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What Solar Equipment to Power Disaster Recovery?

Posted by Cliff on Tue Jan 09, 2007 08:00 PM
from the soak-up-the-sun dept.
Communications Power
MailtoDelete asks: "I work with a team that is involved with disaster recovery efforts after natural disasters, like Katrina. We have satellite based equipment that allows us to bring data connections up in devastated areas to help bring the infrastructure back online to serve the public. I have looked at the main networking equipment and determined that the power draw is usually low (about 50 watts) and was curious about the possibility of using a small solar setup to power the equipment rather than running a 8-10kw generator to do the same work (after all, fuel may be scarce). Can anyone suggest a good site or book that I can look into that would help me learn more about what equipment would best serve my purpose? There is a small business in town that does this sort of work, and they have suggested a 550 watt array with the controllers, etc for about $5100. Does this sound reasonable?"
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  • What if it's cloudy? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JoshJ (1009085) on Tuesday January 09 2007, @08:06PM (#17532970) Journal
    You'll need some sort of long-term energy storage if you want to use solar power, as solar power doesn't function in a cloudy situation. The OP mentioned Katrina- if you're in a hurricane and need disaster recovery stuff, there's usually still a general rainy period (though not hurricane-strength) after the brunt of the hurricane hits, as well as the fact that it may just plain be cloudy. To be quite frank, I'm not sure why you think "solar power" in conjunction with disaster recovery- you want something that will function under almost any condition, not function under "good" conditions and have to rely on a backup power source when the conditions are bad.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by DFM Whiplash (1049088)
      I agree with JoshJ, I usually equate natural disaster with terrible weather conditions. As you said "...rather than running a 8-10kw generator..." why not something MUCH smaller? http://www.hondapowerequipment.com/ModelDetail.asp ?ModelName=eu1000i [hondapowerequipment.com] Or Perhaps? http://www.electricgeneratorsdirect.com/catalog/pr oduct_info.php?cPath=36_139_44_173&products_id=438 [electricge...direct.com] (I really hope these links work, I am new to this)

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by toddbu (748790)
        I have an EU1000i and they're fantastic units. Took mine to the races last year and powered the trailer for >24 hours on just a couple of gallons of gas. Honda also makes larger units, up to the EM7000is, which still consumes very little fuel (~ .25gph @ 1/4 load) given its power output rating.
    • OP makes a good point. Even if it is sunny, you will need to be able to run at night. So you should factor in excess capacity to charge up a storage pile.

      Other than that, I will refer you some of the other posts for references.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by falconwolf (725481)

      You'll need some sort of long-term energy storage if you want to use solar power, as solar power doesn't function in a cloudy situation.

      Some of the new solar panels don't need full sunlight and can work while it's cloudy. Yes the older panels weren't good even if only a small part of the panel was blocked, whether by clouds or a tree, but newer tech had improved this.

      Falcon
      • Yes, you're correct, but you have to account for that in your design phase, and as someone else pointed out, there's also the whole "nighttime" situation to worry about as well.

        • Yes, you're correct, but you have to account for that in your design phase, and as someone else pointed out, there's also the whole "nighttime" situation to worry about as well.

          Yea, and a small battery backup should be added as part of the system. In this case he says the power used is about 50 watts so two or three betteries should provide enough power during the night. If it doesn't then a charger can be used along with a generator that can provide power and charge the batteries.

          Falcon

    • The simple solution (Score:4, Informative)

      by Propaganda13 (312548) on Tuesday January 09 2007, @09:08PM (#17533652)
      Buy a smaller generator.

      Yamaha EF1000iS 900W generator with .66 gallons of fuel has a runtime of 12 hours with 25% load. $700
      • Any reason why this $100 generator [duropower.com] wouldn't work?

        I'm no expert on these, I'm just curious.

        These generators aren't the most environmentally friendly, but during disaster recovery I'd think that's one of your least concerns; it's only temporary anyway.
    • $5K for 500W seems a bit steep. You might want to look into things like wind generators that can also generate at night. Somebody's idea of a diesel engine converted to run on pure cooking oil sounds like a winner idea. If it can run on either diesel or cooking oil then you have a good variety of fuels that you can use to keep things running.

      As many have noted, you'll need batteries for storage -- but, if you're willing to improvise and salvage, there there might be a reasonable supply of dead cars with

      • In that case, there will likely be an abundance of solar energy. At least until the hypercanes start swirling around.

