Rain plates

[magnetman]

Rain could be used, like sunshine, to generate electricity. Falling rain has energy derived from gravity.

Are there any products designed to take advantage of a really wet day to charge the batteries?

[carlt]

You're mad!

I like you.

 

Of course, now I've said that you'll all be googling away and saying 'actually carl, I think you'll find Catsanddogsogen International are producing rain panels which can generate 10000 terawatts in a light drizzle.

Edited January 5, 2007 by carlt

[magnetman]

You're mad!

I like you.

 

Of course, now I've said that you'll all be googling away and saying 'actually carl, I think you'll find Catsanddogsogen International are producing rain panels which can generate 10000 terawatts in a light drizzle.

A friend of mine (yes I have got one) told me about this a couple of years ago. "mad, stoned, drunk or overoptimistic" I thought but there could be some possibilities.

 

edit: please don't split this into a humour topic because its serious...

Edited January 5, 2007 by magnetman

[Supermalc]

Well as I must belong into the same catagarory at you two, I suppose I'd better join in

 

Yes, I agree it's a very serious topic.

 

Years ago, when we whiled away the eveing discussing this (instead of watching soaps) a clever friend said 'one day we will get energy from the air all around us' Well I think some of us will live to see that day.

 

Energy is all around us. Water (h2o) is simply hydrogen an explosive, and oxygen, what is requred for burning. Although I know perpetual motion is impossible. I also know there are many forms of energy as yet, unused, and unexplored. While the world runs on oil, I also know this will never be explored properly, or remain hidden.

 

For instance. At Boston the tide comes in twice a day, as it does all around the world. The tidal river therefore flows.....so why is all that energy wasted? I would have thought that utilized properly and efficiently it would provide for some, if not all of the town. At least enough to bother about.

Edited January 5, 2007 by Supermalc

[carlt]

Well as I must belong into the same catagarory at you two, I suppose I'd better join in

 

Yes, I agree it's a very serious topic.

 

Years ago, when we whiled away the eveing discussing this (instead of watching soaps) a clever friend said 'one day we will get energy from the air all around us' Well I think some of us will live to see that day.

 

Energy is all around us. Water (h2o) is simply hydrogen an explosive, and oxygen, what is requred for burning. Although I know perpetual motion is impossible. I also know there are many forms of energy as yet, unused, and unexplored. While the world runs on oil, I also know this will never be explored properly, or remain hidden.

 

For instance. At Boston the tide comes in twice a day, as it does all around the world. The tidal river therefore flows.....so why is all that energy wasted? I would have thought that utilized properly and efficiently it would provide for some, if not all of the town. At least enough to bother about.

 

The thing that worries me about harnessing tidal power is that we've done so much damage to parts of our coast already by trying to protect other parts with breakwaters and such.

 

What would happen to our coastline if we start disrupting the silt movement and coastal erosion patterns even more by dropping big tidal generators into the sea?

 

I quite like the idea of using the atmoshere's own heat for energy though. If efficient enough heat exchangers were developed enabling us to 'harvest' the heat around us, we could even begin to reverse the effects of global warming.

[Hairy-Neil]

I quite like the idea of using the atmoshere's own heat for energy though. If efficient enough heat exchangers were developed enabling us to 'harvest' the heat around us, we could even begin to reverse the effects of global warming.

 

Basically a reversed air-con unit, remove the heat from the atmosphere and release it inside the house/boat/office etc....The technology is out there but as Malc says, the oil barons see to it that there's little if any investment in the process.

 

There's also thermal loops. Basically the same thing but burried in your garden. Benefit is they are not affected by fluctuations in air temp as the ground temp 1m down remains pretty constant.

[Carrie]

Dear magnetman

You will find most questions about non-mainstream ideas are immediately laughed at. Please persevere, investigate and make it happen!

My own guide as to whether something is (personally) worth pursuing is 'does it take more energy to produce than it generates'.

Thank goodness the great inventors and innovators were able to get past the ridicule they must have faced.

[carlt]

Dear magnetman

You will find most questions about non-mainstream ideas are immediately laughed at. Please persevere, investigate and make it happen!

My own guide as to whether something is (personally) worth pursuing is 'does it take more energy to produce than it generates'.

Thank goodness the great inventors and innovators were able to get past the ridicule they must have faced.

True enough Carrie but in research, ridicule and fanciful ideas lead to invention. A fellow called david jones who has written under the name Daedalus for the New Scientist and Guardian since the sixties (though I think he writes for Nature now) has been inventing pie in the sky things and many of them are now in common use. One of the funniest things to have happened to him was when he was demonstrating his 'perpetual motion machine' at a science fair (a bicycle wheel spinning, apparently unassisted, within a gyroscopic looking contraption), a russian delegate approached him and begged him to defect, offering him untold wealth and his own dacha. Apparently great delight was taken in explaining to the soviet comrade who prof. Jones was, a brilliant research scientist who pushed the boundaries of research beyond the credibility of that time.

