Solve the worlds problems- energy storage

A lot of, if not all of the things mentioned were in use in the 70's. That was 40 years ago. The problem with many of them, is that they are either complicated, difficult for the average homeowner, or just plain expensive at buy in. People are lazy and want to be able to just flick a switch, and it works. More important than energy storage is energy conservation. People treat energy like it's free, and many systems work with ridiculous amounts of waste. Why are fridges vertical, when they should be horizontal? Every electroic device we have is DC, yet we power it with AC. The heat coming off your computer screen? That waste. I have a 100' deep, 4' diameter hole filled with cold water in my back yard, and a central air unit 6' away from it. Why is that? New houses can be built, and old houses retrofitted with a 5000 gallon cistern below the garage or in the yard or basement, but they aren't. Instead of relying on rain for their water, and a cistern for energy storage, they pay $50 a month for municipally treated water. So much waste.

Around here, a 100' deep 4' diameter hole through Arkansas sandstone (used commercially to tear up tool steel) would cost you more than the house. But otherwise, I like the idea.

zomby makes a good point: most everything runs on DC yet the house current is AC. That's because it's easier to transmit (for lack of a better word) AC voltage over long distances.

But if you go into your computer, TV, etc and see that lil' power supply just grunting and groaning to turn AC voltage into 12VDC and heat so you can look at nekkid pictures on the Internet or turn your brain into 'Idiocracy' type goo by watching 'Survivor', then multiply that by all the various stuff in the house you begin to see how it all adds up. Making this stuff run on DC voltage is easy. The problem, as I said, is retrofit of the power grid in the house.

It's not just easier to transmit AC long distances, but more efficient as well. In general. There are a couple of very high voltage DC transmission systems. Interesting work, really.

Don't big military ships use DC for most stuff? Or did I dream that?

The big commercial ships use 3 phase 440.

AC is also a little bit safer for people who like to poke forks into outlets or chew extension cords in that the "alternating" part lets muscles release. DC causes muscles to clench around the source of electron based doom.

I believe that it was this combined with transmission issues that allowed Westinghouse to defeat Edison who championed DC delivery.

Curmudgeon wrote: Duke Power has a 'on demand' reservoir system which works exactly like this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Creek_Hydroelectric_Station During peak hours (generally 4AM-8AM) the turbines are used to generate electricity. Duriing off peak times they are reversed and they refill the reservoir. Part of the reservoir is underground.

Side note: Devil's Fork State Park is an awesome place.

Dr. Hess wrote: Why it won't work: The government can't figure out how to tax sunshine. Multinationals can't figure out how to sell you sunshine. Why, do you realize you could plug an electric car into your house, powered by the sun, and then drive to work FOR FREE? We just can't have that.

For a brainstorming session to try to understand a technical problem, this really doesn't need to be imagined. it's pointless and inflamatory, and false.

Curmudgeon wrote: LEDs for 110v use commonly draw ~1/10 the power of a comparable incandescent bulb for the same light output. So a 75w incandescent can be replaced by a 7.5w LED array. That power consumption includes the rectifier used to step the 110v down to whatever the LEDs are using, on the current 110v versions the rectifier has to have cooling fins. Dumping that in favor of a straight 12v source would eliminate that extra power draw.

Any idea how much power goes into the step down DC supply? We keep getting advertisments to remove your chargers from the wall when not in use- it would be interesting to see how efficient LEDs are with just DC. Maybe we can do better than 90% better, especially if wiring the house to be more like a sailboat.

Zomby woof wrote: A lot of, if not all of the things mentioned were in use in the 70's. That was 40 years ago. The problem with many of them, is that they are either complicated, difficult for the average homeowner, or just plain expensive at buy in. People are lazy and want to be able to just flick a switch, and it works. More important than energy storage is energy conservation. People treat energy like it's free, and many systems work with ridiculous amounts of waste. Why are fridges vertical, when they should be horizontal? Every electroic device we have is DC, yet we power it with AC. The heat coming off your computer screen? That waste. I have a 100' deep, 4' diameter hole filled with cold water in my back yard, and a central air unit 6' away from it. Why is that? New houses can be built, and old houses retrofitted with a 5000 gallon cistern below the garage or in the yard or basement, but they aren't. Instead of relying on rain for their water, and a cistern for energy storage, they pay $50 a month for municipally treated water. So much waste.