  • Home Power magazine (Score:3, Informative)

    by dalmiroy2k (768278) on Tuesday January 09 2007, @08:09PM (#17533012)
    Home Power magazine's website it's a great place to start. You can download free PDF files with practical information about solar power generators for home use.

    http://www.homepower.com/ [homepower.com]
  • Start here [ata.org.au]. Also, subscribe to their magazine, Renew.
  • Why the hell would you want to do Solar after a disaster?

    My disaster recovery involves:
    a) an Ethanol still ~$1500 USD
    b) a generator tuned to run on Ethanol85/E100

    So, in any disaster scenario I can just ship a few hundred bushels of feedstock grade corn (for livestock, or refuse), to a site and power electrical equipment. Solar is very inefficient per dollar, and in a post-hurricane scenario (or blizzard condition), you won't be able to power your equipment.

    With an ethanol still/generator, you just need to
    • If you can truck corn on site, why not just truck cans of gasoline for the generator?
      • As E-85 gains in popularity in the Corn Belt, it's hoped that more farm vehicles will convert to using it, freeing those vehicles from oil dependence as well. Gasoline would be a fine solution for a week or less, but its availability is much less predictable for a month or a year's worth of disaster service.

        The Upper Midwestern states are thousands of miles from natural sources of oil, and currently rely entirely on lengthy pipelines carrying crude oil from distant ports to local refineries. A disaster

        • Uncharged batteries and solar panels may take a while to come on-line, but they're proven reliable and would provide a good long-term solution, (probably the most effective for the 50 watt load the poster mentions.)

          Unless you've been very careful (and spent a great deal of money) when choosing your batteries, you'd be wise not to depend on batteries that have been stored discharged.

          For ordinary wet lead acid or "gel cell" batteries, you ought to at the very least store them fully charged and give them a tes

      • Liquid is heavier and more volatile. Also, depending on the location, some fuels can be found on-site. Bio-fuels can be found in many forms.

        • Liquid is heavier and more volatile.
          OK, but how much energy do I get out of 100 lbs of gasoline versus 100 lbs of seed corn?

      • I said, "ship", not "truck". There are multiple ways to ship a product to a location. Among them are: Truck, Car, Air-Drop, Rail, Sled-Dog, etc.

        Think beyond your area of expertise before you speak such.

    • So, in any disaster scenario I can just ship a few hundred bushels of feedstock grade corn (for livestock, or refuse), to a site and power electrical equipment.

      A few hundred bushels? The roads are blocked, bridges are down.

      But why the hell would you truck in a moonshiner's still and the grain and the fuel to power the damn thing when you can truck in alcohol and other fuels from secure stockpiles and refineries outside the disaster zone?

      The commercial grade product, safe and predictable. You'll need so

      • In the event that ROADS are unavailable, the materials in my configuration can EASILY be air-dropped in a situation as you described. Corn/Wheat/etc. require very little prep before an air-drop. Engines/Stills, slight prep work, but nothing crazy.

        That said, let's look at the Solar/Battery/Generator air-drop:

        It's NOT trivial to air-drop a Solar Panel Array (including a person [or team] to set up/configure the relief)
        It's NOT trivial to air-drop BATTERIES for the Solar Panel Array
        It's somewhat trivial to ai
        • You raise some interesting ideas and I suggest you investigate the process involved. You will understand as you go through each step as to why there are more experienced people here that do not believe that your ideas are practical. Solar is trivial to set up quickly, which is why it was suggested, and you really should understand what is involved in a more complex process before advocating it as strongly as you do. Learning about Rum Distilleries is probably a good first step to give you some idea about
    • Interesting idea - but how long are you prepared to wait for your first batch of brew before you distill it? The same blizzard conditions that will clobber solar will kill your yeast and could actually freeze your brew. Also remember that you are also carrying in glass as part of your truck without any problems - a bit of padding when shippping and your panels would be OK - they get used on sailboats in stormy seas after all.

      If you going to ship in stuff to make fuel it makes more sense to save weight, v

      • Actually, an Ethanol still is very lightweight. A 10,000 gallon still can weigh around 50 pounds. Significantly lighter than a SINGLE 12volt car battery.

  • Marine Equipment (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Cycon (11899) <[ ]ve [at] thePr ... com ['ste' in ga> on Tuesday January 09 2007, @08:33PM (#17533258) Homepage
    Try taking a look at marine equipment. There's plenty of resources online, or if you're near the coast try a boating shop. The larger the better. They're experienced with all sorts of weather-hardened equipment (what if the rain comes back?) that generates power in that range. Be aware you'll likely need some sort of battery system to store the juice and provide output at a sustained rate. You'll probably want to look into deep-cycle batteries.

