Author Topic: Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!  (Read 4729 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline IDEngineer

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1950
  • Country: us
Re: Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!
« Reply #25 on: May 10, 2020, 12:52:52 am »
i struggled with a cheap gasoline one for like 15 years
Emphasis mine. "Cheap" is your problem. A generator with a decent engine from a reputable manufacturer (Honda, B&S, Kohler, etc.) will start instantly every time and last for many, many years with just minimal maintenance. The 7KW unit I mentioned above cost me $699 from the local Home Depot (big box) store. It's been 100% reliable for the 6-7 years I've owned it. I use non-ethanol gasoline with Seafoam additive, and I run it for ~30 minutes each month to keep the fuel system clean and the seals from drying out.

As for gasoline engines in general, I just sold our previous snowblower. It had the original 10HP Briggs & Stratton gasoline engine that it came with when I bought it 20+ years ago, and it ran perfectly. The only reason I sold it was to buy a larger, wider snowblower because we now live where we get even more snow and have an even longer driveway.

Quote
Also the factor of draining fuel (usually wait for it to cool some what) is annoying as hell.
If you run it ~30 minutes once a month, you don't have to drain anything. I've never drained the 7KW generator, not even once. As for seasonal engines (like snowblowers), those get drained at the end of each season if convenient, otherwise they get topped off with treated non-ethanol fuel to minimize the air volume that can cause condensation during storage.

Quote
BTW you can get a kit to refurbish generators to run on propane, i.e. the tiny honda generators.
That flexibility is indeed cool, but propane has less energy content per unit volume and unit weight than does gasoline so you take a performance hit. Plus, the container for five gallons (or any other volume) of propane is a larger and heavier than for gasoline. If you're going to run the generator for just a few hours, you can fill its integrated tank and then you don't need to lug an entirely separate fuel tank, hose assembly, and regulator - just pick up the generator (like it was designed) and go.

Hmm... I wonder if folks who have done that propane conversion have TWO propane tanks. If not, then they are offline while they take the tank somewhere to get it refilled with propane. With gasoline, a single  five gallon can will keep the generator's integrated tank filled, and the generator running, indefinitely. Fill up the integrated tank and the generator keeps running for hours and hours while you take your time going to a nearby gas station.

Add to that the fact that gasoline is available almost anywhere, 24/7 with a credit card, and is self-serve (none of which are true at least here in the States). Finally, if you don't use the gasoline in your generator (or lawn mower or weed eater or jetski or ATV or boat or...) you can always just pour it into your car.

It's very difficult to beat the flexibility, convenience, ease of access, breadth of use, and availability of gasoline. I do fire my grill with itpropane, but only because my present house doesn't have a NatGas fitting on the deck. My last house did, and I rejetted the grill to burn NatGas so I didn't have to lug around those propane bottles nor have the risk of running out of propane. Your comment did just give me a flashback, though... back when we used to go tent camping, all of our Coleman equipment (stove, lantern, etc.) were dual fuel specifically so we could use gasoline. As you said, one single fuel to power everything, including the vehicle that drove us back home.

EDIT: Corrected mistype of "it" to "propane".
« Last Edit: May 10, 2020, 03:47:36 pm by IDEngineer »
 

Offline NiHaoMike

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9318
  • Country: us
  • "Don't turn it on - Take it apart!"
    • Facebook Page
Re: Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!
« Reply #26 on: May 10, 2020, 01:32:40 am »
If you're going with gasoline and only use it occasionally, a hybrid car can double as a backup generator.
http://priups.com/riddle/answer-1.htm

If you live in a cold climate and have a cheap source of liquid or gas fuel (e.g. natural gas), a home CHP generator is worth looking into. If the generator is 30% efficient at generating electricity and the thermal recovery system can recover 80% of the heat, and you use the electricity to run a heat pump with a heating COP of 2.5, you end up with 1.31 units of heat for every unit of energy contained in the fuel.
Cryptocurrency has taught me to love math and at the same time be baffled by it.

Cryptocurrency lesson 0: Altcoins and Bitcoin are not the same thing.
 

Offline calzap

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 537
  • Country: us
Re: Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!
« Reply #27 on: May 10, 2020, 07:45:12 am »
If you have kerosene heaters, there is a better and cheaper source of kerosene than buying it at a fuel dealer or hardware/lumber store.  Take your empty cans to the nearest general aviation airport ... one that serves small planes ... not a big jetport.   What you want is jet-A or jet-A-1 fuel.  It's a more refined and stabilized form of kerosene and usually cheaper than the kerosene sold in stores.  At my nearest airport, I just go to the pump,  put in my credit card, and fill the cans.