 

I believe he described buckminster fullerenes many years before they were discovered.

Edited January 5, 2007 by carlt

[Carrie]

Ha! Must admit I had to look up what buckminster fullerenes were. Thought they might be tasty with chutney!

[carlt]

Ha! Must admit I had to look up what buckminster fullerenes were. Thought they might be tasty with chutney!

 

Yeah sorry, I was working for Courtaulds Carbon fibre research when they were discovered in the mid '80's. My boss ran into the lab one day shouting 'make buckyballs NOW!' We did manage to make a few and excite the management for a bit, but we had no idea how to mass produce them or what for, at the time. The idea was to lubricate the carbon fibre with them (we were struggling to find a finish which would survive the carbonization furnaces) but I cleared off to France before seeing any useful outcome.

[chris w]

Energy is all around us. Water (h2o) is simply hydrogen an explosive, and oxygen, what is requred for burning.

 

You can break water into hydrogen and oxygen by simply inserting two electrodes into a jar of water and passing a current from a battery through the circuit. You can collect the separate gases in test tubes; hydrogen at one electrode and oxygen at the other.

 

I used to make big bangs in my parents' kitchen a few thousand years ago when I was a precocious 12 year old. Unfortunately you need more energy to split the Hydrogen and Oxygen apart than you then get by burning them and forming water so no perpetual motion yet.

 

Chris

[Theo]

Getting back to the rain genny thing: It is done al the time with hydroelectric power. To get energy from the rain as it falls would require some considerable ingenuity because the amount of KE carried by a rain drop is teeny weeny and the amount of PE that you could use would depend on storing it at a height above the narrowboat and then letting it drive somink like a waterwheel or a little turbine.

 

Nick

[Gibbo]

Rain could be used, like sunshine, to generate electricity. Falling rain has energy derived from gravity.

Are there any products designed to take advantage of a really wet day to charge the batteries?

 

Try some figures....

 

1 cubic metre of water weighs 1000kG

 

Dropping that 1 cubic metre of water 1 metre will result in the the water travelling at roughly 0.5m/s. If *all* that velocity*mass was turned into energy (as in the water ended up stationary) it would release 1/2*1000kg*0.5^2m/s joules = 125 joules. That's 125 watts for one second. Or at 12 volts 10 amps for one second, or 0.003 amp hours.

 

You'd actually only ever realistically extract about 30% of this so call it 0.001 amp hours.

 

And that's from one *ton* of water.

 

Now transpose that to raindrops. A "fag packet" calculation gives me 0.000000018 amp hours for a 5mm rain drop.

 

Gibbo

Edited January 6, 2007 by Gibbo

[Guest]

Try some figures....

 

1 cubic metre of water weighs 1000kG

 

Dropping that 1 cubic metre of water 1 metre will result in the the water travelling at roughly 0.5m/s. If *all* that velocity*mass was turned into energy (as in the water ended up stationary) it would release 1/2*1000kg*0.5^2m/s joules = 125 joules. That's 125 watts for one second. Or at 12 volts 10 amps for one second, or 0.003 amp hours.

 

You'd actually only ever realistically extract about 30% of this so call it 0.001 amp hours.

 

And that's from one *ton* of water.

 

Now transpose that to raindrops. A "fag packet" calculation gives me 0.000000018 amp hours for a 5mm rain drop.

 

Gibbo

Sorry Gibbo, but I make it 0.000000013 amp hours. I jest of course

I am surprised that more research is not done as to the heating of water on a NB roof. The roof on ours is so hot on a reasonably sunny day that you can't stand on it with bare feet. There is a lot of energy being wasted up there. A matt black panel and a solar powered circulating pump similar to those solar fish pond pumps? I can't believe it isn't feasible.

[Gibbo]

Sorry Gibbo, but I make it 0.000000013 amp hours. I jest of course

I am surprised that more research is not done as to the heating of water on a NB roof. The roof on ours is so hot on a reasonably sunny day that you can't stand on it with bare feet. There is a lot of energy being wasted up there. A matt black panel and a solar powered circulating pump similar to those solar fish pond pumps? I can't believe it isn't feasible.

 

I did some playing with solar water heating and the results were unbelievable. Tanks full of piping hot water very, very quickly. I'm currently working on getting the controller for the pump right then I'm going to stick all the iinformation on my website. Like a DIY "how to".

 

I'd be happy to hear from anyone who's done this.

 

Gibbo

[Guest]

I did some playing with solar water heating and the results were unbelievable. Tanks full of piping hot water very, very quickly. I'm currently working on getting the controller for the pump right then I'm going to stick all the iinformation on my website. Like a DIY "how to".

