Hobbyist Renewable Energy? 607
vossman77 writes "I was looking into renewable energy from a hobbyist perspective, maybe generating a few watts of solar or wind power, just to reduce my electric bill. But upon further review, I found out that I need a special grid-tied AC inverter that shuts off when the grid turns off (for worker safety reasons) and makes the current in-phase with the grid. These two additional features, over the cheap inverters sold at department store, make the cost upwards of $2000, but support more watts than I need. While this is fine for large-scale projects, it is out of range for a small scale hobbyist. A Google search came with some home-brew hacks at best. So, are there any Slashdotters out there doing small-scale renewable energy projects with grid-tied systems? What are other options for the hobbyist to play around with renewable energy, other than charging a cell phone?"
Renewable fuel (Score:3, Insightful)
go 12 volt (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, $2000? (Score:3, Insightful)
Electricity is a dangerous thing, jury rigging solutions is not an option when your safety is at risk. The device is $2000 because it must pass safety, UL, and a whole host of standards so it doesn't you know kill you or blow up the local transformer when somthing goes wrong.
Keep your cheapo gear off my power grid (Score:4, Insightful)
Not cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:go 12 volt (Score:3, Insightful)
Burning a house down is the least of his concerns (Score:5, Insightful)
Those transformers on the poles work just as well when operated backwards, stepping the 120V output from your inverter up to the 7-13 kV distribution level. Unless your inverter has enough "smarts" to isolate itself from the grid in the absence of utility power, your system will attempt to power up your part of the utility network, resulting in a severely overloaded inverter (with resultant blown fuses/smoke/fire) at the best, or a serious hazard to lineworkers at the worst.
People HAVE been sued when lineworkers are killed/injured by improperly installed generators or PV systems that resulted in backfeed. Prosecution for criminally negligent homicide is also a possibility, especially if the prosecution can prove that you KNEW of the need for automatic isolation, but failed to provide it in order to save a buck.
In short, use properly designed equipment, installed according to manufacturer's instructions (and get the proper permits/inspections as required), or stick with a completely isolated low voltage DC system.
Re:Renewable fuel (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Renewable fuel (Score:5, Insightful)
For a lot of hobbyists, the plan goes something like this:
Re:Renewable fuel (Score:4, Insightful)
It would also take a very special kind of buyer to pay any significantly higher price because of it. You'd be severely limiting your potential buyer base.
But, if the price of the home was basically on par with others in the area, you'd probably have an advantage.
It's like swimming pools. They don't necessarily add any value to the home, and they attract only people that WANT a pool. A lot of people don't want a pool, as I suspect a lot of people wouldn't want all that extra complexity that a supplemental power generation system could introduce.
Only spend the money if you KNOW you will stay there long enough for this to pay for itself for YOU.
One teeny problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Use a 'fan center' to isolate when grid power d (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Use a 'fan center' to isolate when grid power d (Score:3, Insightful)
Think of things in your house that you really don't need to run on grid power -- nonessential items. Perhaps, since this is just for a hobby, you could create a single dedicated socket that you don't use all the time that provides your renewable power to household devices. Your power could be fed into a battery, which would then be fed into a cheap store inverter. You'd want it to be on a switch so that your inverter doesn't run nonstop and drain your batteries, of course. You would, of course, have to have a battery back for such a solution.
Don't do it (Score:5, Insightful)
> amounts of power and driving it into wiring that goes into other
> people's houses and into systems that other people are maintaining.
This is the key part. I'm as Libertarian as they come but a power grid implies a need for some sort of standards and real enforcement of same. Forget the legal implications for a minute, do YOU want to kill your lineman? Then don't conduct unannounced experiments on the production power network. Ya got three choices here:
1. Man up and buy the commerical, TESTED AND CERTIFIED product for that key interconnection point.
2. Build a test grid, do your R&D and produce a TESTED AND CERTIFIED product of your own.
3. Restrict your alternative power experiments to those that do not require an interconnect to the grid.
Re:Renewable energy comer in many forms (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Use a 'fan center' to isolate when grid power d (Score:2, Insightful)
If the failure is isolated to your circuit from the power company (like if the transformer at your pole fails), then your circuit would never detect that the grid power went down if your home power system is producing enough power to feed the grid -- since your home system is tied directly to the grid, it would also be powering your 24AC transformer so would never see the grid side go down.
So, when the lineman goes to fix your transformer, he's dealing with a live circuit from your house.
Real isolation inverters look at the waveform and frequency to determine if the grid is offline.
Re:Renewable energy comer in many forms (Score:2, Insightful)
Use solar energy to heat some form of heat store (anything from a lump of rock to a phase change material) that will heat your house overnight.
Be creative, but stay off the grid unless you have a UL approved connection!