Do NOT buy aviation gasoline or jet-B fuel unless you want death by fire.  Military JP-8 will work; do not use any other military JP fuel.

Mike in California


 

Online David Hess

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 17427
  • Country: us
  • DavidH
Re: Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!
« Reply #28 on: May 10, 2020, 01:55:46 pm »
If you have kerosene heaters, there is a better and cheaper source of kerosene than buying it at a fuel dealer or hardware/lumber store.  Take your empty cans to the nearest general aviation airport ... one that serves small planes ... not a big jetport.   What you want is jet-A or jet-A-1 fuel.  It's a more refined and stabilized form of kerosene and usually cheaper than the kerosene sold in stores.  At my nearest airport, I just go to the pump,  put in my credit card, and fill the cans.

Here in Missouri, kerosene is available at many gas stations.
 

Offline calzap

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 537
  • Country: us
Re: Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!
« Reply #29 on: May 10, 2020, 02:29:32 pm »
My older relatives used to live in N. Arkansas and S. Missouri.  Most are dead now; their children moved elsewhere.  As a child, I remember them buying kerosene at gas stations.  At the stations, it was stored in rectangular tanks above ground and dispensed with hand-cranked pumps.  My relatives called it coal oil, but even then, it was derived from petroleum, not coal.

Mike in California


 
The following users thanked this post: Electro Detective

Offline cdev

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 7350
  • Country: 00
Re: Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!
« Reply #30 on: May 10, 2020, 03:01:04 pm »
Now that we're exporting it, expect the price of natural gas to go up a LOT the next cold winter we get after the coronavirus thing is over. It may take a few years but it will likely be soon enough to make it quite substantially more expensive. Electricity will likely go up a lot too. This is why they are trying to bring back coal. LNG fetches a LOT more money in Asia than here. 

Lots of businesses may close and especially, multiunit apartment buildings too, because its no longer economical to operate without cheap electricity or gas. 

They have been trying to do this for a very long time, now they are. 

"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline NiHaoMike

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9318
  • Country: us
  • "Don't turn it on - Take it apart!"
    • Facebook Page
Re: Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!
« Reply #31 on: May 10, 2020, 05:44:00 pm »
Now that we're exporting it, expect the price of natural gas to go up a LOT the next cold winter we get after the coronavirus thing is over. It may take a few years but it will likely be soon enough to make it quite substantially more expensive. Electricity will likely go up a lot too. This is why they are trying to bring back coal. LNG fetches a LOT more money in Asia than here. 
Things are going to get interesting when solar is already cheap and getting even cheaper. The PG&E crisis in California is already pushing a lot for energy independence at home.
Cryptocurrency has taught me to love math and at the same time be baffled by it.

Cryptocurrency lesson 0: Altcoins and Bitcoin are not the same thing.
 

Offline cdev

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 7350
  • Country: 00
Re: Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!
« Reply #32 on: May 10, 2020, 09:03:17 pm »
When the sun is out thats definitely a good option. The worst case scenario is a year where there is a volcanic eruption that puts a lot of ash in the air. Like "The Year Without a Summer" that Ben Franklin wrote about. No crops, no wind, no rain, no heat. I think "The Scream" was painted in such a year.
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline IDEngineer

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1950
  • Country: us
Re: Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!
« Reply #33 on: May 11, 2020, 03:12:19 am »
Things are going to get interesting when solar is already cheap and getting even cheaper. The PG&E crisis in California is already pushing a lot for energy independence at home.
There's another hilarious side to that. We have close friends on the main island of Hawaii. Roof installs of solar panels have become quite the fashion there, since they get a lot of sun and the state government mandates that excess power must be purchased by the local power company. The result is that the power company, at least on Hawaii, is losing money and cannot afford to maintain their infrastructure. So much solar power is coming into the grid, for which they are compelled to pay, that they are not selling enough of their own generated power to cover their expenses. They have increased their rates, but that just drives more residents to install solar on their roofs because the breakeven timeframe just gets shorter.

