Sustainability vs Survivalist

Daryl wrote:<<SNIP>>
I'm interested to hear that California has 240V AC as I thought the US was on 110V AC.

Some homes, if not most, are fed with two 120V lines, 180 degrees out of phase. This is fed into either a fuse box or a breaker panel as 240 VAC. There a ground is supplied and individual outlets are wired to one side or the other. Some appliances such as driers and electric range, as well as furnaces are wired for 220/240 VAC and their outlets are wired to both sides, using the common ground as reference. Hope this helps.

KNick wrote:

Daryl wrote:<<SNIP>>
I'm interested to hear that California has 240V AC as I thought the US was on 110V AC.

Some homes, if not most, are fed with two 120V lines, 180 degrees out of phase. This is fed into either a fuse box or a breaker panel as 240 VAC. There a ground is supplied and individual outlets are wired to one side or the other. Some appliances such as driers and electric range, as well as furnaces are wired for 220/240 VAC and their outlets are wired to both sides, using the common ground as reference. Hope this helps.

Just so. The box is fed from a 240V center-tapped transformer and has neutral, ground and 2 hot connections. Room circuits use a single-pole breaker and are wired with neutral, ground and one hot phase delivering 120V. Heavy duty equipment like a central air conditioner, electric stove, welder, etc. have a double-pole breaker with neutral, ground and both hot lines for 240V. Breaker stabs alternate between phases so there is a fair chance most people will draw approximately equal loads from each phase.

I have found out the hard way that connecting a computer powered from one phase to a stereo powered from the other phase is a great way to generate a gawdawful buzzing noise. You should NEVER have both phases wired to different outlets in the same room, but whoever rewired this house many years ago did NOT know what they were doing.
------------------
If you ran a business the way they run the government, you would either be in the poorhouse or jail.

Thanks to both replies. I've responded to this one to avoid the embedded quote rule.
Here we have 240V AC to all domestic dwellings. If you have some heavy duty equipment like bigger welders and such you can opt for three phase. This provides 415V when combined. I have three phase but generally most of my gear is 240V. Can get funny things to happen when a phase goes down so you lose lights but not power points, or vise versa. Our fuses are in the main meter box, while I know in the UK they have theirs in the big clunky power cord plugs.

I don't know why but my on grid solar system feeds its excess back on to the grid through two of the three phases, and I then get paid for it based on the overall feed back.

KNick wrote:

Daryl wrote:<<SNIP>>
I'm interested to hear that California has 240V AC as I thought the US was on 110V AC.

Some homes, if not most, are fed with two 120V lines, 180 degrees out of phase. This is fed into either a fuse box or a breaker panel as 240 VAC. There a ground is supplied and individual outlets are wired to one side or the other. Some appliances such as driers and electric range, as well as furnaces are wired for 220/240 VAC and their outlets are wired to both sides, using the common ground as reference. Hope this helps.

Most solar set ups in the US can be designed to back feed the grid any excess power generated. And in most states the power company is required to pay you for that excess.

The only time, by utility regulation, you're required to be disconnected from the grid when you have alternate energy sources, is when the grid goes down. If you remained connected to the grid when the supply stations went down, you would then become the supply for your local area. Your system couldn't handle it/isn't designed for it. AND (far more important from my point of view an electrical engineering sort) if there is some one working on the lines, say repairing them, and your house was still hot, you could injure them.

This is why if you want your system to remain turned on, upon a loss of grid power, your home alternate energy has to have batteries as a part of it. It gives you storage to work from, a power supply to switch to. It also absorbs some of the surges from starting and stopping loads in your home.

It is very common for homes to have a transfer switch that enables the house or selected circuits to be transferred from the grid to the generator to isolate them from the distribution system.

I see no reason why utilities who are switching to "smart meters" could not include an isolation switch that would disconnect houses that have solar or wind from the grid during power outages. The homeowners should eagerely accept this as it allows their alternate energy system to become their emergency generator.