    Basically there's people on the go all over the world with no steady supply of power or fuel who have to be prepared for intense weather conditions - they're called yachties (c:

  • Try a combination (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Colin Smith (2679) on Tuesday January 09 2007, @08:46PM (#17533406)
    Yachts use solar and wind power to charge their batteries, it's a combination which works. Take a look at vertical axis wind turbines as well as photovoltaics. They can be cheap and run at low wind speeds.
     
  • Assuming a non permanent install:
    Solar + battery back up (if continuous operation is required) is fine. But I don't see why it has to be the USD5000 version - sounds too expensive.

    You said the equipment has low power requirements, so just point the panel in the direction that gets the most sun and leave it there to charge the batteries for the times when there's not enough sunlight. Shouldn't need any fancy expensive controllers for that. If you're that desperate, maybe you can get stuff to reflect sunlight
    • Dirty sig man, just plain dirty. :(
    • >Shouldn't need any fancy expensive controllers for that.

      Betcha the reference was to charge controllers for the batteries as opposed to sun tracking systems.

      You need a charge controller. Draw too much or too little current from a solar panel and you lose efficiency, something you really can't afford. The batteries also need some coddling: you'd be surprised how involved a good charging algorithm is.

      Suggestions:
      o Standardize the generator on whatever fuel is being shipped into the disaster area. The Army
      • Yeah, I guess he did say USD5K for controllers, etc. So maybe it's not too bad if etc included batteries and other stuff (and doesn't fall apart if someone just sneezes ;) ).

        AFAIK a Prius costs a bit more than USD5K.

        I thought all the prius cars would be heading away from disaster areas rather than to them :).

        Regards,
        Link.

  • Home Power Magazine [homepower.com] publichs some good howto articles as does Solar Today [solartoday.com] .

    Falcon
  • I strongly recommend that you use the Sun as your primary piece of equipment.
  • So you need 50W of power (maybe at multiple locations). Do you want to do it green, or get a job done?

    A (I'm generalizing) small, light, reliable, and cost effective way to go about it is with mass produced fuel burning products (like small generators).

    I like green, but solar cells in an emergency are not the most cost efficient way to power something, especially considering transport / setup / weather.
    • I think he meant 50kW; but I agree with you 100%.

      In an emergency/crisis scenario, just get the job done - in fact, get it done with zer0 regard for anything else but survival (screw the overprotective soccermoms and their pretentious bullshit/faux values).

      Save lives. Do the right thing. Go with your core instincts.

      The law will most likely protect you and learn from you; rarely will it fight you when you are correct/right.
    • As I read TFQ, he's interested in exploring solar as a potentially practical solution to his problem, not as part of some Greenpeace covert op.

      I think you don't need to tell him how good generators are, since he says he's got one. He goes on to say that fuel scarcity is an issue. It sounds like he operates the sort of service that goes in and stays for a while, so generator fuel supply is not necessarily trivial.

      Also, I think he knows the disadvantages of solar cells right enough, but recall that he's setti
  • Would certainly be a lot more compact than 550-watt's worth of solar panels - and wouldn't be affected by cloudy weather.
  • You mention 50W, 8-10KW and then 550W. So which is it?

    At 50W, solar makes some sense because a larger array can charge batteries with minimal sunlight in a few hours and the batteries can last for days at a 50W draw.

    At 8-10KW trying to do this with solar will be quite expensive and the batteries to run this load at night will be nothing but astonishing. Yes, take your 550W array and multiply the cost 16x. Then add a bunch more for 80KWH worth of batteries to run it at night. Then look for the 50ft semi-
  • search for "solar electric information". You'll find all kinds of stuff.

    Your solar panels won't put out full power when it's cloudy or hot, so oversize them by a good margin. Get an inverter, and you're set. A 175-watt panel and an inverter could start out at $1,000.

