The MYADSL green thread

Ok, I want to save 10% power, so I switch my geyser off in the morning and back ,on late afternoon. Anyway somebody told me that it actually wastes electricity cause it has to reheat the water.

I dont receive the electricity bill so I cant check if its saving or wasting. Whats it doing?

Edit: Today was the first day in the past two weeks where the scheduled LS didnt take place :)
 
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I'm pretty sure this exact list of "500 prominent scientists" who deny global warming has been mentioned by some GW skeptics on this forum before, so this article gave me some lulz.

Heartland Institute gets pwned:

Curious about the Heartland Institute's list of "500 Prominent Scientists" who deny global warming, Kevin decided to contact some of the folks on the list. He put together a list of 150 email addresses...simply the addresses he found it most easy to acquire. After only 24 hours, he'd received 45 emails from angry scientists saying that they, in no way, denied anthropogenic global warming.

It turns out that the heartland institute had never told the scientists they were going on the list, nor did they check to see if these people actually had any doubts about the causes of climate change. Just a sampling of quotes from emails Kevin received:

I am horrified to find my name on such a list. I have spent the last 20 years arguing the opposite.

I have NO doubts ..the recent changes in global climate ARE man-induced. I insist that you immediately remove my name from this list since I did not give you permission to put it there.

Please remove my name. What [they] have done is totally unethical!!
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http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1618/73/
 
Bluecollar, and others.

Can you peeps give me a quick heads-up on the latest solar panel technology available in SA? Need to research this again for domestic use.

I did quite a bit of research about 6 years ago when I decided to build a new place but eventually decided against solar. What I did at that time was to design and implement an integrated hot water system, with a single source of hot water driving all requirements.

Currently, I'm driving this with a heat-pump and supply hot water into the building only where it's needed, i.e. if there is no movement in a certain area, there is no hot water there. This is done with a system of supply and return lines with solenoids controlled by a BMS.

Using a heat-pump gives me about 400% more efficient heating than using a geyser.

I also have an in-line UPS driving all the critical circuits. This was done (also 6 years ago), not because of load shedding, but rather to protect electronics against unstable supply or short breaks. but it helped hugely with the load-shedding we now see.

BTW, the same BMS does as much power management as possible, again only allowing power in areas with movement. It'll also do things like checking that occupants don't do silly things with heating and colling systems. (UFH, Aircons, etc.)

A few things have obviously changed over the years.

1) Efficiency of solar panels should be much better now.
2) Costs will be lower.
3) Eskom happened with all its side-effects.. :rolleyes:

So, any feedback on the latest solar technology for both hot water and electricity?

Tx!
 
V3G, your house sounds amazing dude. I've been very interested in heat pumps for a while now (albeit with a rather modest understanding of the workings of the things) so it's great to see somebody who's using this technology.

A question or two: Why are you now looking for a different water heating system rather than the heat pump? I'm assuming it's coz the heat pump's motor requires electricity, so when you're being 'shedded you get no hot water? Out of interest, could you describe your system a little more? I'd imagine that heat is pumped inside and then the pipes containing the heated refrigerant run into a water tank where the water's heated? Or is the hot water that you use actually the refrigerant in the heat pump system?

Anyhoo, for water heating, it's a poor idea to generate electricity from solar PV to power an electric geyser, although I'm sure you're aware of this and are planning to use the PV to drive the heat pump's motor. If you're simply looking for additional hot water capacity at home, a traditional solar water heater like a Solahoart or Suntanks system would work very nicely(there was somebofy else who posted in the SWH thread whose systems looked quite nice too, can't recall the name now though).


Regarding solar panels, I'd recommend looking at the Sanyo HIT series of panels. They boast a cell efficiency of just over 22% and a module efficiency of about 17.5%. A 205W 58V panel goes for R8600.00 ex VAT.
 