A similar set up would enable people's electric vehicles to act as a back up power supply.

Fireflair wrote:Most solar set ups in the US can be designed to back feed the grid any excess power generated. And in most states the power company is required to pay you for that excess.

The only time, by utility regulation, you're required to be disconnected from the grid when you have alternate energy sources, is when the grid goes down. If you remained connected to the grid when the supply stations went down, you would then become the supply for your local area. Your system couldn't handle it/isn't designed for it. AND (far more important from my point of view an electrical engineering sort) if there is some one working on the lines, say repairing them, and your house was still hot, you could injure them.

This is why if you want your system to remain turned on, upon a loss of grid power, your home alternate energy has to have batteries as a part of it. It gives you storage to work from, a power supply to switch to. It also absorbs some of the surges from starting and stopping loads in your home.

While there have been a lot of discussions of using solar energy for electrical energy generation (a natural idea since so much of our household equipment is electrical in nature), maybe we should also think about using solar energy as a source of heat (for example as a supplement for the hot water heater).

Theres a lot of talk here about solar power generation, but what about in locations that don't have suitable weather patterns or are too far north.

What other methods are suitable for survival focused power generation

As well as my solar electricity panels I have a 300 litre hot water system that is solar heated. It does have an electric booster for cold overcast days but that is rarely needed.

Thucydides wrote:While there have been a lot of discussions of using solar energy for electrical energy generation (a natural idea since so much of our household equipment is electrical in nature), maybe we should also think about using solar energy as a source of heat (for example as a supplement for the hot water heater).

Quite a few small scale (individual house) wind generators in Scotland. Geothermal is used in New Zealand and Iceland.

Emo Otaku wrote:Theres a lot of talk here about solar power generation, but what about in locations that don't have suitable weather patterns or are too far north.

What other methods are suitable for survival focused power generation

Almost everywhere, the shallow ground or upper 10 feet of the Earth's surface maintains a nearly constant temperature between 50° and 60°F (10° and 16°C). Geothermal heat pumps can tap into this resource to heat and cool buildings, vastly reducing their energy needs. This is the primary use for geothermal.

There is commercial power generation using geothermal as well, but for home use this is not a viable tool.

When I build my retirement home, geothermal is definitely one of the things to go in. It will likely cost about 25-30k USD (right now it costs about 20-25k USD), unless something happens to improve the tech and reduce the cost.

This is definitely a technology that is underutilized and worth pursuing, even for an existing home. Augmented by solar, you can keep a home heated and cooled for a very small cost.

The same solar cells which convert light to electricity have a secondary application for heating water. Even on days that aren't terribly sunny they can do a fair job of heating water.

As an alternative to tank hot water heaters, consider 'on demand' or 'in-line' heaters. These are heaters which use electric heaters installed in your hot water line. They only turn on when there is a demand for hot water. Because of not maintaining a big tank of warm water, they are typically cheaper on people's budget.

The caveat to this is homes with frequent running hot water. Because electricity is less efficient to heat with, if you have a constant or high demand on your hot water system, you won't see the savings.

I helped my mother to install a hydro-electric system at her property. She had a number of small streams on the grounds. We rerouted the streams to a holding pond we dug out. The pond drains to a small pool from which we dug routes back to where the streams had originally exited t he property. This prevented any problems with the much larger stream that runs along her property line, and difficulties with neighbors about water usage.

We installed several different flow and generation systems connected to the same battery storage that comes off of her solar panels. Her set up generates about 3000 watts and total cost of the install, since we did most of the work, was only around 10,000 USD.

There are systems much smaller, in the range of anything from 300 watts to 1000 watts that are priced much cheaper. And will provide plenty of power for a small home, using just a small stream.

As a side note, we took the time to properly build up the holding pond bottom, and the area along it's edges to prevent erosion or other complications. Additionally we stocked the pond. A nice little fishing spot.