Too much electricity

[BruceS]

OK, I'll leave the thread as the original poster wishes but feel free to start another thread along different lines if you want.

[wombat]

My system is simple I wanted to be free of gas so talked to T1 about going all electric I already had 160 amp lithium at 24 volt. T1 advised to add another 100 amps of battery capacity and increase my solar so now have 260 amp of lithium and 1450 watts of solar with another 510 to be fitted giving a total of 1960 watts. System is controlled and monitored with T1 control. Batteries are normally full by noon and all cooking / water heating is from the sun. I run 2 inverters 1 360 watt for media centre/computer/bose sound dock this runs 24/7. Second inverter charger is 3000 watt I normally switch the off after cooking the evening meal. Normal battery usage from sun down to sun up is 120 amps according to the Victron. I can charge from mains / generator or 50 amps from engine alternator using a sterling pro reg D but have not used any of these in the last month. hope this helps and don't want to win the pi**ing award just want to use the sun and maybe charge the van next to me

[T1 Terry]

Scott wins the boasting rights by far, but he is not the boasting type and in fact very much the other way so I doubt you will ever hear or see what he has built, well at least not form him anyway
After sticking my head in a noose and having it tighten I'm sure not gunna split up any more threads to start new topics so I'll leave that to someone else. I'll just start a new topic with mine as the first post, I can get into enough trouble that way, so here it is:
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3222

T1 Terry

[bagmaker]

Its my take that the best place to start is by modification of the refridgeration systems to increase our efficiencies, as they are the most important to us.
There are a number of ways to acheive this, most however are quite complex.
The simplest is to turn your deep freeze down to minimum each afternoon and back up to normal in the evening. This will effectually store excess electrical energy within the freezer.
We could also increase the size of the refridgerant storage in each system to minimise cycling, in the same way phase-change fridge systems work, with the hope to minimise electrical input to the times we have plenty. This modification would also require some interesting electronic control- I am not sure this is a bad thing. Kind of a central energy control system.

After that we could modify the condensor part of the fridge, freezer or A/C units to include or replace it with one that heats water instead of air thus gaining Hot water for our showers and cooking.
We can also chill our water holding tanks, UV / filter -sterilize our water or even create water with the excess power.

Next we might move to the HWS system, increasing its internal temperature to around 90 degrees instead of 60 or so.
This can only be safely done with the use of tempering valves on the outlets so folks don't scold themselves but there is an added benefit of hygeine, more temperature = less bacteria.

I can imagine peoples houses having similar systems to Motorhomes in a decade or two, don't discount the small numbers we have in creating the technology.

[T1 Terry]

The filtering/uv sanitising of water is a subject close to my heart. I've envisaged a system that could recycle the shower water for reuse as shower water and investigate, all be it briefly, into what would be required to achieve this. Reverse osmosis is the obvious but I've ruled that out as unsuitable as only 10% of the water is actually recovered, the rest used for flushing the membrane, that leaves filtering and distillation. Now, the filtering would be heavy on the maintenance side and require flocculants to remove the soap and body fats, where distillation would just require the dregs removed from the tank and the heater units cleaned from time to time. The energy requirements for the distillation system is the hanging point, so waste energy recycling would be a possible solution. The distillation process is also part of another subject close to my heart, but that's for another time

T1 Terry

[SteveW]

Magnificent ideas! Above my head but I'll follow with interest. In the meantime I'll just keep trying to split the atom.

[slowhand]

Bagmaker, there are already units which do all you ask, the space station works on those principles very successfully, except for solid wastes I believe, but is extremely expensive. That's the approach they are using for the proposed colonising of Mars, which will be an interesting time when and f it happens.

You can already convert house grey water to fresh very simply, and using no energy or power. I have a one I'm playing around with at home, an environmental engineer friend of my kids is advising me with it (through my daughter). It's really just common sense, the techo aspects don't interest me at all, just that it works ad how to make it happen..

[Dot]

saw a program about using charcoal to clean nasty water (was the usual yank show blah blah but sounded ok)

[bagmaker]

The filtering/uv sanitising of water is a subject close to my heart. I've envisaged a system that could recycle the shower water for reuse as shower water and investigate, all be it briefly, into what would be required to achieve this. Reverse osmosis is the obvious but I've ruled that out as unsuitable as only 10% of the water is actually recovered, the rest used for flushing the membrane, that leaves filtering and distillation. Now, the filtering would be heavy on the maintenance side and require flocculants to remove the soap and body fats, where distillation would just require the dregs removed from the tank and the heater units cleaned from time to time. The energy requirements for the distillation system is the hanging point, so waste energy recycling would be a possible solution. The distillation process is also part of another subject close to my heart, but that's for another time

T1 Terry

Grey / contaminated water can also be treated by UV post filtering but yeah, there is a maintenance issue with the filters for sure.
UV sterilization is substantially more energy efficient than distillation per litre, as I understand it. But we will have plenty of power.........................
Or just make the water as needed and chuck it out when used
http://www.airwater.com.au/

and how they work
http://www.gizmag.com/extracting-water- ... -air/2796/

[bagmaker]

Bagmaker, there are already units which do all you ask, the space station works on those principles very successfully, except for solid wastes I believe, but is extremely expensive. That's the approach they are using for the proposed colonising of Mars, which will be an interesting time when and f it happens.

You can already convert house grey water to fresh very simply, and using no energy or power. I have a one I'm playing around with at home, an environmental engineer friend of my kids is advising me with it (through my daughter). It's really just common sense, the techo aspects don't interest me at all, just that it works ad how to make it happen..

Interesting Mr Hand, can you get some more information on the greywater system for us?