Car or lesuire battery for home power storage?

Cardew

Just a question, as this is a money saving website, it this project primarily a 'technical exercise' or an attempt to save money?

If the latter, have you looked at the economics of the scheme; and for that matter the 'Green' aspects?

uktyler

Cardew wrote: »

Just a question, as this is a money saving website, it this project primarily a 'technical exercise' or an attempt to save money?

If the latter, have you looked at the economics of the scheme; and for that matter the 'Green' aspects?

Both really.

Economically building a 12v system using used parts should cost less than £30, if I only use a single battery as storage. Whilst it will take a while to recoup the money spent, as power useage will be small, I think it will pay for itself before it falls apart.

The 'green' aspect: As I will be using secondhand scrap bits, they won't be going into landfill, so helpfully less pollution.

The whole thing is an exercise to see if the plot would be good for a larger grid tie system, obviously if that time comes I will look at the economic/environmental impact of a bigger system.

A_fiend_for_life

mech wrote: »

I wouldn't use a car alternator. The efficiency is lousy and they need higher RPM than a wind turbine can offer without gearing. You basically want something which can be directly fixed to the blades and has permanent magnets in it. The dynohub thing looks ideal.

Yes thinking about that I suspect its performance would decrease in lower winds especially when the batteries are flat.

What happens when you disconnect / change the batteries and it is still running though? I suspect you will change it into a big capacitor so another load might be useful and safer or wire it in such away that you can change one battery at time. So you would need at least two batteries in parallel.

Might be a bit optimistic unless you ran it disconnected for a while during a battery change.

antenna

It all sounds great..........until you fall off the shed roof and spend 6 months in hospital at the taxpayers expense.....................

antenna

antenna wrote: »

It all sounds great..........until you fall off the shed roof and spend 6 months in hospital at the taxpayers expense.....................

If you are lucky you will land on emu...............but unlike rod hull.....emu landed on him...................

steva_2

:TSounds like a really good project. I've been looking at building a windmill to generate power in the hope of reducing the electricity bill.
I've looked into solar panels but the bought ones are way to expensive. I might have a go at building one.

A really good blog on the subject of building your own: http://soundadvicepublications.com/homemadeenergyblog/

Good luck!

uktyler

antenna wrote: »

It all sounds great..........until you fall off the shed roof and spend 6 months in hospital at the taxpayers expense.....................

The reason for needing cheap power is the fact I won't be working, but don't worry I won't be in the UK so the British taxpayer won't foot the bill.

We have just purchased a very cheap property in Germany, with enough land to be almost self sufficient. Our biggest expense will be power and heat, a trial with a smaller system will allow us to determine whether a bigger grid tie in system would be feasible. In Germany grid tie systems are more common, and easier to set up than over here.

I'll try not to go up on the roof when its raining, in case the ghost of Emu is watching.

uktyler

steva wrote: »

A really good blog on the subject of building your own: http://soundadvicepublications.com/homemadeenergyblog/

Good luck!

That blog just seems to link to adverts selling the information you can get for free elsewhere.

This is one page on home made solar panels, as prices drop I plan to include a solar system as well.

webwalker

I had gone down this road a while ago, got a meter to monitor each appliances consumption, did all the math for converting battery power into mains power and believe me the number of batteries required was huge when you factored in the reserves you needed. On the bright side for you at least, the Germans have a much more positive attitude to home power and their utilities(at that time) were offering excellent offers to buy back the unused power from the home, this of course means no batteries. Unfortunately the website seems to be missing now but I still have some goodies on diy switches and other electronic stuff. Let me know and they are yours.

A_fiend_for_life

Are you as well to switch to heating water once you have reached capacity on the batteries though? That way you could potentially keep the number of batteries down.