 

I'd be happy to hear from anyone who's done this.

 

Gibbo

Excellent. It's been done on houses etc of course, but I have never seen it done on a boat. Must be fairly staright forward, DIY able, and fairly efficiient. I once left a hose pipe on some paving flags with dregs of water in it. The heat in the water was incredible just from the currant bun. Personally I have never done any experiments, but can tell you that in 1974, some lads in the Rand D dept in a factory where I worked did. They painted some large central heating rads mat black, and placed them in frames with glass fronts. The sloping roof tilted them to the sun nicely, and they got very good results. They claimed that rads contained "too much" water and were experimenting with small bore pipe on ally sheet collectors. I got fired, so do not know if they were better than the rads., but have since read on the web that this is the way to go. I have often wondered if this is a more efficient use of solar energy than battery charging?

I believe I have seen camping "showers" that use solar energy to warm the water?

[Gibbo]

Excellent. It's been done on houses etc of course, but I have never seen it done on a boat. Must be fairly staright forward, DIY able, and fairly efficiient. I once left a hose pipe on some paving flags with dregs of water in it. The heat in the water was incredible just from the currant bun. Personally I have never done any experiments, but can tell you that in 1974, some lads in the Rand D dept in a factory where I worked did. They painted some large central heating rads mat black, and placed them in frames with glass fronts.

 

That's what I used.

 

The sloping roof tilted them to the sun nicely, and they got very good results. They claimed that rads contained "too much" water and were experimenting with small bore pipe on ally sheet collectors.

 

They were quite right. My next one will small bore copper pipe (probably 10mm) soldered to a copper sheet and the lot painted matt black then inside a box with a glass front.

 

 

I got fired, so do not know if they were better than the rads., but have since read on the web that this is the way to go. I have often wondered if this is a more efficient use of solar energy than battery charging?

 

Absolutely no question about it. Solar electric panels are about 7 to 10% efficient. Solar water heating can easily achieve 70 to 80% and it's much cheaper.

 

The pump controller I'm working on fires up the pump when the water in the solar panel is warmer than that in the calorifier. I'm messing around putting variable speed pump drive in it so the greater the temperature difference, the faster the pump runs. I'll be putting a schematic of the circuit on the website when it's finished.

 

Gibbo

[Guest]

That's what I used.

 

They were quite right. My next one will small bore copper pipe (probably 10mm) soldered to a copper sheet and the lot painted matt black then inside a box with a glass front.

Absolutely no question about it. Solar electric panels are about 7 to 10% efficient. Solar water heating can easily achieve 70 to 80% and it's much cheaper.

The pump controller I'm working on fires up the pump when the water in the solar panel is warmer than that in the calorifier. I'm messing around putting variable speed pump drive in it so the greater the temperature difference, the faster the pump runs. I'll be putting a schematic of the circuit on the website when it's finished.

 

Gibbo

Didn't realise that the difference was so great. 10 times more efficient and yet much cheaper, it begs the question why isn't it commonplace? I suppose it is because we see hot water as a sort of "by product" from engine-propulsion and engine-battery charging. Still I think solar water heating could have its place on boats. It would have been good on our previous boat, where an engine fed calorifier wasn't an option.

Edited January 6, 2007 by Guest

[chris w]

Didn't realise that the difference was so great. 10 times more efficient and yet much cheaper, it begs the question why isn't it commonplace?

I can't speak for boats but I looked into solar water heating for my house. The cost was around £15K at the time (about 3 years ago) but running a discounted cash flow analysis on it revealed the financial break-even point to be around 20 years.

 

When I mentioned this to the sales rep, he agreed and said his company worked on about 15-18 years depending on the size of the house. I asked him how many of his clients would still be living in the same house in 15-20 years time!! Never heard from him again, surpise, surprise.

 

Chris

[Guest]

I can't speak for boats but I looked into solar water heating for my house. The cost was around £15K at the time (about 3 years ago) but running a discounted cash flow analysis on it revealed the financial break-even point to be around 20 years.

 

When I mentioned this to the sales rep, he agreed and said his company worked on about 15-18 years depending on the size of the house. I asked him how many of his clients would still be living in the same house in 15-20 years time!! Never heard from him again, surpise, surprise.

 

Chris

Yes, once you start to pay someone to manufacture and install such items it can become a pointless exercise. However if you can produce panels for a reasonable sum, plus some control gear it then becomes feasible on a DIY basis.

[Gibbo]

I can't speak for boats but I looked into solar water heating for my house. The cost was around £15K at the time (about 3 years ago) but running a discounted cash flow analysis on it revealed the financial break-even point to be around 20 years.

