Edison batteries give off hydrogen at the positive terminal. Collect it, pressurize and store it. Hydrogen fuel cell or generator for winter problem solved. Oh wait, can you get Edison batteries anymore? Cost?
Is it possible to harvest and store enough solar in summer to carry you through winter?
- Thread starter Gueyog8a7
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DIYrich
Solar Wizard
I was wondering if flow batteries could ever do it. You still need a large area to store the reactants.
Grow algae to convert to bio diesel, and store that?
Use excess energy in summer to mine bitcoin, and sell in winter to pay the electric bill. I wonder if that would add seasonality to bitcoin prices.
Grow algae to convert to bio diesel, and store that?
Use excess energy in summer to mine bitcoin, and sell in winter to pay the electric bill. I wonder if that would add seasonality to bitcoin prices.
LakeHouse
Solar Enthusiast
Making hydrogen out of water with electricity is really easy and definitely DIY-able:
Storing hydrogen in a compact space is pretty hard.
Ammonia is not particularly safe stuff to store. You're thinking of household aqueous ammonia, which is mostly water with some ammonia dissolved in it. Non-aqueous ammonia (anhydrous ammonia, for those in the farming industry) is stored in pressurized cylinders and can be pretty dangerous, especially in confined spaces.
50ShadesOfDirt
Solar Enthusiast
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2021
- Messages
- 453
I think anything is possible, but it has to be done with the individual's (or family's) choices and tradeoffs in mind. If you have a Caviar lifestyle, it won't be as easy.
What we noticed is that, when we went rural and off-grid, all service requirements plummeted, as in, we used less water, electricity, etc., as opposed to when we lived in the city, operating a typical city house (1800 sq ft.) We are a family of four, on an off-grid, mortgage-free (900 sq ft) homestead of 40 acres.
We use about 600 gallons of water per month, and about 150ah of battery capacity per day (very computer intensive, as I'm an old sysadmin type),
Solar easily makes up our power usage, even in most typical winter weather, but we also have propane for our site fuel as a fallback, and could easily generate our own way through the worst possible scenarios you could imagine, in the deep of winter, if we had to. We've never had to, in over 10 years of being off-grid.
Now, we are able to substitute many homestead options for all those services one has to pay for in the city. And, you have to pay through the nose for those services, as they do nothing but go up and up, and tack on all kinds of silly fees, regulations, and so on. It all just works, my kids can operate it, and it is all very possible these days.
If you are stuck in the city, you're just stuck, period. If you can escape the city, you have a chance.
What we noticed is that, when we went rural and off-grid, all service requirements plummeted, as in, we used less water, electricity, etc., as opposed to when we lived in the city, operating a typical city house (1800 sq ft.) We are a family of four, on an off-grid, mortgage-free (900 sq ft) homestead of 40 acres.
We use about 600 gallons of water per month, and about 150ah of battery capacity per day (very computer intensive, as I'm an old sysadmin type),
Solar easily makes up our power usage, even in most typical winter weather, but we also have propane for our site fuel as a fallback, and could easily generate our own way through the worst possible scenarios you could imagine, in the deep of winter, if we had to. We've never had to, in over 10 years of being off-grid.
Now, we are able to substitute many homestead options for all those services one has to pay for in the city. And, you have to pay through the nose for those services, as they do nothing but go up and up, and tack on all kinds of silly fees, regulations, and so on. It all just works, my kids can operate it, and it is all very possible these days.
If you are stuck in the city, you're just stuck, period. If you can escape the city, you have a chance.
KITROBASKIN
Solar Enthusiast
By the time I posted 'geothermal', the thread pretty much established cost and space being substantial.
A year round source of energy, geothermal is currently viable for a few areas (66% in Iceland). With high power millimeter waves drilling past the rocks, depths to acquire supercritical temperatures are possible. This geothermal source could be located at power plants formerly using polluting energy sources. Hopefully that would ameliorate not-in-my-backyard concerns?
