Refuel it once every three years or so...
Posted on 11/14/2006 12:32:02 PM PST by shrinkermd
What the heck is it? A long article, without describing how it works in any level at all.
I'm in the other universe you are connected too, and we are going to pull all that power you took back, and x10 more, the day before Christmas.
A generator uses an internal combustion engine, which usually wastes a great deal of heat. This device reclaims that heat and uses it for domestic heating. The value is in the reclaimed heat. It is not wasted, therefore increasing the apparent efficiency of the engine/generator set. Hard to believe one of these makes better use of fuel than something a million times larger.
Who knows what worms these holes let through?
They could come in and might could eat you.
I've been tracking my electric usage for the past while or two in an Excel spreadsheet, and my baseline is about 1 kilowatt or a little lower.
Over the summer, the micro-CHP would presumably be heating your shower water.
Or use casing head gas like I have at the ranch. :)
Refuel it once every three years or so...
I understand that my friend. We worked off a well too. The first nip in the air and my wife and I filled many containers of water and stored them.
Frozen pipes were a problem, but a strategically placed "salamander" under the house usually remedied that. Never did reach the point of an icerink in the house.
I miss my woodstove since we've relocated to northern Utah, but G-D willing, we'll buy property soon and I will be very happy to start burning again.....Time will tell.
FMCDH(BITS)
Which is why you should have a propane tank with a solenoid-activated switching valve. When power goes off, the valve opens, and you feed propane to run the genset. Power comes back on, system automatically switches back to NG.
You still get hot water along with the electricity. Your hot water heater is a pretty big electric load (if electric)--which now comes "free".
My brother was talking about converting to a corn burning system. While burning corn isn't efficient, you're in a different commodity market than most of the rest of us. With our lovely new Congress, I can see many of his "savings" going into the gas tanks of his fellow citizens.
I've never had a NG interruption, so what would be the point of switching to propane when the electricity goes out?
If EVERY house has a generation systen, why would we still have a grid?
>...produces 1.5 KW per hour. So it would produce 500 KW per year or $50.00 worth of electricity (at $.10 a KW).
1.5 kW for a year is 13,000 kW-hr, or $1300 worth of electricity.
Two reasons. First, because a grid exists already; Second, for power to be sold over the grid from those not needing the power to those needing the power.
What about fuel oil which the rural areas in the heavy heating areas use mostly instead of electric HW heaters?
I'm not sure of what exactly the technology is here, but on first blush, it seems like something that 'could' make sense in a very cold climate with a long heating season. Heating water for the shower would not be justification. That is not an especially heavy load unless you have a drom full of teenage girls. ;~))
Frankly, the '89% efficiency' claim that is making my BS meter spike. That is simply an unbelievable number to me.
1.5 kW for a year is 13,000 kW-hr, or $1300 worth of electricity.
My heating demand (radiant heat and hot water) for a year is apx.1000 gallons of propane. If the engine burns 3 gallons an hour that is apx 333 hours of run time. 333hrs X 1.5KW per hour = 500 KW or $50 worth of electricity.
Your calculation is correct if the generator is running 24 hours a day for a year. Your cost to produce $1300 worth of electricity is going to be around (13,000/1.5 times 3 = 26000 gallons) or about $39,000 if propane costs $1.5 a gallon. If you have enough heating demand to justify burning 26,000 gallons a year then you may want to purchase the system if you think it will last more than 5 or six years : )
I was reading your post as "loss of heating" being caused by loss of NG. If it's just due to not being able to run the furnace, all the better for one of these heat/hotwater/electricity gensets.
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