[Pundyburn Lynn]

Hello folks,


We're in the very early stages of planning an off-grid straw bale house.  We are dividing the various tasks up according to our skills, and I've ended up with the research into renewable energy.  I am clueless!


Having now learned the difference between a kW and a kWh (!), I'm trying to figure out what level of input will be required from our solar and wind power purely for our AC electrical devices.  (I'm told that devices that are on for 24hrs/day are better run on DC to save on the constant running costs for the converter.)


So, my highly naive question is - if the wind turbine was producing a relatively low wattage, maybe 300w, and feeding into a bank of fork lift batteries, could I run my 2000w hairdryer off the battery for 5 mins?? 


Can you recommend a website/source of information that is pitched to imbeciles?


Thanks,
Lynn

[bloomer]

well the easy answer is assuming no energy loss (you do lose a bit) a wind turbine supplying at 300w would take 7 minutes to supply enough energy to run the hair dryer for 1 minute...


that's in its simplest form


but remember the batteries are charging all the time the wind is blowing (including whilst you sleep) so so long as you have enough storage capacity you're fine...


it gets more technical after that and needs an expert as to how much storage capacity a house needs etc...


and that's beyond me...

[Pundyburn Lynn]

Thank you bloomer!


Each answer leads to new questions...

[regen]

Google Navitron and go to forum- you will find everything you want to know in past posts.

 Or join and ask a silly question - they are very patient!
Regen

[pigalicious]

Hi Lynn,

Have just answered your pm, didn't realise you had posted here. You could look at www.windandsun.co.uk  click on information bar, there are a few topics on there may be useful. Hope you find what you are looking for. Incidently we ban all our visitors from using hair dryers etc, not that we don't have enough power,  just that we may need it for something else.

          P

[Young Ed]

i am slightly late on this and off topic but still feel i need to add my tuppence worth!

when living off grid and thus very minimalist high power devices such as hair dryers are generally discarded, some people will do away completely with fridges and freezers and just buy to eat with in the next day or two. washing machines and dishwashers are almost always done away with....... unless you live perched right on the top of a welsh mountain! :p
Cheers Ed

[Ina]

some people will do away completely with fridges and freezers and just buy to eat with in the next day or two.

It's not as hard as that.... Although I'm not off grid, I've not used fridge or freezer for more than 5 years now. I have a claypot cooler, which doesn't actually work very well in Scotland (too humid!), but I still don't need to buy fresh stuff more often than once a week at most. I suppose it helps that I remember the time in my childhood when we didn't have a fridge, either... Milk wasn't pasteurised then, and food in general wasn't plastic shrink wrapped to keep fresh - and we still survived!

[Pundyburn Lynn]

Hi again folks,
 
I'm more than happy to limit my consumption, otherwise I wouldn't be considering going off-grid in the first place.  My question was kinda hypothetical and I'd hoped that people with experience or a technical knowledge of energy storage and consumption could advise.
 
I've had several PMs from people who are indeed living off-grid and using fridges, freezers and hairdryers - it just depends on how much energy is produced and stored.
 
Lynn 
 

[pigalicious]

Hi Lynn, et al,

We managed off grid without a fridge,  just a freezer, we recently purchased a fridge (luxury).

We turn our power off most nights, unless it is extremely windy, when we turn our power on in the morning we turn on the freezer and turn it off at around 5pm (unless extremely windy or sunny), then shut down the system at bedtime. This works well.

So Lynn, you see what I mean when I say, 'we manage, because, we manage'. Most of the time we have more than enough power to run 24/7 we just got into the habit if turning off every night, and it works, after all, why use power when you don't need too. This is one of  the problems with modernity, people take things like power for granted.

As I have said we do not 'need' to do without appliances, we choose to. And as you now know Lynn, storage is everything,

I will reiterate, its no good having massive wind turbines and hundreds of PV solar panels connected to half a dozen 'caravan' batteries.

     P