A lot of them have, most of them, sure.

But lots of progress has taken place in 40 years. Heat pump systems are much better than they were, we now have LED lights that were being dreamed of in 1971.

Still, the solutions tend to be expensive. Or "unsightly".

On the cistern front, I'm planning on using some old trash cans to act as cisterns this spring- to supply water in gardens. Gotta clean them really well... But the idea of rain water capture is gaining momentum. Just as using less energy by growing your own food is, too.

Lots of waste, no doubt. But interest in getting better is certainly there.

GPS, it's actually the other way around. Edison invented the electric chair, which he demonstrated by electrocuting dogs, to show how dangerous AC was. DC is much safer in that respect. Edison had a lot of money in DC power systems at the time, while Tesla's new-fangled, more efficient (cheaper) AC system was starting to move in on his territory.

Taiden wrote: I honestly believe that if all households were fitted with a passive solar system similar to DrBoost's but larger, we would cut energy consumption across the nation by a huge percentage.

I know that here in Alberta (even during the winter) I can heat a house via solar thermal panels on the roof and have all of the hot water I want. I've saw $300 natural gas bills before in the coldest months using standard HVAC systems. The problem we have with solar electric panels here is that the cost is prohibitive to get it tied back into the grid. You basically have to make the system self sufficient or its not worth it.

The system required to do this costs as much as a regular household HVAC system that can survive -40*C winters. Not as practical in cities with huge downtown areas, but extremely practical for anyone who has a single family home with it's own roof.

I think the best way to look at energy storage and consumption is the earth and the sun. We have a huge power supply, and we have a huge storage area, we just need to use it appropriately. Or, if we simply design a system for on demand use (strictly the sun) we get everything we need, whenever we want.

HiTempguy wrote: The problem we have with solar electric panels here is that the cost is prohibitive to get it tied back into the grid. You basically have to make the system self sufficient or its not worth it.

AFAIK, we have the exact same problem here in Michigan. Almost no incentive for people to make power. I think one can return to the line just as much as you use, but no more. Which sounds better here than in Alberta.

If people were allowed to make power to put on the grid, there would be some great incentive to do it.

Dr. Hess wrote: GPS, it's actually the other way around. Edison invented the electric chair, which he demonstrated by electrocuting dogs, to show how dangerous AC was. DC is much safer in that respect. Edison had a lot of money in DC power systems at the time, while Tesla's new-fangled, more efficient (cheaper) AC system was starting to move in on his territory.

Both will kill your ass if you become part of the circuit in a non-trivial way.

AC is certainly dangerous but for the typical electrocution mode, you can pull away. In fact, you can't not pull away. Even accidentally poking the bus bar in a 440v supply with an errant screwdriver will knock you flat on your ass but likely not kill you instantly. Big DC power causes you to clench and since it does not reverse polarity you can't let go and either cook or flat line (if it passes thru the heart). It is the scariest damn job to work live in applications with huge DC motors (like newspaper press rooms). It will kill the guy who tries to pull you off too - you have to have people smart enough to use a non-conductive pole :)

Imagine poor little 2yr old Johnny all stiff, warm and smelling like a christmas ham from poking a fork in the outlet rather than screaming like... er a 2yr old... and nursing a burn. That is why we got AC... for the children!

Edison was a big proponent of DC and did sink a ton of dough into it so it was in his best interest to make AC look less safe. 9 out of 10 dog owners agree.

ransom wrote:

alfadriver wrote: No bad ideas.

Challenge Accepted! What is the feasibility of having a giant thermos under your house? Well-insulated, and with enough thermal mass that if you spend all summer chucking your extra heat at it that you can withdraw it in Winter? Sort of a giant thermal capacitor? I'm guessing there's a lot of difficulty in this, just in terms of making a large, stable reservoir with an excellent insulator (or vacuum) around it that will stand up over time. The cost of a stainless box that size alone would be quite large. But perhaps there are approaches that aren't occurring to me. This was actually phase two after my initial thought, which was... I guess you'd call it bidirectional geothermal. I'm not sure with the temperatures we're talking about whether it makes any sense to try to deposit that energy back into the ground. I'm going to stop before I give a treatise on how obviously I don't understand geothermal systems.