    Since your power usage is fairly low, you could add a charge-controller, and as many batteries as you desire, which would accomplish two things: First, it would get your 50-watt load through the night as well. Second, it would give you powe

  • Solar equipment (Score:3, Informative)

    by r.garrison1 (1049154) on Wednesday January 10 2007, @01:08AM (#17535542)
    I am not certain if this meets the needs specific to your purpose, but I have been looking into an off-grid vacation residence. I found a good bit of information at:

    http://www.backwoodssolar.com/ [backwoodssolar.com]

    One other site I found interesting: http://store.altenergystore.com/Kits-Package-Deals /Sunwize-Power-Ready-Systems/c692/ [altenergystore.com]

  • Many Things To Consider... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Boricle (652297) on Wednesday January 10 2007, @02:54AM (#17536164) Homepage

    I don't really have any answers, just more questions - more detail about your response situations would really be needed to get into more specifics (and I'm not in this area this anyway).

    Reading other posts here, I agree that the Marine angle may provide a good avenue for further investigation. Another option is to look at organisations in the 3rd world and see what they use. Another poster made a good point in contacting local HAM outfits to see what they use for emergency and mobile operation.

    You could also try contacting other emergency services organisations in your region - there are sure to be some local ones, as well as groups like coast guards, chapters of Medicine Sans Frontiers, International Red Cross etc

    . I think that some of the key points are likely to be:

    1. What is your energy budget (peak, average and duration - ie, do you need 50w 24x7, or a 100w startup with 2x2hr per day)
    2. What is your deployment method (air, road, sea, rail, bicycle, foot, quad, motorbike, etc)
    3. How much space / weight do you have available?
    4. What is your expected deployment length (days, weeks, months, years)
    5. What is your resupply situation (air drops, cars, trucks, walking)
    6. What other resources do you have available (oil, fuel, crops, wood, people, rivers, waterfalls, sun)
    7. What is your exposure to the equipment availablility
    8. How critical is the availability / reliability of the equipment (how many die if its only working 8 hours a day?)
    9. How rugged does the equipment need to be?
    10. Who will be using the equipment?
    11. What will be the field maintenance requirements?

    Think further afield - you can go from a very primitive portable situation, to more of a long term field camp arrangement, to a permament station?

    Less technological solutions and allowing for very small packages could be having a good crank generator hooked up to either a person peddling or to a domesticated animal of some kind (like a horse on a flour grinder)?

    Someone else has already mentioned using Diesel generators - you could use biodiesel, take from visiting trucks tanks, or grow your own (too much like hard work)?

    Do you have the ability to use 3rd party equipment? Eg, police, military, other peoples vehicles to charge batteries. What will the people who use your equipment have available that you might use / exchange?

    If the deployment ends up being long term, can you request an additional deployment of equipment (eg, have a crisis kit with a diesel / fuel generator for short term, with a good solar kit to follow up)?

    If the deployment ends up being long term, can you reduce the operating load on the system (eg, have fixed operating windows) to reduce fuel usage / improve solar effectiveness

    Can you mix multiple energy sources (eg, very small generator for short term / emergencies, small solar for ongoing and possibly a crank generator of some kind.

    How low can you get your energy budget? Are there lower power alternatives you can get?

    How independent do you need to be?

    Good Luck!

  • Many RV folks have decided to use solar power to supplement the gas/diesel gensets found in their rigs. There's a market supplying these folks. Kits for RVs and cabins exist already, and probably will do what you're asking. Size your equipment properly, and run directly off the batteries if you can - every voltage conversion is lossy. Here's a nice selection of RV and cabin setups, [sundancesolar.com] complete with prices.
  • Many folks have suggested smaller generators and such. The specific setup is a 22 foot trailer with satellite, security equipment and computer equipment. The trailer already has an 8kw generator welded to the tongue. Since the power draw is relatively low if only the networking equipment is needed (50 watts) I was thinking about adding a solar system to the trailer. This way, if the batteries were critically low, the genset could charge the system, but the batteries would have enough stored energy to last a

    • Re:Two words. (Score:5, Funny)

      by locokamil (850008) on Tuesday January 09 2007, @08:28PM (#17533206) Homepage
      RTFA, dude.

      He's looking for solutions for after the hurricane. ::ducks::

    • Wind power.

      No.

      Think in terms of something mobile that can be set up just about anywhere and expected to work just about anywhere. Solar works even when there is cloud cover (admittedly attenuated), but wind power doesn't work on a still day.

    • Yup. And nose around your local Ham swap meets and the back pages of a few ham radio periodicals while you're at it. (Might as well become a Ham too - never hurts to have yet another communication channel open in an emergency.)

      Our radio club has run a 100% solar setup for the last five or six field days. Nothing excessive - just a couple hundred watts for around 48 hours. Last time our setup consisted of 4 2x6 foot panels, a commercial regulator / battery charger, three or four big marine lead-acid batt

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