Posted on 10/17/2007 6:27:41 AM PDT by Uncledave
I's funny you mentioned that.
were I live I had some people in the neighborhood ask me about connecting them to my wind mill...I was thinking of making a bigger one and hooking them up charge them half what the electric co. charges and quit work...awww it'll never happen.
BTW I erected this windmill about 5 yrs ago..had the DOE here and talking about grants we will see........
Okay, it sounds like you are talking about solid oxide fuel cells. They produce high quality heat as a byproduct and their chief advantage is they do not require hydrogen as a fuel. You can run one of these off traditional fuels such as natural gas. I’ve read that if you use the waste heat for hot water and house heating, they can be cost effective. At this time, SOFCs are still in their early stages. The first 5 kw system was just released for purchase this year and are very expensive. They are holding up better than expected but they still degrade with use, about 5% per thousand hours if memory serves. Their practical service life would thus be rather limitted but improvement is expected over the next few years.
A system that can burn natural gas makes much more sense than one that burns hydrogen but there is still the simple fact that coal is cheaper than gas.
I live in one of the states that has prodigious wind power potential. Wind farms are being built and probably make sense where they are.
Individual wind mills and current solar does not make economic sense where grid power is available.
Future technology can probably make solar economical but throwing money at systems that cannot compete on their own is a drag on the economy.
For myself, I am convinced that being off the grid is going to be more important in the long run and the additional expense in the short term will be worth it. If enough businesses and individuals agree with me, our market demand and the technological response will improve the workability of that concept for everyone, so in my own self-interest I encourage it (push-pull marketing?). I imagine that in the remainder of my lifetime my first “gridless” power system will not be my last. That too is O.K.
Amortizing that $6,500 over ten years, you’d be paying 35 cents per kwh for the 1,650kwh they claim you can expect in a location with a mean wind of 11mph.
That’s very pricey electricity. Higher than photo voltaic, and PV panels would have a longer expected life, 20 years I think.
But someone has to be the first to buy the item.
Remember when VHS movies were 80.00 to buy back in the early 80s. I think it was Raiders of the Lost Ark that came out at 19.99 and the industry thought that was crazy. Of course that first VHS movie at 19.99 sold millions more than if it had sold at 80.00.
Fun item from my day, was beind a Prius, looked at the personal plate, it said:
NOTSMUG
bwah
It all depends on fuel prices, as long as coal is cheap and whatever alternative you have is expensive, the grid makes sense.
Doesn’t that mean that a manufacturer should have the courage of their convictions and decide to sell these wind turbines for $1,000, confident that the orders will roll in and they’ll still make money from the larger volume ?
I was thinking in terms of building a house and having the freedom to orient at one roofline most advantageously. The additional power concentrated by the wind deflected over the roof would have to make up for the uni-directional aspect.
I agree the VAWT has a nice feature in being able to use wind that changes direction frequently. But the relatively small volume of wind that would hit such a small vertical turbine wouldn’t generate much power. Windpower experts generally frown on roof-mounting because the turbulence caused by the roof interferes with turbines that catch only a small portion of the windstream. I thought by having the entire ridge along the roof capturing the concentrated windstream would handle the turbulent air better.
“It all depends on fuel prices, as long as coal is cheap and whatever alternative you have is expensive, the grid makes sense.”
Sorry, I have no desire to install a coal furnace or get a coal fired electric generator, besides, as fuel for major power plants I imagine nuclear would be preferable, even on cost terms and I am not looking to buy the reactor of a retired nuclear sub either.
But, the desire to be off the grid is not derived from purely economic factors, particularly from my point of view [and I believe from the point of view of a growing number of businesses], although the economic direction of current fuel cell technology is helping. As time passes economics will, for me, begin to play even less of a factor, because, although it is still more expensive the decreasing cost disadvantage is getting to the point where that disadvantage can be worth it, when you just want to be off the grid. Although economics is therefore not the only factor, the desire of people to move off the grid can create market conditions with their own technological and economic momentum. In fact, I’m counting on it. I might become an “early waver” but someone has to.
In a modern society, you’ll always be on the grid figuratively.
If you burn NG in your fuel cell, you are at the end of a pipe grid. If you burn propane, gasoline or diesel, you are at the end of a long supply chain.
Going solar or wind sounds like a way to get off the grid but you are still needing to buy a few thousand dollars in deep cell batteries every 5 years.
I live way out in the sticks, luckily, I was able to get power but I was off the water “grid” for about 5 years. It is a royal pain to be the water company when the well quits working at 10:00pm on a rainy workday night, I know, I’ve been there. I would hate to think of being responsible for keeping my power going 24/7, 52 weeks per year. I wouldn’t want to be a dairy farmer for similar reasons.
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