There are already systems that do that, only without pumping heat in to the ground, deep down below the frost line the earth actually stays at a pretty stable temperature.

http://www.energysavers.gov/your_home/space_heating_cooling/index.cfm/mytopic=12650

http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/home/heating_cooling/geothermal.html

e_pie wrote: ... deep down below the frost line the earth actually stays at a pretty stable temperature.

A neat application for when it isn't so stable too:

Using Volcanos to generate electricity

Edit: Link fixed

I'd love to see geothermal power generation used to produce hydrogen.

Hydrogen is the future of energy, everything we do until then is just a band-aid.

Most plentiful thing in the known universe and the only emissions are water, sign me up.

alfadriver wrote:

Curmudgeon wrote: LEDs for 110v use commonly draw ~1/10 the power of a comparable incandescent bulb for the same light output. So a 75w incandescent can be replaced by a 7.5w LED array. That power consumption includes the rectifier used to step the 110v down to whatever the LEDs are using, on the current 110v versions the rectifier has to have cooling fins. Dumping that in favor of a straight 12v source would eliminate that extra power draw.

Any idea how much power goes into the step down DC supply? We keep getting advertisments to remove your chargers from the wall when not in use- it would be interesting to see how efficient LEDs are with just DC. Maybe we can do better than 90% better, especially if wiring the house to be more like a sailboat.

I don't know, but if it generates enough heat to require dissipation fins it must be fairly substantial. Maybe one of the smart guys can chime in on this one.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote:

e_pie wrote: ... deep down below the frost line the earth actually stays at a pretty stable temperature.

A neat application for when it isn't so stable too: Using Volcanos to generate electricity Edit: Link fixed

Iceland generates 26% of their electricity from geothermal, 73.8% from hydro. Plus something like 87% of their buildings are geothermally heated along with almost all of their hot water. Wouldn't it be nice if we could do that here? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power_in_Iceland

In reply to alfadriver:

Eric, If you want to see real life examples of many of the technologies discussed in this thread get yourself on the e-mailing list for Meadowlark Builders in Ann Arbor. They routinely run tours of super efficient homes they are building in the area. I've been through 4 or 5 now and find it very interesting. When we move out of our current home I'd like to build a LEEDs certified home and these tours offer a wealth of information.

I have a remote cabin with a pond and a stream. The pond is spring fed and dammed, and the water flow runs completely through an 8" pipe. About 18' of head.

I'd like to do a couple of things.

First off, I'm planning on doing geothermal with the pond as a storage mass. Later.

I'd also like to capture the flow for point of use power generation. The flow/ head is not enough to power things directly, but I think I can generate DC power from a turbine put in-line in the pipe, and store it in batteries. I could then run DC lighting or appliances. I use the property only a couple of days per month, so it could store energy for 27 days, then I could use it for 3.

Anyone have some low budget approaches to this one?

In reply to SVreX:

I did some research on microhydro setups a year ago or so. I'll see if I have any links to share.

Curmudgeon wrote:

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote:

e_pie wrote: ... deep down below the frost line the earth actually stays at a pretty stable temperature.

A neat application for when it isn't so stable too: Using Volcanos to generate electricity Edit: Link fixed

Iceland generates 26% of their electricity from geothermal, 73.8% from hydro. Plus something like 87% of their buildings are geothermally heated along with almost all of their hot water. Wouldn't it be nice if we could do that here? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power_in_Iceland

Technically you could, you just have to drill deep enough. Sadly it's not really financially feasable. :(

SVreX wrote: I have a remote cabin with a pond and a stream. The pond is spring fed and dammed, and the water flow runs completely through an 8" pipe. About 18' of head. I'd like to do a couple of things. First off, I'm planning on doing geothermal with the pond as a storage mass. Later. I'd also like to capture the flow for point of use power generation. The flow/ head is not enough to power things directly, but I think I can generate DC power from a turbine put in-line in the pipe, and store it in batteries. I could then run DC lighting or appliances. I use the property only a couple of days per month, so it could store energy for 27 days, then I could use it for 3. Anyone have some low budget approaches to this one?

I'd be real tempted to use an automotive alternator / generator, hooked to some sort of turbine. Turbo maybe?