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Diesel gensets, light loads, glazing
Ignoramus21810 wrote:
Anthony Matonak wrote: Ignoramus21810 wrote: ... Well, to put the engine under full load, I would turn on a 4.5 kW water heater, dropped into a bucket of water. I did that to test my generator and I can make it a little more robust for everyday use. So, yes it would be easy to use, and yes, I expect my house to be a light load for most of the time. ... Excuse me if this sounds like a wild, implausible idea, but perhaps it would work better if you had a smaller generator to handle the majority of the light loads most of the time? You would only need to fire up the big generator for the occasional big loads. I know it would be additional expense but it would also give you a better chance of still having power even if one of the generators went down. First, it is expensive, second, I do not like the idea of maintaining two generators, and third, loads are intermittent. Think about my refrigerators, range, etc, I cannot run out and switch from one genset to another every time someone wants to boil a teapot of water. This points to a need for a small demand management system for off-grid homes with limited instantaneous power capacity from generators and inverters. We might turn the fridge off while the range runs, turn the range off for a few seconds while the well pump runs, and so on, with Insteon/X10 hardware and a wireless controller to implement a priority scheme. If someone turns on a teapot with the switch on the handle, the AC receptacle senses that and signals the controller, which delays applying full teapot power until the controller turns off something else in the house. Small on-grid businesses with demand meters could also use boxes like this. On a larger scale, a few years ago I met a negawatt trader who made money in New York State on-line power auctions by meeting predicted utility grid demands on peak summer days by turning off central AC systems in large apartment buildings for an hour or so in the afternoon. He got paid the same as an energy provider, and only bid when the instantaneous auction price got up to about $1/kWh, but he got more valuable credits, since reducing demand creates no pollution. The smallest practical load for him was 1 megawatt, and he seemed excited about the chance to control 1 kW loads automatically. Nick |
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