Well, as I get nearer to making electricity, my mind has moved on to what to do with it when i make it. My original thoughts (when the turbine was going to be mounted on the house) was to connect directly to the water tank emersion heater, now (due to some complaints from my wife) it is being moved to the front garden by the garage, so I think my options are:
1. Run cabel into loft and connect to a 24V water heater. 2. Run into garage, into 240V rectifier, cabel into house and onto the 240V emersion in the water tank. 3. Battery bank in the garage, plus option 2 and use timer to switch the emersion on each day (when enough power). 4. Forget the hot water idea and take the garage off mains and onto battery power.
Heating elements take a lot of current, that's fime if you're using a 24v one so you can just run it straight off your battery bank (a 24v one I assume) but you've got the cost of the element and what if there's not enough juice in you bank to heat the water, and would a 24v element heat your tank. That's thought one.
Thought two is the the 240v immersion. You'd need a big inverter to run a household immersion heating element. Expensive.
I reckon you should look at the simplest and cheapest option and that may be to buy a normal sized inverter and wire your household lighting circuit from it. Relatively cheap(ish) and straightforward and should keep the missus happy. Legally and for saftey sake you should get a sparky to disconnect your holdhold junction box and wire in a new small one with a supply from your inverter.
What to do with Watts
Posted - 17/01/2008 : 19:39:00
