Category: Electricity

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Electricity Energy

Summer Kitchen Renovation Part4: Electricity

A few days after completing the post the guys from the electric company came out to do their part. They were quick … done in less than two hours. They put in the new electric box and moved the meter into it:

… and moved the main supply wires from the summer kitchen to the new post:

While they were doing that and power was out I was making some arrangement in the house-electric-box for hooking up the new line.

They connected the new main line to the box and finished up some work connections I didn’t have time to do … and pretty soon power was back on and running:

All the old parts became bare and desolate (and ready for tear-down):

A few weeks later I got around to completing the job. First by putting in a new box in the summer kitchen. This was a first taste of carving into cob with an SDS hammer (easy!) to make a channel for the cable and a hole for the box.

Then I created two deadmen with scrap pieces of wood and nails, screwed the box into the deadmen and set the whole thing into fresh cob I placed in the hole:

This box now has a main fuse and a second fuse that is attached to a socket that we can use when working in the summer kitchen.

When that was done we finished arranging the main-box by connecting the summer kitchen, re-arranging some of the main fuses and finally re-connecting the cellar directly to the same fuse box (no pictures).

This, I hope, concludes this years adventures in electricity. Everthing is properly hooked up, no more of those pesky ceramic fuses that had to be replaced … and the summer kitchen is ready for more demolition WITH a new power line installed and working.

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Construction Electricity

Summer Kitchen Renovation Part2: Water & Electricity

When I started healing from my strained back we invited the excavator back to do the work we halted a couple of weeks earlier. I offered guidance, Iulia did the work!

We started working on a water line. There was already a second pipe (the first being the one that feeds into the house) coming out of our water infrastructure. We decided to extend it and attempt to bring it into the summer kitchen (I felt this was the best time to try this, before burying the electric power cable). We excavated parallel to the existing water line to avoid injuring the working pipe:

Iulia promptly continued with some manual digging around the existing pipe, to loosen the soil around it enough to bury it in full depth (~80cm deep):

While Iulia was doing that Florin created the channel from right up against the house until we had a full path:

We then patched the existing pipe to a new segment, placed it in the ground and very quickly the excavation was closed off (except for the part near the structure where we would need to manually dig to get the pipe inside):

We then moved on to burying a new main electric cable (more on that project as it unfolds). This is a fairly massive armored cable (4 lines of 16sqmm aluminum wires). We started by excavating a channel between the house and summer kitchen (which will be connected to the house). It is shaped as two diagonals because of limited space for the excavator to maneuver):

Then we began to dig the line out and away from the house:

… and around the summer kitchen. The cable is buried ~50cm deep, so it crosses over the water pipe:

We then moved our attention to the other end of this cable, to where a new electric post would be installed. We first transplanted a plant that was occupying the location of the new post:

We then continued the ditch to the post location:

Then we came to the hole for the post itself:

then the cable went in:

… and once again everything was quickly buried again:

This kind of infrastructure work doesn’t leave much of a trace … the materials and work simply get swallowed and converted into potential value!

… this was completed ~3 weeks ago … to be continued 🙂

Categories
Electricity Energy Hot Water

Dual Sun

A french company is bringing to market a solar panel that combines photovoltaic cells with solar hot water. The combination is not only interesting in a utilitarian way but promises improved performance of the PV cells by reducing the panel temperature (PV efficient drops as temperature rises).

DualSun-Panneau-Recto-verso

I wonder what this combination implies in terms of longevity and warranty. PV panels are typically rated to last more than 25 years. Would that still be true when they cease to be a simple static element and include flowing water? Is the panel leak proof (especially with the hard water flowing flowing through my pipes) for 25 years?

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Electricity Energy

Tesla Energy presents Powerwall

no more batteries and battery rooms
no more charge controllers
no more grid tie
no more cable messes

tesla-powerwall

Tesla just announced the Powerwall one integrated unit to hang on a wall… a battery with a purpose … connect it to a photovoltaic array and (if you want as backup) the grid and you are good to go … at a fraction of the price of existing, more complicated solutions:

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Electricity Energy

How Burning Works

There’s an interesting group called All Power Labs who research biomass gasifiers: in lay terms they make machines that can convert hay, wood chips, nutshells (a large variety of biomass substances) into clean gas products which can be used to power other things – such as a diesel engine generator (which they do). You can see this system at work here:

They got my attention because if/when we go off-the-grid we will likely need a backup source of energy in winter months – the simplest being a diesel generator. But that requires diesel. So the potential of a generator that can run on biomass of which we have plenty is pretty exciting and fills another gap in the sustainability puzzel.

Their CEO Jim Mason appears in a series of 3 videos (~2.5 hours) which finally provided me with an explanation on how burning works. I admit that parts of it were a bit beyond me but for the most part I was able to follow it and learn what actually happens when I burn wood for heat  (namely 4 processes: drying, pyrolysis, gasification, combustion).

It refined my understanding and appreciation of what goes on inside Rocket Stoves. Most  stoves or fireplaces are only able to burn ~20% of the potential energy in wood, most of the rest is released as gasses which for the most part escapes out the chimney unburned. A lose-lose situation: losing potential energy and releasing pollutans into the atmosphere. A typical rocket stoves will burn most (if not all) of those gasses – already making it 4 to 5 times more efficient then most wood burning stoves. Then, after a clean and efficient burn the heat that is generated is retained in a thermal mass … which easily brings them to 10 times better.

via Matt

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Construction Electricity Energy Water Infrastructure

Water – Electricity

Despite the irony of the title – electricity was an inevitable next step in the water infrastructure. The basic needs was to get an electric outlet for the pump. However I decided to take it one step further and install additional power outlets that would be available in the fields (so that I wouln’t have to stretch out long extension cords). So I set out to put in power adapters in both the flow junction concrete box and in the pump concrete box.  Though it should have been a straightforward task I did run into a few difficulties and learned a few lessons worth mentioning.