Not a DIY or van life thing, but something to keep an eye on, thinking.
www.quaise.energy
A year round source of energy, geothermal is currently viable for a few areas (66% in Iceland). With high power millimeter waves drilling past the rocks, depths to acquire supercritical temperatures are possible. This geothermal source could be located at power plants formerly using polluting energy sources. Hopefully that would ameliorate not-in-my-backyard concerns?
Not a DIY or van life thing, but something to keep an eye on, thinking.
Quaise Energy
Quaise is an energy company unlocking geothermal energy for the world population through millimeter wave drilling technology.
140L 35Mpa (5000psi) hydrogen tank costs $3000 and can store 4Kg of H2 * 33 kWh = 132 kWh thermal. That's equivalent to 5 gal of propane. Not very DIY economical.
ksmithaz1
Solar / EV Junkie
Bottom line is, all these energy conversions involve other materials besides the sun. What you need is a way to convert difficult/expensive to store energy into easy/inexpensive to store energy with a minimal use of other material to make it happen. The other question is "how long is 'winter' . . .". It also needs to be non-labor intensive. I think a battery technology is the only way you could really do it. If you could create some sort of liquid battery tech with a reagent that you could process into something else with electricity, store in a tank, then bleed off and use to generate electricity, leaving the reagent you started with. The minute you start working with gasses like hydrogen and oxygen to/from water it gets expensive to store it in the needed state. It's the holy grail.
The other thing though, is we might see a doubling of storage density, and I think costs will have downward pressure for the foreseeable, so a connex full of batteries may not be out of the realm in 10 years.
The other thing though, is we might see a doubling of storage density, and I think costs will have downward pressure for the foreseeable, so a connex full of batteries may not be out of the realm in 10 years.
fmeili1
Solar Enthusiast
Like a redox flow battery?
Edit:
I found this guy who built a DIY vanadium redox battery demonstrator (he has a whole series of videos on it).
Last edited:
I don't remember if this was an idea or something someone actually did, but the idea was installing an above ground pool in the basement as thermal storage. Heat the pool with excess summer solar and use it heat the house during the winter.
ksmithaz1
Solar / EV Junkie
That's one way, but they are actually directly storing electricity in an electrolyte. I was thinking more of converting a hydrocarbon into it's component pieces, and using electricity to recombine the combustion product back int a hydrocarbon somehow, or using a fuelcell material like ammonia then solar electricity to re-create the ammonia or something like that. Liquid volatile combust, capture combustion products as liquids, recombine into liquid volatile with solar electricity somehow creating a loop. Might could store gasses short term, better to have a capture to liquid method. Easier to move and store liquids.
ksmithaz1
Solar / EV Junkie
Yea, it's just a lousy way to store heat. Way harder to keep the heat in water than hydrogen under pressure. If you figure out a way to keep the heat in there, let me know, we can go in the HWH business
.
Zwy
Emperor Of Solar
I'm installing a little over 1,000 gallons of thermal storage for my gasification wood boiler that will batch burn. From 185°F down to 145°F is 416,000 btu's. From 185°F down to 110°F is about 650,000 btu's.
That will run an average house for about a day, depending on house insulation/size/heat loss.
It would take an awfully big pool to heat the house during winter.
Zwy
Emperor Of Solar
Two Bit Davinci had a video about how there is process to use electricity to create hydrogen from water, then run it thru a high temp reactor with a catalyst to produce fuel such as gasoline or diesel or even the ammonia mentioned before. Basically a hydrocarbon is built in reverse using the process. The catalyst material determines the product output. As there seems to be an excess of CO2 being produced in many industrial applications, this might be a good fit, if the energy used is renewable and they can find efficiencies to run the reactor/catalyst.
That is the most promising energy storage I have seen. E fuel produced using this process might be the stop gap to slowly move towards alternative fueled vehicles in the future.
