[ale] OT Just bought my 1st & 2nd "lighting-class" LED bulbs

[Ron Frazier (ALE)]

"Michael H. Warfield" <mhw at WittsEnd.com> wrote:

>On Tue, 2013-07-23 at 18:16 -0400, Jim Kinney wrote: 
>> must replace my SEER 0.001 with something MUCH better (looking at a
>> SEER 16 unit). Plus add a crapload of insulation in attic and glob on
>> the ultra-bright white roof paint. My June power bill was $380.
>> 
>> 
>> Why do people insist on BLACK shingles in the hot states? Aesthetics
>> be damned! AC bills prevent me from have other fun :-(  The only
>black
>> things I want my roof are solar panels for power and hot water.
>
>Ours are brown but I keep insisting that "solar panel blue" is
>esthetically pleasing...  The evil looks I get from June would wilt a
>plastic plant at 100M.  We've even got an extremely optimal siting,
>with
>the orientation and view our roof has...  Sigh...  I won't win that
>fight.  Not even worth starting down the road.
>
>I was tempted, years ago, to put "fin stock" tubing up in the attic
>(you
>buy it in Canada from Home Depot up there for distributed hot water
>heating systems - it's radiator tubing with fins) to act as a heat
>exchanger (reverse of a heater - blow air over it and warm the water)
>and warm our pool.  But our pool is already hitting the 90's in the
>summer when the attic is the hottest.  Where do I dump the EXCESS heat?
>I'd have steam coming on the pool in July and August.  Another idea
>bites the dust... 
>Regards,
>Mike
>

Mike W, and all,

I've studied solar quite a bit.  I have a subscription to Home Power magazine.  I like the idea but getting payback in any good time frame is hard, in the South East, even if the wife problem were fixable.  Big problem is heating, cooling, and dehumidifying.  I tell people I could solarize my house for the price of the house.  A 15 KW array, for about $ 150,000 would do nicely.

You only get the mathematical equivalent of 5 hours of full sun here per day.  That means that it's mathematically equivalent to a sun that comes up instantly, stays 5 hours, and is gone.  You have to account for the time when it's not as bright or is dark.  If I average my load throughout the month, I need 3 KW at all times.  Thus, a 15 KW array running 5 hr per day is about the same as a 3 KW load running 24 hr per day.

Also, when it's dark(er) and you still need power, you have to get it from somewhere.  So, you either need a battery bank weighing thousands of pounds or you need a grid tied inverter and net metering.  You can get net metering in GA, so long as the net solar output total never exceeds 2% of what the power company generates (as of the last time I checked).  When you're generating excess energy, your meter runs backwards or a second meter tally's your contribution.  When you are using more than you're making, your meter runs forward as usual.  The electric company bills you for the net of what you use plus a minimum maintenance fee no matter what you use.  If, at the end of the year, you've contributed more than you used, you might get the wholesale price for it, which is about $ 0.015 / kwh.

No luck when it storms, like ... er ... the last 3 weeks.  So the array has to be even bigger.  Not much production in the winter either, when the sun is low.  So the array has to be even bigger.  Unless I have LOTS of money to burn, like winning the lottery, I doubt I'll be solarizing.

Now, solar water heating can be much more viable.  But, as you said, you can have too much hot water.

What I REALLY want is a low temperature vapor engine that will run on a 170 degree hot water source rather than requiring a 300 degree plus boiler like a steam engine does.

What's sad is to think that we get about 1000 W / square yard of heat from the sun on to our roofs.  For a 50' x 50' roof space (at noon), that's 277 square yards or 277 KW of heat hitting it.  I SO wish I could put that to use rather than paying the electric company to pump the heat back out of the house.

Hmm, I saw some neat semi underground houses on the travel channel.  10' below the ground, the temperature is almost completely constant, and earth is a pretty good insulator if you have enough of it.

We really do just about everything to work against nature, rather than to work with it.

Just for kicks, look up thermal energy storage system.  This is sometimes used with industrial buildings.  They may have a huge tank with ice water in it as cold storage.  Then, instead of "chilling" water to cool the building, they just run it through the ice tank.  Overall, it's much more efficient.  Eventually, you have to rechill the tank, but you can do that with off peak electric rates, etc.

I've given some thought as to whether you could do that with a house.  Say you have two 3000 gallon tanks of water.  (I'm strictly making the numbers up and haven't done a thermal analysis on them.)  Say you simultaneously heat one and cool the other by running a heat pump.  Then, when you need cooling, you pull it from the cool reservoir with a heat exchanger.  When you need air heat or water heat, to a point, you pull it from the hot reservoir.  You also use solar heat to reheat the hot tank and solar energy and or geothermal cooling to recool the cool tank.  At certain times, you could pump heat from the cool tank to the hot tank.  Like I said, I haven't done the math, but I bet there would be a way to make the house much more efficient.  It's especially frustrating in the spring to be heating the house at night and cooling it in the day.

Sincerely,

Ron 


-snip-



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Ron Frazier
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