‘Green’ generator sets, order early to avoid disappointment ...

Fast Eddie

VIP MEMBER
Joined
Oct 4, 2013
Messages
20,587
Country flag
We had a power cut recently and I got to looking at generator sets.

It occurred to me how ‘old hat’ they all look in this EV age with the old fossil fuel burning engines.

Got me thinking about marketing a better version. A modern, green, electric powered generator set...
 
We had a power cut recently and I got to looking at generator sets.

It occurred to me how ‘old hat’ they all look in this EV age with the old fossil fuel burning engines.

Got me thinking about marketing a better version. A modern, green, electric powered generator set...
Saw a site unit, battery pack, on the web recently supplying power. It still needs charging though so if remote you'll need a diesel powered Genny to charge it or a field of solar panels?
 
Sort of on topic.... I had a browse on an electricity company website and was looking at solar panels and a "house battery". They showed a cost to buy and install, and the projected savings per annum. At best, it would pay back in 20 years, and could be nigh on 30 years at their lower rates. I think I will give it a miss, I might live long enough to recoup the expenditure on a 20 year payback, but 30 year might be a bit optimistic..

Maybe I could rig up some bright lights to illuminate the solar panels at night?
 
I think the best you can do is have a solar array on your roof. Backup to that is a propane genset. Propane
because it is independent of the gas network. Propane is not very energy rich so running your genset on it
will be expensive. And delivery of said gas will be very iffy longer term.
 
Very good Eddie
But what really makes me laugh is the deisil generators running 24/7 to charge up electric buses
And now electric London black cabs to be fitted with petrol generator's ,so they can get too Gatwick and back I'm told?
Not sure if this is true (about the cabs that is?) but it makes me laugh
 
Here in Texas we just take a 10' length of pipe from Home Depot, a sledge hammer, and a ladder; climb up the ladder with the hammer and have a mate hold the pipe. Drive that sucker in about 9', threaded end up (we use an old 2x4 to protect the threads from the hammer).

Hook up a flex pipe from the pipe to your generator and you'll never run out of natural gas.
 
Sort of on topic.... I had a browse on an electricity company website and was looking at solar panels and a "house battery". They showed a cost to buy and install, and the projected savings per annum. At best, it would pay back in 20 years, and could be nigh on 30 years at their lower rates. I think I will give it a miss, I might live long enough to recoup the expenditure on a 20 year payback, but 30 year might be a bit optimistic..

Maybe I could rig up some bright lights to illuminate the solar panels at night?
Place your solar panels under the street lamps?? LOL!!
 
Place your solar panels under the street lamps?? LOL!!
Not a joke, in Spain a few years back the tariff paid to solar panel owners for the excess electricity feed back into the grid was so good it paid them to use a diesel generator to power lamps overnight so the solar panels fed back into the grid 24 hrs a day. Create a subsidy and the market is distorted sometimes so badly it has the opposite effect to what was intended.

Northern Ireland has its own version based on burning wood pellets.


The scheme worked by paying applicants to use renewable energy. However, the rate paid was more than the cost of the fuel, and thus many applicants were making profits simply by heating their properties.

They were installing as many boilers as a building would take and running them 24hrs 365 days a year, all the doors and windows were left open to get rid of the heat.
 
Here in Texas we just take a 10' length of pipe from Home Depot, a sledge hammer, and a ladder; climb up the ladder with the hammer and have a mate hold the pipe. Drive that sucker in about 9', threaded end up (we use an old 2x4 to protect the threads from the hammer).

Hook up a flex pipe from the pipe to your generator and you'll never run out of natural gas.
Unless you hit an unexpected oil well . . . .
 
Unless you hit an unexpected oil well . . . .
Yeah, those are REALLY pesky and messy. Plus, the price of crude is down, so none of the operators want to lease right now.

Still, we get a tidy little check every month that's enough to keep our vehicles fueled up. That's a nice "freebie" that was left to my wyfe by her parents.
 
At over £6 for a UK gallon, I wish I could find one in my garden, I'll happily move out to bigger premises.
 
At over £6 for a UK gallon, I wish I could find one in my garden, I'll happily move out to bigger premises.
...and here I am complaining about $2.50/gallon. It never ceases to amaze me how Texas gets affected by nation baloney, we have enough oil to fill a moat around the state (including the Mexican border) and float away on our own...
 
I don’t understand why no-one has suggested using a clockwork mechanism to drive a generator






sorry, that was also just a wind-up :cool:
Ian Gillan (Deep Purple singer) once had an idea for a clockwork assisted motorcycle... Surprisingly, naught came of it....
 
Short term power cuts are not that worrisome to deal with just about any sort of genset will do. But if it turns into days or
even weeks you will find that the fuel supply situation will be troublesome and expensive. Probably the best way is diesel
because you can run it off your home heating tank which, if you live in the chilly zone, is capacious and kept topped up.
I guess having solar panels now make sense even in UK where the sun is less than reliable.
 
tHE GREENS FINALLY FIGURE OUT THE SECRET TO PREPETUAL MOTION
 

Attachments

  • ‘Green’ generator sets, order early to avoid disappointment ...
    vegan-eating-meat.jpg
    58.8 KB · Views: 106
I think the best you can do is have a solar array on your roof. Backup to that is a propane genset. Propane
because it is independent of the gas network. Propane is not very energy rich so running your genset on it
will be expensive. And delivery of said gas will be very iffy longer term.
In Texas, we have no need to make ourselves independent of the gas network, because we are the SOURCE of it already.
 
I don’t understand why no-one has suggested using a clockwork mechanism to drive a generator
Those do, in fact, exist (after a fashion).

There are hand-crank flashlights (torches), hand-crank radios, and hand-crank / pedal-powered generators for smallish remote needs.

I suppose a wind-up clockwork generator would be easy enough to make; but you can't "create" energy, so all the cranking to supply a decent power source for a decent amount of time, might take one monstrous spring and one heck of a lot of cranking it up!
 
Back
Top