It's hilarious when folks insist on corrupting the free market. Inevitably, they force people to re-learn that the road to he!! is paved with good intentions. Nobody knows how this is going to end up. Who will pay to maintain the electrical grid? Will they continue to have centralized power stations at all, and if so who will pay for those? Does the state government dare rescind the mandated power-buy, destroying the business case for (and the political support from) all those homeowners who paid $10's of K up front to install solar?  :popcorn:
 
The following users thanked this post: GlennSprigg

Offline Berni

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 5050
  • Country: si
Re: Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!
« Reply #34 on: May 11, 2020, 05:30:34 am »
Things are going to get interesting when solar is already cheap and getting even cheaper. The PG&E crisis in California is already pushing a lot for energy independence at home.
There's another hilarious side to that. We have close friends on the main island of Hawaii. Roof installs of solar panels have become quite the fashion there, since they get a lot of sun and the state government mandates that excess power must be purchased by the local power company. The result is that the power company, at least on Hawaii, is losing money and cannot afford to maintain their infrastructure. So much solar power is coming into the grid, for which they are compelled to pay, that they are not selling enough of their own generated power to cover their expenses. They have increased their rates, but that just drives more residents to install solar on their roofs because the breakeven timeframe just gets shorter.

It's hilarious when folks insist on corrupting the free market. Inevitably, they force people to re-learn that the road to he!! is paved with good intentions. Nobody knows how this is going to end up. Who will pay to maintain the electrical grid? Will they continue to have centralized power stations at all, and if so who will pay for those? Does the state government dare rescind the mandated power-buy, destroying the business case for (and the political support from) all those homeowners who paid $10's of K up front to install solar?  :popcorn:

That does sound like a recipe for disaster.

We have a 12kW solar array but the way it works with the particular power company we use is that you only pay for the difference in kWh between the generated and used power. But if you generate more than you use they won't pay you for it and you give them the power for free. So you can't actually make money from the solar power, but it does grantee a 1:1 buy/sell rate for you. To be able to actually sell power here, then you need some extra paperwork cause you need to be a company to do that.

But it does work out pretty well overall. Its similar to having a off grid setup except that the power company instead provides you with a "battery array" with infinite capacity and zero maintenance in the form of the power grid. Real battery arrays big enough to cover the daily usage of a typical full sized house are not cheap so its a pretty good deal. But you don't get any of the battery backup functionality since if the grid is down so is your solar setup. But the grid appears pretty reliable here apart from a few extreme cases here or there, i only have one UPS and its a dinky little one that i got a few years ago to gently shut down my NAS server in a potential power failure. Nothing else is on UPS cause power failures are so rare.
 

Online Gregg

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1156
  • Country: us
Re: Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!
« Reply #35 on: May 11, 2020, 05:03:32 pm »
We have a 12kW solar array but the way it works with the particular power company we use is that you only pay for the difference in kWh between the generated and used power. But if you generate more than you use they won't pay you for it and you give them the power for free. So you can't actually make money from the solar power, but it does grantee a 1:1 buy/sell rate for you. To be able to actually sell power here, then you need some extra paperwork cause you need to be a company to do that.

But it does work out pretty well overall. Its similar to having a off grid setup except that the power company instead provides you with a "battery array" with infinite capacity and zero maintenance in the form of the power grid. Real battery arrays big enough to cover the daily usage of a typical full sized house are not cheap so its a pretty good deal. But you don't get any of the battery backup functionality since if the grid is down so is your solar setup. But the grid appears pretty reliable here apart from a few extreme cases here or there, i only have one UPS and its a dinky little one that i got a few years ago to gently shut down my NAS server in a potential power failure. Nothing else is on UPS cause power failures are so rare.

This sounds reasonably fair if the KWH is averaged over a year.  If it averages every 24 hours it doesn't sound like a very good deal for the consumer.
 

Offline Berni

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 5050
  • Country: si
Re: Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!
« Reply #36 on: May 12, 2020, 06:48:59 am »
We have a 12kW solar array but the way it works with the particular power company we use is that you only pay for the difference in kWh between the generated and used power. But if you generate more than you use they won't pay you for it and you give them the power for free. So you can't actually make money from the solar power, but it does grantee a 1:1 buy/sell rate for you. To be able to actually sell power here, then you need some extra paperwork cause you need to be a company to do that.

But it does work out pretty well overall. Its similar to having a off grid setup except that the power company instead provides you with a "battery array" with infinite capacity and zero maintenance in the form of the power grid. Real battery arrays big enough to cover the daily usage of a typical full sized house are not cheap so its a pretty good deal. But you don't get any of the battery backup functionality since if the grid is down so is your solar setup. But the grid appears pretty reliable here apart from a few extreme cases here or there, i only have one UPS and its a dinky little one that i got a few years ago to gently shut down my NAS server in a potential power failure. Nothing else is on UPS cause power failures are so rare.

This sounds reasonably fair if the KWH is averaged over a year.  If it averages every 24 hours it doesn't sound like a very good deal for the consumer.