Electric Cable

We purchased a 200 meter roll of three wire cable. I don’t remember the exact specification – but I do remember we chose the one with thicker diameter wires (also more expensive) that were rated for a higher current. I would have wanted to put in more then one supply cable – but the cost was prohibitive.

Much later I learned that there is a 5 wire cable which is usually used for three-phase electric installations. However, I believe it can used as if it were three separate electric cables bound into one. The ground and zero wires are shared and then there are three current supply wires.

I don’t have a specific short-term need for this in mind, however it isn’t every day that you dig a 60 meter long, 1 meter deep trench on your property. So there’s that 🙂

Burying Electric Cable

The cable was buried alongside the water pipe. To protect it we purchased a ribbed plastic tube (2×100 meters length) meant to protect it.

The cable was a perfect fit in the protective tube. As a result, getting the cable into the tube was hard work. Rather then going into the details of how we did it (hint: using a pull-wire and cutting the protective tube into manageable segments) I would suggest getting a more spacious tube. I thought about this when we purchased ours but I thought that a tight fit would offer better protection to the cable. I still think that too large a tube, with too much free space, may collapse under the pressure of the earth and may give out sooner.

Modularity

For the better part of a day I struggled in vain to get the electric-accessories (splitter box and sockets) installed. I wired them together indoors and then headed out to fit them into the concrete walls. Remembers this is work done in a confined underground space. I failed … completely. I couldn’t get is assembled in place.

After a long and mostly fruitless day I realized I had been going about this the hard way. It dawned on me that I could do most of the assembly work inside if I were to simply mount the electric-accessories onto a wood panel and then simply mount that panel on the concretewalls. So, the next day I tried this and it worked like a charm. I predrilled the panels in place and then worked comfortably on them indoors. These are the two panels prepared for installation.

The only electric fitting I had to do underground was to connect the ends of the buried cabled to these boxes. In the image below you can see that I left empty sockets on the left hand side – so all I needed was a screwdriver and a few minutes of work.

Since our electricity infrastructure is outdated and partially improvised this entire supply line is simply plugged into an existing power outlet.

 

Categories
Electricity Energy

Hydro Electric Barrel

In a country like Romania it is not unheard of to live on a property of land that has running water – so we’ve put that on our wishlist. In such cases hydro-electricity can be a very appealing source of electricity (though I have asked myself what would happen in case of freezing). With that in mind have a look at this interesting invention – the hydro-electric-barrel:

Categories
Electricity Energy

3 Steps to Electricity Independence in Romania

Though living off-the-grid is tempting it probably isn’t as ecological as you may think it is. Electricity is an infrastructure that is best provided through collaborative systems instead of independent ones. It is unfortunate that so much of it is generated with an unnecessarily high ecological price – which is good enough reason to want to do it better on your own.

Being off the grid isn’t necessarily a smart financial choice either (at the present) because a completely independent system is still so expensive that it may never really repay itself (taking into consideration your level of consumption and price of grid electricity). Living off-the-grid is morally better but necessarily financially better.

Step 1: On The Grid

There are enough challenges and expenses when building a new house. Getting off-the-grid doesn’t need to be a top priority. If you are building a home and can connect to the grid then consider starting connected to the grid. You can design your home so that eventually it may be completely off-the-grid but you don’t need to implement it right away. You can designate places for photovoltaic panels, for wires, for batteries, converters, etc. but you don’t have to install them right from the start.

If, like us, you are building your own home then you will need a reliable source of electricity during construction. If you don’t have a grid-connection then you may need to bring a generator on site instead.

Step2: Self Generated

The next step, when you are ready for it is to start generating your own electricity. You should start with the natural resource that is most available to you. In the area of Cluj the leading sources are probably sun and water (if you’ve got running water on your property with enough altitude difference to generate the needed flow). If you are living in the mountains you may also have wind power available to you, yet it seems that commercial wind-powered generators are prohibitively expensive. In addition to the generating source (such as solar panels) you will need converters to convert and regulate your source current into 120v so it is compatible with all of your existing appliances.

It’s comfortable to do this while still connected to the grid because your self-generated electricity is backed- by the grid electricity (though you will need a grid-tie system to connect to the grid). If, for example, you rely on solar power then on cloudy days you still have all the power you need from the grid. If you generate more electricity then you consume then there is a good chance that your electric company will buy it from you. So in the end you may still be benefiting from grid-electricity but your bill will be zero or the electric company may pay you.

An efficient electric generating system and a low consumption home can generate a monthly revenue for you – so you may want to consider staying in this configuration and not going off the grid.

Step3: Off The Grid

To go completely off the grid you need to add to your electrical system a battery array. Batteries store energy when it is generated and make it available when it isn’t. If, for example, you rely on solar power then you will need batteries to supply you with electricity during the night when your solar panels are not providing you with electricity. Good batteries (that will work for 20 years) are initially very expensive to install. You may need additional converters to integrate them into your system and you need to be careful and monitor their use when your sources are not generating electricity  (more on that in a separate post).

When you go off the grid you are completely on your own so regardless of any expenses (and potential losses) involved in doing so, make sure you are ready to be on your own (for example, in our house we are planning heating and hot-water systems that can operate at least basically when there is a power-out).