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Hey guys.
First off:
1) Small huts on mountains which are not connected to the power supply system:
One uses a nearby electric current to generate a little elecricity for some bulbs.
2)Energy from plants is stored by pumping water up the montain (-> potential energy) during the night. During the day you can then run this water through turbines generating elecricity.
So what about you and me, living nowhere near a mountain?
Is it possible to put a tank under your roof for storing water and use that water to generate elecricity for your own home?
Physically, yes it is ( of course).
So, how do we get water into our tank?
Rain water
1) An hour (60mins)of standard rain 2l / (sqm*min) on your house (100 m^2 )
A simple calculation:
2*100*60= 12.000 l
2) In a year we have a
Other stuff..
e.g. Gyms could use their training machines to pump water up into the tank.
Now how much elecricity do we use?
A standard familiy in Germany uses about 10 kwh per day. 3650 kwh per year obv
Of course this differs in other countries and depending on wether your kids are spoiled brats or not (just let them carry water up into the tank instead of playing on the computer, its so much more fun).
Now of course the power you generate is depending on the pressure of the water (and that is depending on the drop height) and the amount of water that runs through your system per second/minute/whatever.
Finally, here are the data from a small turbine I googled:
With a dropheight of 6 m
and 6,4 l / s (I know what you're thinking, we'll get to that later)
generates
200 Watt at
230 V (Cause thats what you want , noob)
So lets calculate, how many l of water would you need , to generate the elecricity you need in a year?
3650 kwh a year -> 3.650.000 Wh -> 13.140.000.000 Ws
( 13.140.000.000 Ws * 6,4 l/s ) / 200 W = 420.480.000 litres.
Now you may think, that this is a lot of water. Well, yes it is.
The same houshold would use about 185.000 litres of water in a normal year.
How much water do we get from saving every drop of rain over a year?
In the rainiest regions of Germany we have about 2000l / sqm a year
that means about 200.000 litres of water a year on your roof.
That is about 0.05% of what you would need.
In other words: You can reduce your elecricity bill by 0.05 %.
Our example household has a shitty energy provider and pays around 1000 Euros a year for elecricity. Using our system then would save you 50 cents a year.
Given the fact that such a machine costs around 5000 euros, you only need to employ it a laughable 10.000 years without break to earn your money back. Giving the steadily rising energy prises of couse it will realistically only be around
9800 years.
Perfect investment.
Thank you for your attention.
 
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I prefer the idea of using bacteria, there are bacteria able to synthesize methyl alcohol, and the pressure from output gases and heat they produce can be used too. Then there are cyanobacteria, probably cheaper than solar panels, but both use sunlight, just that cyanobacteria don't like the company of other bacteria afaik.
Some bioengineering here and there and the little shits could help us at getting energy.
Use their gases to pump up the water.
Some stuff already done:
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/09/waste-water-bacteria-clean-energ.html
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sounds interesting, unfortunately i am no good at biological or chemical processes. I prefer the old fashioned mechanical way ^^
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Doesn't seem economically viable designing a a residential building to accommodate what is essentially a hydroelectric dam. And factoring various things such as thermal comfort and others affects your energy use; especially if you're living in an dense urban area with heat island effects and etc. The most viable for now would be sticking to your wind turbines or efficient solar panels.
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You can get solar panels that will pay for themselves in less than a decade, if anyone was hoping for a more serious way to offset their electricity costs. In some places, the government will even help with the initial costs of setting it up.
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If you live by a stream on the other hand you could rig something up that saves a heck of a lot more than 0.05%
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United States1135 Posts
After reading the first half of the blog, in my head I was yelling "ITS NOT PRACTICAL." And then I got to the math at the very end, which made me a happy camper.
On May 11 2013 23:37 corpuscle wrote:
You can get solar panels that will pay for themselves in less than a decade, if anyone was hoping for a more serious way to offset their electricity costs. In some places, the government will even help with the initial costs of setting it up.
Solar panels are really location dependent to be paid off in a decent amount of time. For example, if you were to get solar panels in California, you would get a lot of sunlight and probably power your house regularly, and any excess power you generate would get you some good money from the power company. However, in not so sunny places, it would actually take quiet a while to get a solar panel home paid off. For example, in KY an electrical engineer I knew setup his whole house to be powered by automated solar panels. He had backup power supplies, and solar tubes for heating. In KY you don't get paid for any excess power you generate for the grid, you merely get it off your next bill (which I guess is kinda similar), due to KY's really low energy costs. For the inverter, solar panels, automation equipment, back up power supply, and heating system, it is taking him like 45 years to pay off. I wish I could give specifics but I would have to do a bit of research to get the right numbers. So overall, solar panels are nice but a HUGE investment.
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On May 12 2013 00:49 Chimpalimp wrote:After reading the first half of the blog, in my head I was yelling "ITS NOT PRACTICAL." And then I got to the math at the very end, which made me a happy camper. Show nested quote +On May 11 2013 23:37 corpuscle wrote:
You can get solar panels that will pay for themselves in less than a decade, if anyone was hoping for a more serious way to offset their electricity costs. In some places, the government will even help with the initial costs of setting it up. Solar panels are really location dependent to be paid off in a decent amount of time. For example, if you were to get solar panels in California, you would get a lot of sunlight and probably power your house regularly, and any excess power you generate would get you some good money from the power company. However, in not so sunny places, it would actually take quiet a while to get a solar panel home paid off. For example, in KY an electrical engineer I knew setup his whole house to be powered by automated solar panels. He had backup power supplies, and solar tubes for heating. In KY you don't get paid for any excess power you generate for the grid, you merely get it off your next bill (which I guess is kinda similar), due to KY's really low energy costs. For the inverter, solar panels, automation equipment, back up power supply, and heating system, it is taking him like 45 years to pay off. I wish I could give specifics but I would have to do a bit of research to get the right numbers. So overall, solar panels are nice but a HUGE investment.