Yep the line is drawn at the end of the year. So it works out pretty good.

Especially since we heat the house using a heatpump. So a crap ton of power is used during the winter, but the solar is generating a crap ton of power during the summer. So they are pretty nice for holding on to that exess power for half a year.

Not sure how the finances work out on there side for this. But they are a company that just resell power, they don't maintain any of the power infrastructure. Mostly started off with them striking a deal with the nuclear plant for cheep power and then selling it off to households at a cheaper rate than the usual power company. So they don't really have any concerns with keeping the grid healthy. Later on they started offering these solar deals and i guess this just means they have to buy less power from that nuclear plant.
 

Offline Red Squirrel

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2757
  • Country: ca
Re: Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!
« Reply #37 on: May 12, 2020, 10:11:10 am »
My fear with solar taking off is the government will eventually tax it to the point that you don't save by going solar.  They don't like it when people find ways to save money, and they want their cut.   Hopefully it does not happen but I would not put it past them tbh.
 

Offline Electro Detective

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2715
  • Country: au
Re: Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!
« Reply #38 on: May 12, 2020, 10:30:15 am »

Everyone I know with solar prayer panels is going to lose money in the long run after doing some rough math,
as well as the current stress of gearing their lives around the peak and off peak thing

Those panels and electronics will need to be replaced one day,
one day after the first lot finally just got paid off  |O

Solar panels charging batteries sounds like a better goer than just playing the grid game bs,
it's stored power you can use any time running it through the sine wave inverter

I'll wait a while longer and DIY a decent rig, once the prices get real methinks..


 

Offline Berni

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 5050
  • Country: si
Re: Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!
« Reply #39 on: May 12, 2020, 11:21:06 am »
Yeah saving money with solar is pretty iffy

Dad wanted to get into this solar thing and with all the batteries involved it didn't quite make sense. Especially since it would be difficult to make use of all the excess power in summer. So the idea was abandoned.

Its only once this power reselling company offered this new way of just trading your generated kWh for consumed kWh 1:1 making them a free infinite capacity battery that it started making sense. On top of this there are some subsidies for this to help reduce the initial investment. But even after this its still not that terrific of an investment, but it does pay back well within the expected lifetime of the system.

If we are trying to be nice to the environment then id say just build more nuclear plants.
 

Offline Electro Detective

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2715
  • Country: au
Re: Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!
« Reply #40 on: May 12, 2020, 10:29:32 pm »

...If we are trying to be nice to the environment then id say just build more nuclear plants.


 :-+  that's a top option
but unfortunately there will always be an unforeseen convenient 'accident' to shut them down 'somehow'
with an awesome news media carnival to go with it,
to ensure it's a long time between builds or rebuilds (not),

and let's not forget how many -thousands of centuries- it takes for the nuke fallout to go away, according to their 'experts',
that somehow fails to convince plant life and animals to stay away from ground zero   ???  :-//

yeah, the fossil fuel crew are good like that  >:D

lots of smoke, fireworks, a good side show for the viewers  :popcorn: 

tons of their paid good troll/bad troll teams on the internet via social media, forums, Youtube etc
to beat down on anyone questioning their racket, aka conspiracy theory nuts   

and of course during any crisis like that, fuel prices get nudged up a bit to cover their expenses = win win   :D

shhh.. :scared:

 ;D
 

Offline IDEngineer

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1950
  • Country: us
Re: Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!
« Reply #41 on: May 13, 2020, 12:05:27 am »
but unfortunately there will always be an unforeseen convenient 'accident' to shut them down 'somehow'
with an awesome news media carnival to go with it,
to ensure it's a long time between builds or rebuilds (not),
and let's not forget how many -thousands of centuries- it takes for the nuke fallout to go away, according to their 'experts',
The solution to nuclear energy is thorium. It's not perfect, but it's decidedly better than uranium-based nuclear. Thorium is quite abundant and broadly distributed on the planet (three times as plentiful as tin!), and when used for fission generates much smaller amounts of much lower radiation byproducts - many of which can be recycled for more fuel, and virtually none of which can be used in weapons.

It's this last detail that killed thorium power early on. Governments wanted the uranium and plutonium byproducts for weapons, so they shut down research into thorium power in favor of uranium based fission which gave them the byproducts they wanted. But the physics hasn't changed, and thorium would be an excellent part of an overall environment friendly energy package.

Guess who is leading in thorium R&D right now? China and India. The west needs a Manhattan Project for thorium power. Most of the basic questions were answered decades ago, we just need to commercialize it.

