Replace bateries with cement . This will get your attention for sure

[John]

I know absolutely nothing about the systems you guys are talking about
and I am new to this group but I am not stupid and would like to
venture a question.

From reading your messages I conclude that, batteries are most of the
times, a necessary pain in the neck ,they have a limited life, must
be matched etc. etc.

Why not use a different way to store energy?

Why not store the energy using a mechanical system? I am not talking
about springs or torsion bars, I am thinking of gravity.

Make one or two very large boxes of cement mechanically suspended on
the side of the house ( the side without windows) and use the energy
you want to store to lift that contraption. You know the rest.

Modern electric motors and generators are today rated at more then 90%
efficiency and that is probably more than what you can get from
batteries.
The boxes under the eaves may even collect rain and increase the
weight of the contraption and if you don't like the looks, you can
build a wall to hide the full assembly.
Easy to seee how much energy you have in storage.

Once my manager asked me to design a TV station. Why me- I asked I
know nothing about TV stations . That's why , I am tired of seeing
the same thing over and over again,

Please no insults. It's Sunday

John

 

[John]

I tried that method and my house tipped over and ruined it. Show us
your design.

You don't attached it to the house. If I have to shown you a design,
you don't understand the idea.
Have you heard about electric cars that generate power when they go
down hill? That's the same principle. They use power when they go up
and may return part of it on the way down the same hill.

A full elevator going down may not use energy. It may even convert
part of the energy used to go up into electric energy coming down.

The hydro electric pumping plant uses that method at
Niagra Falls in Buffalo NY

That's a different subject

 

[Terryc]

Why not use a different way to store energy?

One word; efficency!

To do anything else requires that electricity that you pump into a
battery to be converted (with significant losses in any practical
system) to something else,

You also loose when you recover.

 

[Terryc]

You don't attached it to the house. If I have to shown you a design,
you don't understand the idea.

Hook line and sinker!
Can you please post your weight for the fishing score.

Yer, I know it is Sunday, but not here. {.

See previous answer.

 

[John]

Hi John

I like the way you think outside the box. Alternative energy for the home
is going to be a multi level solution using several technologies. You
brought up thermonic regen from sewers in another thread. Great thinking! A
energy autonomous house is going to need every technology that's out to
achieve it's goal.
Looking forward to reading more from you.

Mike
You brought in a point that I have been trying to shake for some time.
The thinking inside of the box.

On the sewer project that to my surprise I had until now an
unbelievable cooperation from the Water Department of the city, any
attempt to discuss any idea that may involve the cooperation of other
departments is politely ignored.

Believe it or not , they are prepared to lift 24 meters of the street
pavement, down to about 6 feet, and install modified sewer pipes to
carry on my experiment.

I have suggested that the city, before installing the utility pipes
and before paving a new street, work that requires digging below the
frost line, install a loop of 150 meters of 1 inch cooper tubing
routed below the side walks and make the ends accessible to the houses
that are to be build on that street. Make this on a street called
"Energy St." It is well know that the major cost of installing an
efficient heat pump is the digging required to install the underground
pipes.
No way. That's the responsibility of the Roads Department and only the
Mayor can authorize such project that would required the cooperation
of various departments and if it fails could be a political disaster.
The Mayor, an old fogy like myself (78) isn't going to risk it's
political future by engaging in projects of unproven results.
So... ... close the box.

Thanks for your nice words, I'll put them in my empty box. The other
is almost full

John

 

[John]

I don't agree. You will need a mix of technologies but you certainly
don't need every one that's out there. You only need the appropriate
ones for your circumstances.

Anthony

Semantics

Your posting is just as useless as this one

John

 

[John]

John wrote:
...

Because batteries work best of all the alternatives.


Have you tried putting some numbers to your design?
This is not a new idea and has been discussed here in the past.

The formula we are looking for here is energy = force x distance.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/gpot.html
In this case we could use kg x m x 9.8 = joules
1 watt-hour is 3600 joules so we could go further and use...
kg x m x 9.8 / 3600 = watt-hours (wh)

Let's say we want to replace a pair of Surrette 6CS-25PS Batteries.
These are 6V batteries so we need a pair for the 12V commonly used
in solar PV systems. They're 820 Amp-Hours, 6 Volts DC or 4920 wh
for a total of 9840 wh or nearly 10 kWh. This might be enough for
a very energy conserving house. They weigh 145kg each and measure
some 56cm x 29cm x 47cm.

Now we need to choose a height. Let's say we don't want to lift these
large weights more than 10 meters, roughly 3 stories. Anything more
might be an eyesore and get complaints from the neighbors.

So, we use the formula to figure the weight required (showing our work).