It's a completely different story if you're trying to power your whole house, though. Just having a simple setup that offsets some of the cost isn't unreasonably expensive because you don't have to worry about things like storing enough power to keep your house running overnight and during long stretches of poor sunlight.
It's pretty common in my area for people to have two or three smallish panels that just provide as much instantaneous power as they can, and maybe a simple storage system for the rare occasions when the panels are providing excess power. It's inexpensive enough that it doesn't have to save you too much to pay for itself; from what I hear from people who have it, it mostly just covers the cost of keeping their house cool in the summer, which is a pretty big deal.
Granted, I'm in MA, and the state will help cover the cost of installing a solar system, so I'm not sure how economically feasible it is for people in areas that don't have government support.
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Do modern solar panels with equipment around them last 45 years? If not it is a loss in that area (unless we have WW3, then it is a good investment).
Could perhaps get it back in sales when you sell? Just claim it is solar powered and charge double of setup cost.
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Haha this was great, ending was pretty funny.
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Probably an even easier way to reduce your energy bill would be to install a geothermal heat pump into your home, which can double as a cooling system. It doesn't require that much space, unless you live in an apartment building of course (in which case you would need to convince everybody  ). Apparently you can see a return on investment in about 5 years.
I was pretty confused for a while, but now I see your post was just to make a joke of the idea of using such a generator  .
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On May 12 2013 01:20 corpuscle wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2013 00:49 Chimpalimp wrote:After reading the first half of the blog, in my head I was yelling "ITS NOT PRACTICAL." And then I got to the math at the very end, which made me a happy camper. On May 11 2013 23:37 corpuscle wrote:
You can get solar panels that will pay for themselves in less than a decade, if anyone was hoping for a more serious way to offset their electricity costs. In some places, the government will even help with the initial costs of setting it up. Solar panels are really location dependent to be paid off in a decent amount of time. For example, if you were to get solar panels in California, you would get a lot of sunlight and probably power your house regularly, and any excess power you generate would get you some good money from the power company. However, in not so sunny places, it would actually take quiet a while to get a solar panel home paid off. For example, in KY an electrical engineer I knew setup his whole house to be powered by automated solar panels. He had backup power supplies, and solar tubes for heating. In KY you don't get paid for any excess power you generate for the grid, you merely get it off your next bill (which I guess is kinda similar), due to KY's really low energy costs. For the inverter, solar panels, automation equipment, back up power supply, and heating system, it is taking him like 45 years to pay off. I wish I could give specifics but I would have to do a bit of research to get the right numbers. So overall, solar panels are nice but a HUGE investment. It's a completely different story if you're trying to power your whole house, though. Just having a simple setup that offsets some of the cost isn't unreasonably expensive because you don't have to worry about things like storing enough power to keep your house running overnight and during long stretches of poor sunlight. It's pretty common in my area for people to have two or three smallish panels that just provide as much instantaneous power as they can, and maybe a simple storage system for the rare occasions when the panels are providing excess power. It's inexpensive enough that it doesn't have to save you too much to pay for itself; from what I hear from people who have it, it mostly just covers the cost of keeping their house cool in the summer, which is a pretty big deal. Granted, I'm in MA, and the state will help cover the cost of installing a solar system, so I'm not sure how economically feasible it is for people in areas that don't have government support.
Any storage system will make it uneconomical in pretty much anywhere except maybe AZ desert area, to many losses and storage is to expensive. You want to be gird connected so excess electircty is sold to the grid and you can buy from the grid as needed. MA really isnt a good area for solar PV the only reason its economical there is goverment subsidies. You really want 5kw+/ m^2 which in the US is basically NC and south on the east coast, and then the southwest.
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Put coils and magnets on every bike and car/truck/van/bus/RV tire.
The gym idea is cool, lift water to drop it and turn a turbine. But would it be simpler and easier to just use the movement generated by the machine to power a coil? The electricity can be stored many ways, not just in water height.
Cheers, and keep working on this please.
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Hehe, nice idea you've had there :D 9800 years....
On May 11 2013 22:37 Vivax wrote:I prefer the idea of using bacteria, there are bacteria able to synthesize methyl alcohol, and the pressure from output gases and heat they produce can be used too. Then there are cyanobacteria, probably cheaper than solar panels, but both use sunlight, just that cyanobacteria don't like the company of other bacteria afaik. Some bioengineering here and there and the little shits could help us at getting energy. Use their gases to pump up the water. Some stuff already done: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/09/waste-water-bacteria-clean-energ.html
Really interesting idea, but a lot of "ifs" still involved. But still worth researching I guess.
A kinda crazy idea that sticked in my mind:
+ Show Spoiler +
But as far as I know they felt horribly short of their expectations in terms of power output.
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