Electric Cars - the discussion continues.

[Bruce Tuncks]

And I like the look of that lavo system. I wish them well, but doubt that I will be affording one soon. Still, you have to start somewhere.

[spacesailor]

My neighbour said " Never, they don't trust them to be safe " ,   So say they.

A bit like my son-in-law, Only uses top brand fuel in his ute, & still got a tank of WATER in the fuel, Servo couldn't get away with it, as he Drove in, But couldn't get back onto the road, before it expired.

AND they had to pay for everything , including a Loner ute. $ thousands.

spacesailor

[nomadpete]

Octave, you have been busy. Thanks for the LAVO link.

Although its way beyond my pocketbook, I'm impressed that a product is already on the market. It's an Aussie product, too. And it would be perfect for my home. But at the moment theres 30,000 good reasons for me to hold back.

Edited August 1, 2021 by nomadpete

[octave]

Here is another emerging (hopefully) technology.

 

New Iron-Air Battery outperforms best Lithium Ion tech. Cheap. Abundant. Non-toxic & Carbon Free.

 

[Dax]

Iron air batteries have been around since the 1970's, the problem is they are extremely heavy and big, much to big for an Ev of any size.

 

You will soon be able to get people movers with 300klm range, which would make excellent campervans. Add some solar panels on the roof and a couple of fold up panels, small lifepo4 house pack and you would be close to self sufficient on the road.

 

https://www.drive.com.au/news/2021-byd-t3-australias-cheapest-electric-vehicle-now-on-sale-from-35855-drive-away/

 

These are our E bikes, they fold up and were designed for special forces use, was lucky to get hold of over a decade ago and they are great for going anywhere.

 

 

Edited August 2, 2021 by Dax

[Bruce Tuncks]

Weight and size don't matter for a battery to replace the mains . Cost is everything.

[octave]

Dax, yes I posted about iron air batteries in the EV thread due to the usual thread drift problem. Certainly relevant for grid storage.

 

 

Edited August 2, 2021 by octave

[octave]

50 minutes ago, Dax said:

Iron air batteries have been around since the 1970's, the problem is they are extremely heavy and big, much to big for an Ev of any size.

 

It is not so much whether the technology is new or not but it is about whether or not it can be economically utilized.  In this case this company believes it can build  grid level storage that would be complimentary to lithium storage.

 

54 minutes ago, Dax said:

These are our E bikes, they fold up and were designed for special forces use, was lucky to get hold of over a decade ago and they are great for going anywhere.

 

We just love our E bikes.  

[Dax]

3 hours ago, octave said:

It is not so much whether the technology is new or not but it is about whether or not it can be economically utilized.  In this case this company believes it can build  grid level storage that would be complimentary to lithium storage.

When I first heard of iron air batteries way back in the late 1970's, they claimed they would be on the market for off grid within 5 years. In the 1980's a number of companies went the iron air direction, including Westinghouse and none of them could get it to work as claimed. The problem was and still is they can't get the rate or cycle stability right to make them practical. From what I've read in the past, the iron negative electrode causes the low energy cycle instability and the air positive electrode is causes the low rate capability.

 

It's seems they have yet to overcome those problems and doubt they will, like nuclear fusion being promised for decades, but it's all theory. I think nuclear fusion is  a fallacy, and I feel stars don't work that way, but that's another story.

 

It would be great if they were successful with both forms of technology, but, like many of our theories they get dismissed when new understandings come around.

 

Doubt they will get much better batteries for either off grid storage or EVs than lithium for the foreseeable future and they may well be a combination of lithium/graphene and graphene super capacitors.

 

They've been trying to get flow batteries working since the 1980's as well, but can't get them to work consistently, or to the claims they keep making.

[octave]

9 minutes ago, Dax said:

They've been trying to get flow batteries working since the 1980's as well, but can't get them to work consistently, or to the claims they keep making.

 

I guess we will see if the demo plant is successful or not. One thing I have learned while following these new technologies is not to grasp on to an idea that is early in its development and believe it is the answer but also not to jump in on every development and proclaim that it wont work.   There are many different technologies that are in the demo stage such as liquid air energy storage, thermal solar etc.   I believe it is important research all of these ideas

23 minutes ago, Dax said:

I think nuclear fusion is  a fallacy, and I feel stars don't work that way, but that's another story.

 

Now that is an intriguing statement!

[Dax]

40 minutes ago, octave said:

I believe it is important research all of these ideas

Just about all ideas should be investigated when it comes to most subjects involving humans. As we discover new forms of energy/generation, other problems or hurdles will arise followed by research and answers. Our understanding of batteries and energy, may be still in the nappy stage, or earlier.