Or we can just ignore thorium and continue down our primrose path....
 

Offline Red Squirrel

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2757
  • Country: ca
Re: Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!
« Reply #42 on: May 13, 2020, 12:15:11 am »
Assuming I'm wrong about the government eventually taxing it (I hope I am) then you definitely can save with solar but you need the land for it.  Rooftop is too much of a pain to maintain, ground mount is best.  If they are vertical facing east, south and west (could make a C then have the battery building in it too) then snow should not be as much of an issue so they will be low maintenance.  Pay a lot now to save forever.  Hydro rates only keep going up year after year. Wish I had more land as I would definitely work towards going off grid.  Easier to do in a country setting though, where you don't need permits to build anything, and can have a wood stove for heat etc and have more land to play on.  It's my dream to buy such land eventually. Just waiting for the right parcel to come up, I'm hoping to find something water front with road access.
 

Offline Berni

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 5050
  • Country: si
Re: Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!
« Reply #43 on: May 13, 2020, 05:12:19 am »
There was some talk about adding another reactor to the single nuclear plant we have here. But yeah it will never happen. There would likely be protests to begin with and if it does end up going trough then such a large project would inevitably end up going massively overdue and overbudget because the funding would disappear to corrupt middlemen on it (This is what happened on the extra block of a coal plant that was being built).

Don't think we can do much about the radioactive boogieman, especially in these times when flat earthers, 5G fools, antivaxers..etc are at a all time high. One would think giving everyone access to information on the internet would make them smarter and more informed... pretty much opposite is the case it seams. It just makes it easier for people to group together and form "stupidity cults" that spread there own misinformation.
 

Offline Red Squirrel

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2757
  • Country: ca
Re: Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!
« Reply #44 on: May 13, 2020, 06:21:28 am »
Nuclear definitely seems to be the best balance of environment and power output.  Main issue with solar/wind is storage. I think more effort needs to go towards that, but for the time being nuclear is best bet.  Too bad people are so scared of it.    Funny thing is there have been way more oil disasters than nuclear disasters.    Just look at the BP oil spill in the ocean, the effects of that will be seen for centuries if longer.
 

Offline Electro Detective

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2715
  • Country: au
Re: Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!
« Reply #45 on: May 13, 2020, 06:56:08 am »
Yep, gotta show protesters some love too  :-* 

The fossil fuel crew pay good money to their mates at news media circus Inc to make nuke power look bad
and their 'better the devil we know' racket a better bet,
or their blunder spillages and gas blowups just not mentioned as much, if at all   

and  'dial a crowd' protestors will prostitute themselves for a dime and TV attention,
sell their own offspring and parents to slavery when cash is low.

Most of those placard waving asses are cheap and easy to buy,
and on regular standby call to go anywhere any time,
free flights, transport, accommodation, clothing, disguises, violence startup scripts, booze, coke, spending cash,   
and other benefits like > no interest loans on houses, cushy job preference, good school grades for their brats etc

all the good stuff that low life sellouts and 5th columnists enjoy  :clap:

Just the type of people you need as neighbors..  :D
 

« Last Edit: May 13, 2020, 06:59:03 am by Electro Detective »
 

Offline Lord of nothing

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1591
  • Country: at
Re: Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!
« Reply #46 on: May 13, 2020, 08:51:16 am »
Everyone who here use a Diesel Generator how to deal with the E10 Crap?  :-//
I heard that are not so stable for long therm Storage.
Made in Japan, destroyed in Sulz im Wienerwald.
 

Offline NiHaoMike

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9318
  • Country: us
  • "Don't turn it on - Take it apart!"
    • Facebook Page
Re: Power Failures! In the year 2020 !!
« Reply #47 on: May 13, 2020, 12:38:06 pm »
Nuclear definitely seems to be the best balance of environment and power output.  Main issue with solar/wind is storage. I think more effort needs to go towards that, but for the time being nuclear is best bet.  Too bad people are so scared of it.    Funny thing is there have been way more oil disasters than nuclear disasters.    Just look at the BP oil spill in the ocean, the effects of that will be seen for centuries if longer.
And when was the last solar or wind disaster? Specifically one that was not localized to the installation site.

I have a clue thermal storage will be a big part of the solution when the majority of residential load is HVAC.
Everyone who here use a Diesel Generator how to deal with the E10 Crap?  :-//
I heard that are not so stable for long therm Storage.
There's no ethanol in diesel.
Cryptocurrency has taught me to love math and at the same time be baffled by it.

Cryptocurrency lesson 0: Altcoins and Bitcoin are not the same thing.
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf