Which way would you go in a Genset?

oilyriser · May 12, 2007

So roughly 15.5 UScents/kw-hr (7 cents for power + 3.5 + 5)
plus a fixed monthly amount just for being there. In Ontario, it runs around us11 UScents/kw-hr overall for a typical house.

Is the Interruptible a 60% discount on the entire 15.5 or just on the energy and capacity charge, which is only about 7 cents?

"pushing way too much heat to get the heat to the thermostat ..way overshooting the setpoint ...longer idle times until the thermostat calls for heat ..and so on."

Honeywell makes a learning thermostat that is great for high heat capacity systems. It learns the thermal response of the house, and can turn down the heat before the house overheats. It even gets used to the sun shining in at certain times of day, and backs off the heat when it expects the sun to take over. If it suddenly gets cloudy, there will be a brief cool period until the thermostat notices the temperature isn't moving like it normally does:

Honeywell "smart response"

Shannow · May 12, 2007

Quote:

I can't necessarily follow your path from the price of #2 ..the consumption of the genset (without knowing demand) and arriving at a $/kwh ..but ...

Even if that's true (your figures how they work out) it's not that much of an issue since it allows ALL of my house to run when the interruptible service is off line.

A decent diesel runs at around 0.45lb per horsepower hour.

That's 300ml of fuel per KWhr.

At $2.20 per US Gal, my calcs come out at 17c/KWhr also.

You need to use the other 60 percent of the heat that the engine isn't turning into electricity.

As to ultimately being disconnected, they've got some great, utility friendly rules down here. If you are within 250m of a sewer, you pay the utility as if you were connected. Similarly with drinking water, you are charged the service fee, but not the useage.

There was a classic case in Queensland, where a guy was first into a rural subdivision. They were going to charge $40-$50k to supply his electricity. He said no thanks, and spent a little less than that on solar and batteries.

A year or so later, he got some neighbours, and they ran the supply to the area (didn't connect to him), and presented him with a bill for $10k for electricity supply to his block.

He argued in court, and lost.

The view was that his land value was improved by having the facility to connect, even if he didn't use the service, so he had to pay.

oilyriser · May 12, 2007

That's totally insane. If a neighbour builds a giant mansion beside my place, it would also increase my property value, but I would not have to pay towards his waste of resources.

Gary Allan · May 12, 2007

When I see the next bill, I'll copy the particulars for everyone to decipher. My regular, fixed distribution, power is billed at (last number I recall) $0.187+ any fuel surcharge... AND all the other fees you saw there.

Once (IF) this gets off the ground, I'll eliminate one service.

It's amazing how easy it is to fool the Public Utility Commission if you just hire enough spin doctors. They're so simple, they can't see how crossing outside PECO's captive audience, other people, using other utilities, don't experience all these added costs.

There must be some localized flux density issues in Peco country that alter the basic laws of the universe. The effect must have some inherent value ...cuz we sure pay for the privilege of living here

Quote:

Honeywell makes a learning thermostat that is great for high heat capacity systems. It learns the thermal response of the house, and can turn down the heat before the house overheats. It even gets used to the sun shining in at certain times of day, and backs off the heat when it expects the sun to take over. If it suddenly gets cloudy, there will be a brief cool period until the thermostat notices the temperature isn't moving like it normally does:

Honeywell "smart response"

I was wondering if they had some wiz bang routines in them to adapt appropriately. My solution was to put a timer in the thermostat cicuit. It cycles the boiler to max of 5 minutes on and 5 minutes off when the setpoint isn't reached. It cut the cost of getting the system up to steam by about 1/3. I've got to figure some practical (as in cheap) economizer or other heat recovery. I'm blowing way too much heat out the chimney. I've only got about 8-10" of vertical stack to deal with.

Gary Allan · May 12, 2007

Quote:

As to ultimately being disconnected, they've got some great, utility friendly rules down here. If you are within 250m of a sewer, you pay the utility as if you were connected. Similarly with drinking water, you are charged the service fee, but not the useage.

We have something similar for sewers. If you were within 250' of the (future) sewer line, you paid not only to hook up ..but so much per foot for the pipe that ran along your frontage. My FIL's house was 300' from the street, got charged nothing with most of his front acre (3.3 total) being frontage (wider than deep) ..but the guy next door got charged $7000 (198-something) PLUS his $2500 hook up fee.

Quote:

A decent diesel runs at around 0.45lb per horsepower hour.

That's 300ml of fuel per KWhr.

At $2.20 per US Gal, my calcs come out at 17c/KWhr also.

You need to use the other 60 percent of the heat that the engine isn't turning into electricity.

Okay ..now I see where the figure came from ...easy enough. That's competitive with what I pay for fixed distribution electricity. Even if I don't recover any of it, I'm still using $0.07kwh for the rest of the majority of the clock. Now I just have got to figure the avoided costs against replacing/refreshing the genset every so often.

I don't know how many hours of continuous operation elapses before a refit on this type of engine.

tom slick · May 12, 2007

have you considered solar? no maintenance, 25 year warranty, rebates, no fuel bill, etc.
if you are thinking about heat recovery look up how heat gets reused in industrial settings with NG and diesel powered air compressors. there are heat exchangers for the coolant and exhaust.

Oldmoparguy1 · May 12, 2007

Wow Gary! If I had to put up with that, I'd move to another state.

OTOH: There could be a good startup opportunity for a good corporate lawyer and a good energy engineer.

Gary Allan · May 12, 2007

Solar ...I could use it to heat water in the summer easy enough. The third floor dormer was going to be a greenhouse type thing sealed off from the rest of the third floor and would work well for that purpose ..even in the winter, but we're not talking only heat here. It's the unique lame utility structure that makes any electric usage very expensive unless you can trump the gap between fixed and variable distribution. You're also looking at heating oil climbing in price as well.

It was like my old plant. We spent $70k/month on electricity. We also spent $70k a month on NG for out boilers. They never connected that they could have used a gas turbine to use the $70k worth of NG to produce whatever they could in electricity. Well, they did get a notion of connecting the dots ..but only when the iceberg had already been hit (the .com bubble gave many companies with "common profits" the death blow when you could be making 20+% in other stocks)

Just like them, I'm being forced to budget $2400 (I think this will fall short for the coming heating season) for heating oil ..and $2500 for electricity. Just on those figures alone, and considering that I can eliminate MOST of one $2400 figure (for heat) with 7 cent electricity, I only need to fill that little gap in energy production to make it work. The only question is recovering the cost of the unit and affording the refit over whatever time span that will be.

I have plenty of industrial experience with heat exchangers. I ran a large evaporator for 5 years with (between condensers and exchangers) 6 of them about 40-60' tall (these are small by many industrial standards). I'm perfectly able to complicate this to some nth degree here. I'm even trying to envision a cooling tower to cope with the unrecoverable waste heat. Although all these ancillary systems are really neat to "be one with" in an industrial setting where you sit in your control room ...where you see "something is unright" and investigate and determine what you're going to advise the superintendent of the dept about who's going to coordinate a "crew" to correct it, ..or do weekly PM in the form of oiling and greasing .. I don't want to become a full time maintenance man for my creation. You get into really expensive hard parts just due to the limited distribution. Size of scale issues also pop up.

My first step is to install electric heat in all the upper floors (where the thermostat isn't located) and shut off the radiators. I'll compare how the electric bill increases and how the oil bill decreases. I'm working on how to keep the rooms warm during the power interruption. I wish I could find those older style Robert Shaw "steam radiator thermostats". Those you could dial in the room temp that you wanted and they wouldn't let the steam into the rad above that setpoint. They had a capillary tube type thing to them.

oilyriser · May 12, 2007

A 1000 gallon plastic cistern of water, cooled to 5C overnight using cheap electricity, and warmed to 15C with a water to air heat exchanger as it cools the home, could absorb 44 kw-hrs of heat. That should be enough for most summer days. Then you could run the lukewarm water through another heat exchanger to preheat the cold water for when the teenagers take their showers.

onion · May 12, 2007

I can't claim any special knowledge of gen-sets or heating/refrigeration, but I have worked with Yanmar diesel engines in John Deere mini-excavators, utility tractors and Takeuchi excavators. I say "worked with" rather than "worked on" because I never saw one break- or even leak significantly. They're rock solid reliable, in my experience.

Gary Allan · May 12, 2007

I've got very little room to add too many more items. I could just dig up the yard below 3' and put a fairly decent distribution system to soak up excess heat ..heck ..have a green lawn in the winter

Keep in mind I don't have any central ventilation. For example, over 12 years ago an estimate for central air was well over $12k ..while a ranch or bilevel were around $7k. When you strip away the hardware, you're looking at a buttload of labor for ducting in a 100 year old house. So, most of the air systems are muddied in like capital outlay to the genset plan. I mean ..I can install some duct work...but I haven't studied, nor am I experienced in, HVAC ...and I only want to do this ONCE. I'm really against a basket case scenario where I'm forever correcting for, or learning to live with, system imbalances and miscalculated CFM figures ..load sizing of the compressor ..etc...etc..etc.

Al · May 12, 2007

Quote:

Wow Gary! If I had to put up with that, I'd move to another state.

His only choice would be Jersey and that would b e even worse.

As time goes on and energy becomes more expensive large houses may become dinosaurs.

We have a 1300 sq ft ranch house and for the two of us that's too big. We spend 95% of our time during the day in a 350 sq ft room that's cooled with a 6800 BTU unit which dehumidifies and cools a portion of the rest of the house. At night our bedroom is cooled with a 5000BTU unit. Very comfortable and cheap.

Winter our propane stove is in that room and supplemental heating for the rest of the house. We only heat the bedroom to 60 at night.

Out total energy bill for a year is under $2K.

JHZR2 · May 12, 2007

Quote:

His only choice would be Jersey and that would b e even worse.

Ill have to check, but we are right across the river from Phila., and I am pretty sure we don't pay that much...

PSE&G, whle not as cheap as the DE-based co-ops, is still quite a bit cheaper than the Pepco companies and the excelon companies, when I read a study on it not too long ago.

Plus we get cheaper gasoline

JMH

oilyriser · May 12, 2007

The problem with cogeneration is your electric use might not have enough base to allow the genset to run at an efficient point. But if your utility allows net metering, you'll be feeding power to the surrounding homes when your microwave isn't running. Your meter will run backwards, and you get to keep the waste heat.

I wonder what the COP on absorption chillers is. If you make electricity for your neighbours during the summer, would there be enough waste heat to cool one floor of your home? The utility would have to allow annual net metering for that to make sense. In Ontario, they only go monthly up to now.

Gary Allan · May 13, 2007

Quote:

Ill have to check, but we are right across the river from Phila., and I am pretty sure we don't pay that much...

Of course you don't. Limerick wasn't built for the Phila part of the PENNJERDEL power pool. It was built by Peco for Jersey. My interrruptible service provides Jersey with more $0.025 power off of the grid.

I just get to pay for the plant.

Our municipal water company appealed to PECO for relief from the electric costs of pumping water. They sent 11 people to the meeting. All gave great suggestions on how to save electricity. The borough countered that they would pay for lines to be installed to connect them to MET-ED, which at the time due to restrictions on producing power above your avoided costs, was actually buying PECO power off the grid. The borough had to outlay $200,000 for the lines to be run, which MET-ED rebated $40k/year.

PECO had no counter offer.

Edited for figures..

Master ACiD · May 14, 2007

gary whatever you decide on let me know youre plans. this is exactly the type of thing i love reading and thinking about.
i spent weeks, heck months planning out my system that powers my house and water system incase of power outage from a hurricane.
this type of stuff is intertesting, i wish i went farther unti it by using exhaust as heating, and generator cooling fan as an attic ventilating fan (cooler attic in the summer).

theres lots of ways to use wasted energy from a genset. i even rewired my head unit to provide more power. ill see if i can provide a link for you to read about. you probably wouldnt want to rewire youre gen head, but its interesting reading none the less.

http://www.otherpower.com/20page1.html this is 1 link to get ya started.

Steve S · May 14, 2007

As far as durability goes Diesel engins are used in all machinery that runs hard and has to last a long time, Natural gas and propane engines last longer thas gasoline feuled engines. Natural gas and propane vaporizers may be probablamatic as I workrd on propane forklifts for over 20 years. How about solar with a commercial battery / inverter setup ?

Gary Allan · May 14, 2007

Quote:

The problem with cogeneration is your electric use might not have enough base to allow the genset to run at an efficient point. But if your utility allows net metering, you'll be feeding power to the surrounding homes when your microwave isn't running. Your meter will run backwards, and you get to keep the waste heat.

I wonder what the COP on absorption chillers is. If you make electricity for your neighbours during the summer, would there be enough waste heat to cool one floor of your home? The utility would have to allow annual net metering for that to make sense. In Ontario, they only go monthly up to now.

I don't know how the current meters (electronic) work. The old style (spinning disc - odometer type) didn't turn backwards. For anyone producing their own power, they had to install a dual meter pan with one meter getting the wires swapped. The wires going to the "taps" would be from the outlet of the meter, the wires from the house/genset would enter the inlet side of the meter. The electric company would read both meters and bill for used power and credit for produced power. I don't think that it was a net swap though. I think they billed full rate and paid back at some lower rate. Naturally if you used your power producer during your peak demand, then you would see less expensive electricity (it would slow the incoming meter)..and if you could produce it long enough you could recoup your losses. Some have done it with simple alternators (large) and windmills (not all that big). They have inverters that can be synchronized to the utility. One guy has some semi-historic house on a major creek with a working water wheel.

As far as my load:capacity mismatch ..that's sorta an issue ...but keep in mind I'm not running this thing 24/7 like they are at Cutty Hunk Island where they have no undersea cable to power the island. I just need full service capability for 8 hours max. My main power users during the summer variable distribution season are mostly AC units that run full duty 24/7. They rarely cycle off. The main variable would be cooking/baking and the clothes dryer.

If deep cycle batteries are a better way to go ..with the supporting electronics/hardware ..that would be the ideal. I could soak up 16hours of cheap energy to provide 8 hours of usage. Then are we looking at a like expense in the inevitable replacement of the batteries in ..how long? I think most people who are in remote locations ..using photo-voltaic panels with batteries for non-producing hours are already "energy-lite" in their choices of how they consume their energy. They can also, typically, afford to just add more panels and batteries if they aren't happy. They have money. Their idea of saving money is the alternative between paying the nearest utility $50-60k to run a line ..or them spending $35-$40k on alternative energy sources. They were never worried about being able to pay the bill or sacrifice to live in comfort.

Which way would you go in a Genset?

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