 

1 hour ago, octave said:

Now that is an intriguing statement!

Sure would be if stars were the other side of black holes in another universe or reality and that would explain a lot. There is a logical scientific argument for it, 🤔

[Bruce Tuncks]

As for Chinese stuff...  well I have a tractor which cost about half because it was Chinese and it has gone fine ever since.

The biggest mistake I ever made was to buy a Massey-Ferguson ( good name huh ) which turned out to have been made in Mexico. It was no good and it was an expensive lesson. If you shell out the minimum, you have less grounds to later complain.  But hey, the cheap thing just might be OK.

[Dax]

Some chinese goods are fine, have lots of their junk and a MF backhoe frontend loader which comes from the 1960's, which still works fine, but a bit sloppy. Have a medium size Kubota 4x4 for the last 20 years and it's a great little tractor. 

 

My ebay $199 chinese bore pump has outlasted my neighbours $1500 grundig and it runs on my portable lifepo4 pack which sits in the workshop. Simply love lifepo4, such a massive advancement in energy storage and with most of my tools being cordless, means can work anywhere in the farm.

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

I'm currently converting a farm buggy to electric drive. My problem is that I think too cheaply so the batteries and motor/s have been undersized.

It would be great to have a decent air-iron battery so we could go off the grid at the farm. Thanks Octave for the link.

With a setup using solar-voltaic panels and a wind-generator and several kWh of battery storage, this starts to look like a possibility.

In the meantime, I would like to do a hot-water system using copper pipe in the combustion-heater chimney and a plastic tank inside an older galv tank, with wool insulation between the 2 tanks. An electric pump would just circulate the water when switched on.

Has anybody done this already? 

[Dax]

28 minutes ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

With a setup using solar-voltaic panels and a wind-generator and several kWh of battery storage, this starts to look like a possibility.

My house runs on 700ah lifepo4 with 4.2kw solar and small wind generator, uses between 8-12kwh a day. Having been off grid for decades, you learn how to use your system to it's best advantage and not go overboard with usage.

 

All my lights are LED, appliances including dishwasher are inverter controlled, which really drops your power usage. Do washing etc in mornings when the pack is full, as it only takes a couple of hours to top the pack up and most days when the sun goes, the pack is full. The accept charge so fast, can do the washing, vacum the house, charge all the battery packs and still have a full pack.

 

My neighbour runs A/C on her 500ah pack on very hot days and has 4.2kwh of solar. Took her a while to get things right as she tended to leave lights and chargers on and never planned her power usage, after her first year off grid, she had it together. Soon learnt if you don't switch off things, or plan your power usage properly, you can find yourself without power. The pack controllers are designed to disconnect at 12v, so your DOD is within limits that add life to your pack and not diminish it. Having things on standby power, draws a huge amount of energy no matter what they say. I have usage meters on all my house circuits, that way can see what draws what and make adjustments as needed. I try to keep my usage to around 10kwh per day and that covers the entire house. 

[Old Koreelah]

2 hours ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

… I would like to do a hot-water system using copper pipe in the combustion-heater chimney and a plastic tank inside an older galv tank, with wool insulation between the 2 tanks. An electric pump would just circulate the water when switched on.

Has anybody done this already? 

Bruce I would hesitate to use a plastic tank for hot water. Maybe cheaper in the long run to get a good used HW tank, even if the element is crook.
 

As I write this, our water is at scalding temperatures because we’ve had the the old Rayburn stove burning all day. Our HW tank is a very second hand Rheem glass-lined steel tank. It will most likely outlast me, and I recently bought another one (for my pool room) for loose change.

 

Our tank is mounted upstairs above the stove and my home-made solar water heater panel, so they both thermo-syphon without the need for a pump.

No problems in 38 years.

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

Congratulations Dax and Old K. You guys are saving heaps.

One of the awful things the current nanny state has decreed is that hot water cannot be over 60 degrees, on account of how retarded people could scald themselves otherwise. It was this regulation, plus having a wife who could not understand why a door fridge was a bad idea, that stopped me going off-grid when we built.

If I do make a hot water system, you can bet it may be non-compliant with some regulations. But it would be good to have a display which showed the hot water temperature.

[Old Koreelah]

8 minutes ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

Congratulations Dax and Old K. You guys are saving heaps.

One of the awful things the current nanny state has decreed is that hot water cannot be over 60 degrees, on account of how retarded people could scald themselves otherwise…

 

But it would be good to have a display which showed the hot water temperature.