OffGridForGood
Catch, make or grow everything you can.
Build two solar panel systems:
One in Canada at my homestead, for Spring-Summer-Fall
One in Southern California - tie into someone's NEM 1 agreement and collect enough $$$ to pay for all the Utility electricity I can use all Winter in Canada !!
On a bigger scale:
Build a really big solar array in Southern Saskatchewan - supply South-West USA with extra power for all the A/C they need during hot summer (when we have 18 hour days) and can't use that much energy.
Build another really big solar array in NM/AZ/TX somewhere and send Canada the power needed during Winter when USA doesn't need A/C but we need extra power during those short winter days - Win Win. { @upnorthandpersonal can propose the same deal with Spain!)
One in Canada at my homestead, for Spring-Summer-Fall
One in Southern California - tie into someone's NEM 1 agreement and collect enough $$$ to pay for all the Utility electricity I can use all Winter in Canada !!
On a bigger scale:
Build a really big solar array in Southern Saskatchewan - supply South-West USA with extra power for all the A/C they need during hot summer (when we have 18 hour days) and can't use that much energy.
Build another really big solar array in NM/AZ/TX somewhere and send Canada the power needed during Winter when USA doesn't need A/C but we need extra power during those short winter days - Win Win. { @upnorthandpersonal can propose the same deal with Spain!)
Yea, it's just a lousy way to store heat. Way harder to keep the heat in water than hydrogen under pressure. If you figure out a way to keep the heat in there, let me know, we can go in the HWH business
Oh yeah, hugely impractical. Wasn't my idea, just sharing one I'd heard of.
Some back of the napkin math shows a $350 4400 gallon pool might store 5M BTUs, assuming ~70f-170f temperature differential. That's equivalent to about 1/3rd of a cord of firewood, depending on species. The firewood will happily sit there until you need it, taking up much less space, costing a lot less, and not leaking energy away through the insulation.
Hedges
I See Electromagnetic Fields!
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2020
- Messages
- 21,192
Start with vegetable oil, or something more durable.
Use PV to crack water into hydrogen, and hydrogenate the oil to make Crisco.
In the winter, crack the hydrogen back out of the Crisco and use it in a fuel cell CHP.
It is a process being promoted on commercial scale, advantage being fuel can be transported and stored in tanks. There is some heat in/heat out during the process. Don't know how cost effective for DIY/home scale.
diysolarforum.com
Use PV to crack water into hydrogen, and hydrogenate the oil to make Crisco.
In the winter, crack the hydrogen back out of the Crisco and use it in a fuel cell CHP.
It is a process being promoted on commercial scale, advantage being fuel can be transported and stored in tanks. There is some heat in/heat out during the process. Don't know how cost effective for DIY/home scale.
Is there any way to make money from excess power apart from selling back to grid?
100W for how long? Corrected - thank you. Or better, how many Wh? It would generate maybe 100Wh. I don't remember the details (and I could be off) but my calcs showed a very small result . Useless for any kind of DIY home solution. It would take a major project on the scale of 1000s of...
diysolarforum.com
OffGridForGood
Catch, make or grow everything you can.
I recall doing a search of a whole bunch of different locations, looking for the 'Solar Utopia'
You will find it hard to Beat Puripica, Bolivia where they have 7-8 kWh/m^2 /day all year round.
A bit far from my place though...LOL
You will find it hard to Beat Puripica, Bolivia where they have 7-8 kWh/m^2 /day all year round.
A bit far from my place though...LOL
Just run the extension cord.
sunshine_eggo
Happy Breffast!
Build two solar panel systems:
One in Canada at my homestead, for Spring-Summer-Fall
One in Southern California - tie into someone's NEM 1 agreement and collect enough $$$ to pay for all the Utility electricity I can use all Winter in Canada !!
Fuck So-Cal bro!!!
ARIZONA WINTER FTW!!!
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