 

When I mentioned this to the sales rep, he agreed and said his company worked on about 15-18 years depending on the size of the house. I asked him how many of his clients would still be living in the same house in 15-20 years time!! Never heard from him again, surpise, surprise.

 

Chris

 

The price has dropped substantially. Break even point in the UK is now reckoned to be around 3 years (I haven't checked this).

 

Contrast that with electric solar power and in the UK the break even point is never. The solar panels will have worn out before they pay for themselves. Obviously that has no bearing on their use on boats when away from shorepower.

 

I'm not going to argue with anyone about this electric solar power thingy. A few minutes on google will confirm it.

 

Gibbo

[magnetman]

Didn't realise that the difference was so great. 10 times more efficient and yet much cheaper, it begs the question why isn't it commonplace? I suppose it is because we see hot water as a sort of "by product" from engine-propulsion and engine-battery charging. Still I think solar water heating could have its place on boats. It would have been good on our previous boat, where an engine fed calorifier wasn't an option.

I have been considering solar hot water - using elbowed together black sink waste pipe as the collector, in an insulated box with a glass front - with a thermostatic pump but two things come to mind:

 

1. Electric consumption of the pump, which is pushing the HOT water DOWN to the calorifier

2. Get plenty of hot water from the engine during sunny weather because its boating weather and in winter the fire does it.

 

Apart from that the roof of a narrowboat does seem like a sensible place to collect heat energy.

[Guest]

I have been considering solar hot water - using elbowed together black sink waste pipe as the collector, in an insulated box with a glass front - with a thermostatic pump but two things come to mind:

 

1. Electric consumption of the pump, which is pushing the HOT water DOWN to the calorifier

2. Get plenty of hot water from the engine during sunny weather because its boating weather and in winter the fire does it.

 

Apart from that the roof of a narrowboat does seem like a sensible place to collect heat energy.

Yes to both points.

If the pump uses a considerable amount of energy then you are gaining little. Also I consider hot water "free" when cruising or battery charging with the engine. However if diesel increases as predicted, then it could be a different story. I will use our small petrol genny to charge the batteries then (ten hours on 1.5 gallons if just battery charging), and cruising will be on a reduced basis.

BTW from what little I have read, and as Gibbo says, small bore copper is the way to go.

[Gibbo]

I have been considering solar hot water - using elbowed together black sink waste pipe as the collector, in an insulated box with a glass front - with a thermostatic pump but two things come to mind:

 

1. Electric consumption of the pump, which is pushing the HOT water DOWN to the calorifier

2. Get plenty of hot water from the engine during sunny weather because its boating weather and in winter the fire does it.

 

Apart from that the roof of a narrowboat does seem like a sensible place to collect heat energy.

 

Waste pipe is no good.

 

Firstly it's much too big. After my experiments with the radiators I concluded that the volume of water was too high. Research on the web seemed to confirm everyone else had come to the same conclusion. The commerial ones use much smaller pipe. Some of them look bigger but they are the evacuated pipes (think thermos flask) that have the heat travelling up the inner steel core to the heat exchanger. There is no water in the pipes on that type. I'm looking at using 10 or 15mm pipe with the water running through it.

 

Plastic is a rather poor conductor of heat. You want copper or aluminium.

 

The water pump I used (Johnson [i think] 12 volt heating circulation pump) draws just under 1 amp. That's 12 watts. 12 watts of electricity heating a 12 gallon calorifier would raise the temperature by about nothing per month (think about putting a small soldering iron in a bathful of water). In summer my 1m^2 of black radiators heated a 12 gallon calorifier from cold to 60degC in 4 hours. 48 watt hours of power used. At 12 volts that's 4 amp hours. Sod all.

 

I'm working on variable speed for the controller using puilse width modulation for the pump (you don't have to know what it means - it's just dead efficient). This means no wasted power in resistors or other such primitive methods of slowing the pump down. It also means that the speed the pump runs will depend upon the temperature difference between the solar panel and the calorifier. This should produce a substantial power saving (and the electrical power used is already very low).

 

That's the theory anyway.

 

Gibbo

[chris w]

In summer my 1m^2 of black radiators heated a 12 gallon calorifier from cold to 60degC in 4 hours. 48 watt hours of power used. At 12 volts that's 4 amp hours. Sod all.

 

Running the maths, to heat that 12 gallon calorifier from cold (let's say 15 degC in summer) to 60 degC in 4 hours would take 618W of input power or 2.4KWh of energy. If the only down side was the 48W pump over the 4 hours ie: 0.192KWh of energy, the efficiency of your system was around 92% in terms of cost analysis.

 

Of course we don't know the conversion efficiency of the huge sunlight energy that finally translated to that 2.4KWh but hey that bit's free.

 

Chris