I totally agree, Bruce. As a partial fix, I have a fan which circulates air past a naked portion of the HW tank to warm the bathroom, but we need to install an extra system, controlled by a thermostat, to take the heat out of the water.

[red750]

On 31/07/2021 at 3:42 PM, red750 said:

Our local shopping centre has a recharging bay, and I can't recall seeing it in use.

I was down at the shoping centre yesterday, and a Tesla Model 3 was plugged in. If you haven't been near one, the lights flash any time someone passes close to it, and the display screen inside lights up advising that the security monitor has activated. You don't even have to touch it. I don't know if it has a camera recording passers by.

[octave]

7 minutes ago, red750 said:

I was down at the shoping centre yesterday, and a Tesla Model 3 was plugged in. If you haven't been near one, the lights flash any time someone passes close to it, and the display screen inside lights up advising that the security monitor has activated. You don't even have to touch it. I don't know if it has a camera recording passers by.

my son has lots of footage of his neighour's cat.

[Dax]

59 minutes ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

One of the awful things the current nanny state has decreed is that hot water cannot be over 60 degrees, on account of how retarded people could scald themselves otherwise.

My solar and stove hot water system constantly boils over, you can walk outside and there's steam emanating out of the overflow pipe most days. As my house sits at between 20-25deg year round, there's a bit of waste of hot water. A neighbour uses their solar/stove hotwater to heat their home in winter, we got some old car radiators, put one in each room and fed them through copper pipes. Used car electric radiator fans thermostatically controlled, the whole project cost less than $500, excluding the stove and solar hotwater system. In summer he pumps cold water from tanks under the house through the system which keeps the house at a comfortable temp and runs on a couple of extra solar panels.

 

For those interested, I built a pantry cool room, using peltiers. Have dual peltiers fitted into the floor, they draw air from outside the house which is cooled by the peltiers and exhausts through the roof. The peltiers run on solar panels separate from the house system, they only run when the sun is out and the pantry sits at 8-14 deg all year round. It's heavily insulated and sealed except for the peltier inlet and roof outlet, which means air is circulated 24/7. during the day it sits at 8 deg and in summer at night it reaches 14 deg on really hot days.

 

You can lower you building heating and cooling costs a lot with a little bit of innovation, peltiers are great, but draw a lot of power, hence they run on a separate panels. Also built a big peltier cooler for the truck from an old large esky, it sits in the back where the dogs live and keeps food and water at lovely cool temps.

[Old Koreelah]

3 hours ago, Dax said:

… we got some old car radiators, put one in each room and fed them through copper pipes…

My efforts with an old car radiator lasted a few days before it developed a leak, so I gave up on that idea. I presumed it needed anti-corrosive coolant, rather than the sweet, but very hot rainwater I gave it.

 

What’s your secret?

[Marty_d]

7 hours ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

Congratulations Dax and Old K. You guys are saving heaps.

One of the awful things the current nanny state has decreed is that hot water cannot be over 60 degrees, on account of how retarded people could scald themselves otherwise. It was this regulation, plus having a wife who could not understand why a door fridge was a bad idea, that stopped me going off-grid when we built.

If I do make a hot water system, you can bet it may be non-compliant with some regulations. But it would be good to have a display which showed the hot water temperature.

The other thing the nanny state won't let you have your hot water is too cool, because that could lead to legionnaire's disease (according to my plumbing inspector brother-in-law, anyway).  We have an evacuated tube solar HW and had been using it turned off at the switchboard, but he discouraged us from doing that because of that risk.

The system works quite well - often in summer time you can hear boiling sounds coming from the cylinder.  Plumber who installed it said that he installed one for a bloke living by himself, who only has to turn the power to it on about 3 days in winter.  (He didn't say how often the bloke showered though!)

 

 

Edited August 5, 2021 by Marty_d

[Dax]

15 hours ago, Old Koreelah said:

What’s your secret?

He just used water, the hot water tank works on a heat exchanger, then the water is circulated through the house and back to the stove. There was a leak in one radiator, but we soldered that and in the years he's had it, never leaked. The radiators are brass and copper cores, so shouldn't rust at all.

[kgwilson]

When I bought my new house with a heat pump hot water system I wasn't impressed with the fact that the hot water was never very hot. Then I discovered the regulator that limited the hot water to 60 deg or less by mixing cold with the hot. I simply removed that and now I have really hot water when I want it & since I put a timer on that circuit to only operate in daylight hours most of the power needed to run the heat pump comes from the solar panels on the roof. If I sell the house I'll reinstall the regulator before the pre sale inspection mob get a chance to whinge about it.