. 

I have plenty of analysis with test equipment to do once the system is complete and spinning.  Of great importance is to map expected resonances, and unexpected, then make sure the controller knows that certain speeds are to be avoided, etc. I plan to measure actual twisting torque on the vertical driveshaft too and look for dynamic wind up/unwinding oscillations. I know that my mainshaft keyways are marginal for the torque that will be seen at the lower speeds that these blades will operate at.   An anemometer will be part of the control system and will be used to determine the instantaneous quality or danger present in the wind resource in real time to direct the system controller to act appropriately.  I have much of this partially thought out.  The actual controller is not yet conceived.  That is an area where I would love to have the assistance of a local with PLC or PicAxe controller experience. Without such assistance my plan is to do it all with analog comparators, servo loops and relay logic.  I am an old dog who hasn't learned all the new tricks. Bite me.    I need to figure out how to make a automatic MPPT controller of sorts out of a big 3-phase variac driven by a DC servo motor.  Every single direction I turn on this huge project I find a detail that must be addressed which is usually a major project all by itself!  This project, now nearing the end of the fourth year in construction, is being quite a challenge for me.  I will be SOOOO glad when the hard physical work is all done.  Today I was out there cutting and welding the angle iron steel for the wing ribs in cold wind and some spitting rain.  After a few hours my bald head was frozen and I had to call it quits. I've recently taken to cutting off all my hair in the summer to help keep me cool while I'm working in the sweltering sun and Ontario humidity. I should have been wearing a snomobiler's toque but those don't fit well under my welding helmet. The past week here has been absloutely terrible.  I've been awaiting a spray painting opportunity that just won't appear.