?kg x 10m x 9.8/3600 = 9840 wh
?kg x .0272 = 9840 wh
?kg = 9840 / .0272
?kg = 361,470
361,470kg required.

How much concrete would this be? A normal weight concrete weighs
approximately 2400 kg/m^3 (more or less). We would need 150 m^3.
Let's say we don't want the block more than 3 meters tall so it'll
have to be a bit more than 7m x 7m x 3m or approximately the same
dimensions as a single story house.

Of course, it would be much smaller if we substituted lead with
it's density of 11,300 kg/m^3. We would only need 32 m^3 and this
could be a block 3.2 m on each side (about 10.4 feet).

This is what would be needed to replace the 300kg of batteries
that could be stored in a corner somewhere.

Anthony

Anthony
Thanks for the detailed calculations.
I would never think that a couple of NEW batteries weighting 300kg
could store sufficient energy to lift 300,000 kg 10 meters. Am I
right? Hard to believe
Even if we consider that after 2 or 3 years the batteries have 50% of
the rated efficiency, we still have a lot of energy.

John

 

[Randy]

Your biggest problem is going to be that the sewers simply are not hot
enough to get an appreciable temperature differential.


..................................................................................................
Solar Discussion Forum: http://www.wind-sun.com/ForumVB/
..................................................................................................

O.K., I can't resist getting into this thread...
How about putting hydro on the main sewer outlet from the city.
Or does this idea stink
Randy

 

[John]

Your biggest problem is going to be that the sewers simply are not hot
enough to get an appreciable temperature differential.


..................................................................................................
Solar Discussion Forum: http://www.wind-sun.com/ForumVB/
..................................................................................................

What are you talking about?

For more then 3 years I have been measuring the temperature of the
sewer on my street. The lowest was 12 C and maximum 16 C and the
interesting thing was that the temperature was higher during the
Winter then in the Spring or Autumn. The frost insulates the sewer.

Scandinavian countries and others located North of Europe like
Germany and Austria are developing the heat Pump Industry to a point
were today one can get a coefficient of performance of 5 (COP)

A COP of 5 means that the heat recovered is equivalent to 5 times
more that one would pay if using electricity. Like 500% efficiency.

Air to air heat pumps are very inefficient when the temperature of the
air is below zero C but if one can get a guarantied source of heat
that remains about 10 C year round then they become very efficient.

The main problem with ground/ water to air/water heat pumps is the
cost of installation and very much like PV they become a good
investment if someone else pays for the system.

Heat pumps in general have the disadvantage of been very efficient
when little heat is required like the Winter in Florida .

If one extracts the heat from the heart were the temperature below
frost is in the order of 8 degrees C (Vermont) , then we get a COP of
about 4. If we reclaim the sewer temperature we can easily get a COP
of 5.

Norway, Oslo, uses the Sewer's temperature to heat a full block of
houses and is at the moment building another and larger system.

Vancouver, Canada, is also installing a system that will provide the
heat to a future Olympic Village. That is easy because the air
temperature rarely goes below zero C.

I better stop here before been told that this isn't the right group
for this type of discussion

John

 

[John]

O.K., I can't resist getting into this thread...
How about putting hydro on the main sewer outlet from the city.
Or does this idea stink
Randy

If I understand wath you are sugesting, It doesn't stink if you can
get the water for free. It's called water to air or water to water
heat pump.

 

[John]

The elevator you mentioned will generate energy in the down cycle. It
could light up your flashlight for over a few minutes. Get some
figures and you will understand.

Yes and no. There are many factors like the energy used to elevate the
elevator . If other conditions don't change, like the number of people
inside, the counter weight etc. , the equivalent of an elevator
designed for that purpose, should be able to return 70% of the power
used to provide the inverse function and that can go from a plus to a
minus with everything in between.
Can you show me with your calculations that I am wrong?

 

[Randy]

If I understand wath you are sugesting, It doesn't stink if you can
get the water for free. It's called water to air or water to water
heat pump.

Actully I was thinking hydroelectric off the treated outlet of a waste water
treatment facility to the stream/river.
In our city, they do recover the methane gas to help provide electricity for
the treatment plant. I'm not sure the methode they use to do the generating
though as to gas turbine or reciprocating engine.
I believe there are heat recovery units you can put in your home to recover
heat from your grey water. I hear them talk about it in alt.solar.thermal
quite often.
But gathering heat from the sewer main can be asking a bit from many cities
who are barely able to keep up with functional sewer lines in the first
place.
Let alone something they might have to mess with when a line breaks during
sub-freezing weather.
I have been around those repairs before and foutunately not the one in the
hip-waders, chopping frozen yuk.
That is why they would like to keep as much steamy stuff flowing down the
lines, to prevent freezing.
If someone was to build a substation for the purpose of collecting heat from
the waste water, that might be possible but would it make financial sense?
I'll leave that to our more mathmaticaly inclined people here.
It is a shame to waste the extra heat though that just heats up our streams.
Take care
Randy

 

[John]

John wrote:
...

