Woodgas AE vs Solar AE

[610Alpha]

I have been looking into Solar and Woodgas....been kicking these back and forth so I thought I would throw this out there for discussion. Power Options:

Woodgas Gasifier with Spark Ignited Genset and battery bank

vs.

Solar & Genset & Battery bank

Woodgas - No tax credits so it might be a little more expensive, but you have to figure out the wood gasifier and modify your genset, and all the other unknowns.

Solar - tax credits, lots of info out there, not a lot of unknowns.


Thoughts?

[1Admin]

Woodgas- smell, smoke, more labor involved cutting, splitting, stacking. Potential wait time for drying, logistics as in shelter/shed for place to hold wood.

I've ever known one person who made it work- Engineer775.

Solar- quiet, no regular labor involved, no noisy chainsaw to prep raw materials- the sun will continue to shine until the Lord makes the world dark at the very end and other power sources won't matter much then ;)

Solar has come down in price finally. We are looking at adding another 1KW in the next year or so and further expanding our battery bank to 28 L16's. We rarely ever use our genset any more, ran it to exercise it for the first time in a long while the other day.

[610Alpha]

We are looking at adding another 1KW in the next year or so and further expanding our battery bank to 28 L16's. We rarely ever use our genset any more, ran it to exercise it for the first time in a long while the other day.

How did you determine how many batteries you would need?

Prices are very reasonable and with the tax credits you can get makes the ROI much sooner. Did you see my screen shot of my spreadsheet on the cost for a 315 Watt panel from civicsolar.com? $360.54 ~ $1.14/watt...I think you have to buy so many panels to get them at that price...when you click on the 315 watt panel the next screen says they are $379 ~ $1.20/watt either price is pretty reasonable IMO.

http://www.civicsolar.com/products/solar-panels/?filters=is_cck_field_manufacturer%3A494&solrsort=fs_price_watt_break_1_0%20asc

Engineer775 was who I was thinking about....I am just fascinated by the wood gasifier.

[1Admin]

Check out altenergystore.com

Some quality panels are now around $1.55 a watt which is pretty cheap comparably.

I'm sure their is a formula for storage to input, honestly I don't know it.

I know that when we were only running (14) Kyocera 120's that our bank of 20 L16's was considered a large storage for that.

We are running (24) of the KC130's now going in to a bank of 24 L16's and we did the "inpardonable sin" of mixing old and new batteries. Always considered a no-no but after 3 years I can't see any issues because of it. :)

Not having power issues but their is some more I want to do in the future so at some point in time if money holds out, we will add approximately another KW of input and 4 more L16's for a total of 28.

[1Admin]

I made some arguments against wood earlier but really, you'll probably be cutting wood ANYWAYS.

[trkarl]

Sharp is a pretty respectable name in panels. Check out this site:

http://www.solarblvd.com/Solar-Panels-&-Systems-Solar-Panels-By-The-Pallet/c1_250/p2675/Sharp-ND-240QCJ-BX-240-Watt-24V-Solar-Panel---6-Panels/product_info.html

Here are 6 for .90 per watt. A while ago they had some Solar World 230 watt panels for .97 per watt but you had to buy 10. Solar World imo are some of the best. Keep checking this site often because they constantly get panels in and sell out real quick.


ETA: The first panels I bought were BP 200 watt panels that cost 4.40 per watt. That's 880.00 per panel and I started out with 12 of those. Seeing these prices now makes me cry.

[610Alpha]

I made some arguments against wood earlier but really, you'll probably be cutting wood ANYWAYS.

Yeah it just depends on how ur home is set up....got to have some backup systems in place.