BlueCollar said:
V3G, your house sounds amazing dude. I've been very interested in heat pumps for a while now (albeit with a rather modest understanding of the workings of the things) so it's great to see somebody who's using this technology.

A question or two: Why are you now looking for a different water heating system rather than the heat pump? I'm assuming it's coz the heat pump's motor requires electricity, so when you're being 'shedded you get no hot water? Out of interest, could you describe your system a little more? I'd imagine that heat is pumped inside and then the pipes containing the heated refrigerant run into a water tank where the water's heated? Or is the hot water that you use actually the refrigerant in the heat pump system?

Anyhoo, for water heating, it's a poor idea to generate electricity from solar PV to power an electric geyser, although I'm sure you're aware of this and are planning to use the PV to drive the heat pump's motor. If you're simply looking for additional hot water capacity at home, a traditional solar water heater like a Solahoart or Suntanks system would work very nicely(there was somebofy else who posted in the SWH thread whose systems looked quite nice too, can't recall the name now though).


Regarding solar panels, I'd recommend looking at the Sanyo HIT series of panels. They boast a cell efficiency of just over 22% and a module efficiency of about 17.5%. A 205W 58V panel goes for R8600.00 ex VAT.
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Eskom with its 10% savings requirement (read: we stuffed up, so you must foot the bill), is forcing me to see how I can also save 10%. Which, in my case, will be difficult as I've been saving every watt I could from day 1.....

I thus want to investigate solar for 2 separate applications:

1) Solar heating of hot water to take load off the heat pump. The heat pump is a 50KW unit and draws about 13KW to generate full load, i.e. I get 4 times more energy out than what I put it! Sounds like magic! Short description of how it works.

If hotwater heating via solar is now more economically viable, I'll just connect a set of panels in parallel with the HP and it'll will remove that amount of load from the HP.

So that's for hotwater.

2) Electricity - I have a 45KVA, 3-phase UPS that can keep the house up for around 4 hours at full load, i.e. enough to survive load shedding. I'd like to see if I can keep the batteries charged up via solar panels.

Because I have every single plug and light on a dimmer or relay via a BMC, I can 'load-shed' the house itself if and when the batteries (or solar levels) drop.

So I see two installations, one hotwater and one electrical. Thus my questions on where to look.

Thoughts on windpower to supplement the electrical side? I probably have more wind that sun available, being high up and exposed to both the SE and NW winds.

PS. If you want to read a bit more on the technology in the house, go to the press page on http://www.omnisol.co.za. There are some nice PDF's there.
 
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Ocean Iron Fertilization Test Not Successful

Following up on a story we brought to you a couple of months ago, the iron fertilization project in the South Atlantic Ocean has not produced the results expected by researchers.

To recap, the project by British scientists aimed to increase the amount of carbon dioxide-absorbing algae in the ocean off of South Georgia Island by adding extra iron to the water. Ideally, the extra algae would remove a large chunk of CO2 in the atmosphere and then sink far below the surface, permanently sequestering the CO2.

As expected, great amounts of algae did bloom, but there was an unexpected glitch. Instead of the algae sinking to the bottom of the ocean, they were eaten by copepods, which were then eaten by amphipods, which meant a lot less CO2 was absorbed and sequestered than thought.

Basically, the CO2 that was removed was "almost negligible" as one researcher put it. I guess it's back to the drawing board.
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I always thought this was a silly idea.
 
Quick question. I turn the geyser on when I get up in the morning, then off again at about mid day after baths are sorted and lunch is cooked. Am I fooling myself that I am saving anything?
 
Fazda said:
Quick question. I turn the geyser on when I get up in the morning, then off again at about mid day after baths are sorted and lunch is cooked. Am I fooling myself that I am saving anything?
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The savings are relatively small, as when the geyser is off, the water gets cold and when you turn it on later that day it has to reheat the water from scratch.

I think turning the geyser off is only really beneficial when you turn it off for days/weeks at a time while away on holiday etc.
 
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