ESB going up again

Mailman

What with the high standing charges and ever increasing cost of electricity per unit I was thinking that it is almost affordable to generate your own electricity.

It seems relatively cheap and easy to get simple old diesel engines and diesel car batteries from scrapped cars and cheap forms of diesel type fuels are available for next to nothing.

What is the cheapest way of converting/transforming the 12V DC stored in the batteries into 220V to power standard household equipment i.e. what item can you buy inexpensively that will do the job?

I know that power is lost while being transformed from DC to AC and batteries aren't that efficient but I figure the procedure would be relatively green when compared to the generating stations we have here in Ireland and because the point of generation would be at point of use running at optimum efficiency rather than at the far side of the country in an oil burning power station.
I know that it isn't just that simple to generate your own electricity in that there would be possible problems with brownouts and deep draining lead acid batteries but I don't think those problems would be insurmountable if you can get an affordable transformer.

Paladin

Umm...no.

To convert from a 12V DC Battery to 240V AC you would need something like the starter in a car.

What happens is a contact touches the battery, charges a magnet, this magnet pulls the contact away from the battery breaking the connection, and this keeps repeating at a certain rate. What happens to create the 240V (or whatever you are after) is back emf in a coil.
This is leaving cert physics.

However it is extremely innefficient.
The ESB rates are actually hundreds (if not thousands) of times cheaper per unit of electricity than batteries.

Whilst diesal engines might be found cheaply you will have to convert it to a generator in its own right (just get a diesal generator instead?) which could be tricky.

Lots of big companies including where I work (Im in motorola) have backup generators. If it was possible to generate your own electricity more efficiently than taking it from the national grid then they would do it.

Mailman

Remember being in third level economics course where tutor told us that while working as a consultant he took a company off the grid because it was actually cheaper per KWh for that specific company to generate their own electricity than purchase from ESB.

From my limited knowledge of electrics a starter motor is not a transformer, it's a motor and if reversed it would be a generator(but not at 220V which is what is needed to drive household appliances). A transformer is composed of two different coil windings which work through inductance or something similar to give you a desired output voltage, current and\or phase.

Mailman

BTW when you are getting your fuel for free and the engine costs next to nothing does inefficency matter that much?

Batbat

solar?

NinjaBart

lunar?

Mailman

Free diesel type fuel in so far as it will combust in a diesel engine and is available for free.

Paladin

Ok if fuel were free then yes you could do it cheaper than the ESB. How can fuel be free (or should I feel scared asking that question ).

Also to clear up something...

What I am talking about in cars is the induction coil needed to generate the high voltages for spark plugs. Induction coils work on the principle of a changing magnetic field so what you need to do to step up 12V DC is to turn it on and off fast. I know that in the past this was done with a mechanical relay and a capacitor to prevent large sparking when the relay disengaged. Whether this is done differently in modern times I have no idea (was studying the electronic principle, not cars).

This sparking and passing through a step up transformer costs lots of energy and I dont think it would be the way to go. Using an already existing generator would be better. Whether its more cost effective than the ESB I am sceptical, but if you can get free fuel...

As for solar and wind power, the problems using these domestically is how do you store the energy they create and how could you possibly regulate a reliable 240V AC supply that most houses require? Thus far I dont think there is any reliably method for this. If anyone has any links to good ideas though it would be interesting.

Capt'n Midnight

Even with the 8% increase the ESB will still be cheaper than most of rest of the EU.

to convert from 12 to 240 you would need an inverter - dynamotors would not be stable enough in frequency, voltage and have too many spikes.

In theory (and I'm not going to test this... - wiring lead acid batteries in series is an excellent form of suicide ) SOME electronic equipment Might work on ~336V DC. if the SMPSU is designed to handle it.

What are you trying to power ?
if you want heat - then burn the fuel
if you want motion then get compressed air tools and a compressor with a big resevoir
if you want to power a computer - get a laptop they use less power and are more tolerant of voltages than a desktop (usually will take from 90 to 250 V) and have a built in UPS.

as for storing wind energy - look at turlough hill - you pump the water to the top and let it flow when you need to generate power.