diy solar

diy solar

Is there any way to make money from excess power apart from selling back to grid?

OffGridInTheCity said:
Use the extra power to create some prep supplies? We run a Harvest Right Freeze Dyer - haven't measured it but it's 10-15kwh / 24hr-cycle. The food is reconstituted with water and a good number of items (eggs, hamburger, for example) are quite good after reconstitution.

Personally, I'd LOVE to build a 10,000kwh battery and store the summer excess for winter, but that would be on the order of 1Million+ 18650 cells :)
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How do you like the harvest right? I have had my eye on one for several years. We have a garden and it would make it so easy to put up food for long term storage.
 
Nobodybusiness said:
Nobody under the age of 40 probably even knows what the Hindenburg was..
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well inshould hope they do.
it is tought all over the world in history classes ( except the usa, as i never had it in middle or hogh school, which explain a lot of the issues currently going on there. )

"if one knows about history, one wont make the same mistakes twice"
 
houseofancients said:
well inshould hope they do.
it is tought all over the world in history classes ( except the usa, as i never had it in middle or hogh school, which explain a lot of the issues currently going on there. )

"if one knows about history, one wont make the same mistakes twice"
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I remember learning about it back in elementary or high school (central PA) and watching a few documentaries on it since. It was a fascinating feat of engineering and shockingly charging reason for its demise. Born in 88, some of us young old folk still have it together.
 
You have excess generation of power, but no way to store/sell it. Just use SolarGenerator designs to store the excess power, where you charge them faster than people can use them.

Could narrow this down to just the batteries involved, not the whole SoGen. They come by and pick them up; you can have them buy the SoGen and/or batteries, to cut cap costs at your end; "select" clients only. Could limit it to "spare" batteries (which plug in) to the actual SoGen head unit.

If folks pay to have their propane bottles (of varying sizes) filled, they might also pay to have their batteries (of varying sizes) filled ...

If you pick up and deliver, even better ...
 
You could:
1) Cover the panels that you do not need (if you have the panels divided in 3-4 arrays) to preserve their physical integrity and extend their life and performance. Then you will save replacement costs in the future.
2) Produce an e-fuel and sell it. One example is ethanol from some organic waste; industry uses sugar cane. You need heat for the fermentation and heat for the distillation of ethanol from water. The ethanol could then be used to heat up homes in winter or purposes where purity is not a problem.
 
We run 2 freeze driers also, we get a 1 for 1 credit from are power company so I installed an electric furnace, it's backed up to my gas furnace using same central heating ducked. We have enough credit thru summer to run all winter in Idaho with some credit left.
 
MurphyGuy said:
Most batches in the medium Harvest Right machine take about 20 to 23 kWh of energy.
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Holy crimpers, Batman! I had no idea that a freeze dryer used so much energy.

Makes me want to build a carport at home for our camp trailer so I can utilize the solar system there for a freeze dryer. Harder to do it now because our trailer is usually parked 10 miles from home. lol
 
Tomthumb62 said:
Holy crimpers, Batman! I had no idea that a freeze dryer used so much energy.

Makes me want to build a carport at home for our camp trailer so I can utilize the solar system there for a freeze dryer. Harder to do it now because our trailer is usually parked 10 miles from home. lol
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For most batches, the freezer dryer uses as much energy in 24 hours as the entire rest of my home. Freeze drying is the most energy intensive method of food preservation, but its also the most beneficial. Unlike other methods such as canning(30%?) or dehydrating (50%-70%?), freeze drying retains something like 97% of the food's nutritional value. Storage times are also ridiculously long. Canning is about 2 to 3 years, dehydrated food can go 10 years if packed in oxygen free environment.. Freeze drying can go 25 years or more.

There are also a lot of foods that can be freeze dried, but not canned or dehydrated, so a lot more options for food storage.

And when it comes to meats, its hard to tell the difference between freeze dried and frozen. Nothing compares to fresh obviously, but most meats re-hydrate extremely well. We have freeze dried about 200-250 cans of tuna fish and you can't tell the difference between what just came out of the can and what was re-hydrated.

Of my favorites are Thanksgiving dinners.. When the turkeys go on sale every November, my wife will get 6 to 8 of them each year. She'll cram in the stuffing and cook a turkey every weekend.. We'll make one dinner out of it, then freeze dry everything that's left and repeat the process every weekend until they're all gone.

We do somewhat of the same thing every Easter with the hams.

It is energy intensive, and the machines are kind of expensive as they're up in the $2500 to $3500 range. Being on solar, I don't care about the energy as we produce way WAY more power than we use.

Next to having a weapon, the freeze dryer is a huge prepper item. One #10 can of Mountain House ground beef is like $90.. that's one batch in the freeze dryer + $25 to $35 worth of beef. Plus, I can freeze dry it raw or precooked.
 
MurphyGuy said:
For most batches, the freezer dryer uses as much energy in 24 hours as the entire rest of my home. Freeze drying is the most energy intensive method of food preservation, but its also the most beneficial. Unlike other methods such as canning(30%?) or dehydrating (50%-70%?), freeze drying retains something like 97% of the food's nutritional value. Storage times are also ridiculously long. Canning is about 2 to 3 years, dehydrated food can go 10 years if packed in oxygen free environment.. Freeze drying can go 25 years or more.

There are also a lot of foods that can be freeze dried, but not canned or dehydrated, so a lot more options for food storage.

And when it comes to meats, its hard to tell the difference between freeze dried and frozen. Nothing compares to fresh obviously, but most meats re-hydrate extremely well. We have freeze dried about 200-250 cans of tuna fish and you can't tell the difference between what just came out of the can and what was re-hydrated.

Of my favorites are Thanksgiving dinners.. When the turkeys go on sale every November, my wife will get 6 to 8 of them each year. She'll cram in the stuffing and cook a turkey every weekend.. We'll make one dinner out of it, then freeze dry everything that's left and repeat the process every weekend until they're all gone.

We do somewhat of the same thing every Easter with the hams.

It is energy intensive, and the machines are kind of expensive as they're up in the $2500 to $3500 range. Being on solar, I don't care about the energy as we produce way WAY more power than we use.

Next to having a weapon, the freeze dryer is a huge prepper item. One #10 can of Mountain House ground beef is like $90.. that's one batch in the freeze dryer + $25 to $35 worth of beef. Plus, I can freeze dry it raw or precooked.
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What a fantastic post...thank you. We were using our our freeze dryer like crazy before we moved off grid & building our home. We have over about 3.2kw of our 21kw of panels functional right now. So not enough yet but next year I'm sure. What an excellent use of surplus power!

That said, slight side bar...you mentioned doing hamburger. I thought grease/fatv was problematic to freeze dry?
 
Watched a video today about a guy who installed double the PV system he needed. Half the systems powers the house just fine in the summer. His second system is running an electrolysis system for extracting Hydrogen from water. This is accumulated throughout the summer and stored in large steel tanks then used to run the house in the winter Using fuel cells.
 
I've done this in the past and @Will Prowse has mentioned bitcoin mining on solar in a couple of videos; You could get a few crypto mining machines and start mining bitcoin, litecoin, etc. This is probably the only way to make actual money from excess solar power. In general mining rigs are very power-hungry and with relatively low return. But if you have free excess power, that doesn't matter.
 
robby said:
Watched a video today about a guy who installed double the PV system he needed. Half the systems powers the house just fine in the summer. His second system is running an electrolysis system for extracting Hydrogen from water. This is accumulated throughout the summer and stored in large steel tanks then used to run the house in the winter Using fuel cells.
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Link?
 
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