Anyone using alternative energy?

I was just wondering if anyone on here is using any type of alternative energy to power their grows?
Ive been trying to find ways to supplement power and even cut costs if at all possible.

Just curious whats out there and has already been tried

torontoke said:

I was just wondering if anyone on here is using any type of alternative energy to power their grows?
Ive been trying to find ways to supplement power and even cut costs if at all possible.

Just curious whats out there and has already been tried

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Too huge a system is required to power much for lighting from solar/wind. I use solar to power pumps in my outdoor gardening, but powering lights is way too power intensive. Then storing the power is your next problem, you will need 10 x 100ah batteries to power 1000w for 12 hours, and that would be totally draining them and killing their lifespan, so make that 15 if you want it to last. IMHO, it's not realistic to use light or wind for powering your lights.

So what alternative energy can provide much more power in a smaller space? Well only three options I can think of, wood/burnable fuel powering a generator, geothermal (in exceedingly rare locations), and rushing river/stream.

Time to build a steam engine for your generator?

I wasnt thinking of the batteries only being recharged by sun and or wind.
But even a battery charger that is on the grid would use alot less energy then the lights.
So even if the chargers was charging half the time wouldnt that still save 50% of the hydro usage?
I was hoping to cut down the hydro didnt expect it to disapear completely.
Just curious if anyone else has actually tried any of this before investing a bunch of time thats all

If the hillbillys can make a japanese truck run on wood chips than surely to fuck theres a way to power up a grow light?

torontoke said:

I wasnt thinking of the batteries only being recharged by sun and or wind.
But even a battery charger that is on the grid would use alot less energy then the lights.
So even if the chargers was charging half the time wouldnt that still save 50% of the hydro usage?
I was hoping to cut down the hydro didnt expect it to disapear completely.
Just curious if anyone else has actually tried any of this before investing a bunch of time thats all

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Hydro usage? Do you have a hydro generator on a river already? If you want to just spread the time you pull the power out so they can't see the cycles then all you need is the battery system, a charger, and a large enough inverter or to switch your lights over to DC (LED) lighting.

Charging your batteries will be less than 100% efficient, so you will actually use a fair bit more power buy charging them and using them to power your lights.

torontoke said:

If the hillbillys can make a japanese truck run on wood chips than surely to fuck theres a way to power up a grow light?

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Same way the hillbillys make the truck work. Convert to steam engine and use water + fire to power it. You just need a generator part of a genset that is large enough and an engine you can convert to steam. Then you have the fun of keeping it stocked with wood chips, coal, or similar and water.

nomofatum said:

Hydro usage? Do you have a hydro generator on a river already? If you want to just spread the time you pull the power out so they can't see the cycles then all you need is the battery system, a charger, and a large enough inverter or to switch your lights over to DC (LED) lighting.

Charging your batteries will be less than 100% efficient, so you will actually use a fair bit more power buy charging them and using them to power your lights.

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So u think it would take more power to charge a battery bank than to power up the lights? Idk
Lets say for arguments sake i want to run 4 1000watters for 12 hours.
I buy 4 invertors and a bank of batteries for each light.
You think the battery chargers will use more power than 4 1000k lights on for 12 hours?

torontoke said:

So u think it would take more power to charge a battery bank than to power up the lights? Idk
Lets say for arguments sake i want to run 4 1000watters for 12 hours.
I buy 4 invertors and a bank of batteries for each light.
You think the battery chargers will use more power than 4 1000k lights on for 12 hours?

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First things first, realize that every watt of power you pull from that battery you must first put into it, the battery is not a generator, it's only a storage device. If you want to pull 12kwh worth of electricity you will have to first put 12kwh of electricity into that battery. So if you were to get 100% efficiency on everything you would have to power the chargers with 1000w for 12 hours (or 2000w for 6hr or 500w for 24hr or ...) to charge the batteries enough to then pull 1000w with your lights for 12 hours.

Second thing, nothing is ever 100% efficient. In our case, the best batteries using the best chargers will get you between 90 and 92% efficiency, but that is just to store the electricity, now to use it in a AC device we have to run it through an inverter to convert from 12v DC (or multiples of 12v) to 110-120 AC. The inverter will likely be around 80% efficient. So after you spend all your money on the equipment you will also be spending/using 25% more electricity if all charging is done with power from the grid.

Using a DC light would eliminate the larger loss of the inverter. This is why LED would be your light of choice if going down the path of using batteries.

Ahhh
Ok now i see so unless the recharging is free its not worth it.
Perhaps a few large 200amp car altenators being run by a small low wattage motor.

torontoke said:

Ahhh
Ok now i see so unless the recharging is free its not worth it.
Perhaps a few large 200amp car altenators being run by a small low wattage motor.

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You are running into the problem of the law of conservation of energy. No energy can be created or destroyed, only transformed. It will take more electricity to run the motor than the alternators will produce, if that were not the case you could simply power the motor with a portion of the alternator's output and have free electricity forever from the excess produced.

If you want this to work you need something off grid to power your chargers, at least partially. Hydro, Geotherm, wind, solar, wood, ...

I run geo for heat. Setting up solar in the summer. Not looking to get off the grid entirely. I won't have batteries. Just looking to turn the sun into electricity, feed back into the grid and turn my meter backwards. Solar is cheapest its been ever.

I plan to go solar eventually myself and i was looking into the small windturbines that use converted car altenators.
Thanks nomo for the lesson i think i have a way better understanding about it.

Rrog said:

I run geo for heat. Setting up solar in the summer. Not looking to get off the grid entirely. I won't have batteries. Just looking to turn the sun into electricity, feed back into the grid and turn my meter backwards. Solar is cheapest its been ever.

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I'm curious if you could modify your geotherm setup to work with peltier thermoelectric generators in the summer for power production.

From Wikipedia regarding the Thermoelectric generators:

... They are only economical when a high temperature (>200 °C) can be used and when only small amounts of power (a few watts) are needed."

Very intriguing concept, however. I'm doing geosolar, I call it. Looking at possible Hydrogen storage for the leftover electricity created. If I don't want to / can't sell back to my power company any longer. H2 storage tech is close...

torontoke said:

I plan to go solar eventually myself and i was looking into the small windturbines that use converted car altenators.
Thanks nomo for the lesson i think i have a way better understanding about it.

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Depending on where you live solar or wind is the most viable right now..unless you have running water on your property... I just read an article about a "wind mill tree" that had a bunch of smaller wind turbines on it, each one mounted on the end of a "branch" here it is>http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/21/tech/wind-tree-arbre-a-vent/
Could probably build something similar with the converted alternators, DIY will keep the cost..umm reasonable?

Thats awesome

if you face south and have a lotta open sky, solar is a good long term deal, especially with the latest Enphase components. You now have a solid state system, no moving parts, and no anticipated replacement of any components for 25-30 years.

And a 30% tax credit on materials and labor

And up to 250 000 in government grant and loans available that most canadians know nothing about.
Ive looked into it in theory the government will loan u the money to bud a big enough system and u can pay them back with money u receive from selling back to the grid

torontoke said:

And up to 250 000 in government grant and loans available that most canadians know nothing about.
Ive looked into it in theory the government will loan u the money to bud a big enough system and u can pay them back with money u receive from selling back to the grid

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Wish we'd get on board with something like that down here south of that border. They'd rather give billions in subsidies to oil companies then support a national solar program

They dont talk or advertise it here either