I would suggest that if you're pulling heat from the sewer that
you have some way of insuring that they don't freeze. Blocked
sewer lines can be bothersome and are guaranteed to make you
unpopular with the neighbors.

Anthony

Thanks Anthony
We are taking that into consideration.

The temperature of the water/antifreeze fluid circulating in the
sewer via 1 inch cooper pipe will be above zero C.The projected rate
is 15 gallons per minute and the city guaranties a flow of at list 30
gallons per minute. We are selecting a 60 cm's pipe not the more
common 30 cm's to minimize the risk of low flow over nigh when most
people are a sleep.

Under consideration is a pipe that gets the sewer from a local
hospital that has the advantage of some overnight flow but the
disadvantage of possible bacteria presence.
There is also a possibility of using the sewer from a new hotel that
also has sewer flow over night .
There is always the risk that one of those places may decide to
recuperate their on heat and in that case the efficiency of our system
will be, in the worst case, reduced to the efficiency of a standard
geo thermal system . From COP 5 to COP4 since the temperature of the
environment around the sewer pipe will decrease .

In any case we are also considering the installation, at the same time
and part of the same assembly of a more standard system of a grid of
more then 100m of 1 inch buried cooper tubing under the utility pipes
that preheats our fluid before entering the main sewer system.
In short in the heating mode, we estimate that will to be sending
our water/antifreeze liquid to the preheating grid at plus 2 C that
will come out of the preheating grid at plus 5 C that will enter our
main system at the same plus 5 that will raise the temperature to plus
12. The rest is up to the heat pump inside of the house. It will heat
or and cool the house and the water all year round as required

The yearly cost of electricity required to satisfy the most common
requirements for energy for a house totally heated and cooled by
electricity in my area is in the order of $2,000.
Central heating and cooling plus hot water accounts to $1,400 , That
can be reduced to $280. May be the other $880 can be reduced to zero
by the application of PVs.
May be, by the time we finish this project, we will have a glass or
plastic roof that can be painted with squares of PV material.

A set of drawings is to be submitted to a governmental lab for
evaluation before the installation starts.

This is mainly a prototype and we hope to get sufficient knowledge
that can be applied to future projects.
There will be several sensors located above and below ground level
whose information will transmitted via Internet, to our office to
minimize the inconvenience of local monitoring to the local residents

To the best of our knowledge this is the first time in north America
that a single residence is heated by the discarded heat from the
sewer.

The above may required more then the usual effort to be understood
My apologies. English is obviously not my mother's language

Constructive comments are very welcome

John

 

[John]

I was in Electrical Revenue Metering for 30 years and know better by
example and witnessing it in industry.

Can you show examples of the potential energy from a given weight for
a given height? If you could you would understand.

It's simple, the energy that one gets is in the order of 75% of the
energy used to lift the mass .
I have no problem understanding it. There is no problem, basically
the idea can be used but it as been demonstrated to me that in order
to store the amount of energy equivalent of the batteries we usually
use, the size of the cement block mast be very large
In other words: I have under estimated the storing capacity of the
batteries.

 

[John]

Fool. Show me your massive motor or engine that produces 75%
efficiency doing the work in the first place.

Before calling anyone "fool", do a little search and avoid been called
ignorant.

If we combine an electric motor and a generator as described below, we
get 82.8 eff. Plenty of room for other losses before we get to the
refereed 75%

Typical Electric Generator Efficiency

Electric generator losses usually include the same kind losses as of
the power transformer, copper losses in the winding and magnetizing
losses in the core, plus the rotational losses.

According to RETScreen Software model for small hydro project,
generator efficiencies can range from 93% to 97%. Since the turbine
used for small hydro power plants has a slow output rotational speed,
a gearbox or a speed increaser, between the turbine and the generator
is required to match the ideal rotational speeds of each. This is to
permit the use of a high-speed, lower cost generators but reduces the
overall efficiency of the plant by approximately 2%.

According to RETScreen, a value of 95% represents the efficiency of
most generators used for small hydro plants. This value should be
reduced to 93% for plants that require a gearbox.

http://www.jcmiras.net/jcm/item/93/

 

[John]

ROFLMFAO. liar

Stop bottom trolling

Do you intent to say; I am sorry , I confess my ignorance ?

Apologies accepted.

John