Roselea

Category: Green Energy

All forms of Natural Energy like Sunshine and Wind, Ground source energy plus also Battery systems, Energy Storage and Recovery.

  • Energy Module Number Four has a leak (probably)!

    We discovered a very disturbing problem with one of our Energy Module when we were connecting our newly laid 22mm water pipe running from the Utility Room, to Tank Number Four that lies under the Kitchen and Bedroom One. We noticed that the water level was very low and after measuring it, there was only 130mm of water lying in the bottom, when there should have nearly 800mm depth of water. We are pretty sure that we had filled them up when we installed them years ago, but somehow, we have sprung a leak.

    But, because it was so long ago, we have to make sure we do have a leak actually. To check this out, we connected up our pump that is already located in the bottom of the Rain Water tank underneath the Garage and diverted the pipework into the house, by using one of the existing 22mm water pipe that is travelling from the Garage to the Utility Room (this pipe will be used for transferring the hot water from the Thermal Solar Panels sitting on top of the Garage) and then connected it to our 22mm pipe that goes off to this Energy Module.

    We included a water meter to measure the amount we transferred. We don’t mind using this source of water because it is free anyway, being pure rain water.
    We managed to get it running after the usual hiccups and we put in about 900litres before the end of the day, just to see if we lost it again overnight. We created a little float stick and put on a zero mark beforehand and it is now reading 83mm.

    Energy Module Number Four has a leak (probably)!

    Leak-measuring-gauge-on-25th


    But, in the morning, Tuesday morning, there was no signs of any leaks. So we continued to transfer more water and by lunch time at 1pm, we got the water level up to 250mm or about 2750litres extra for this experiment. We thought that maybe it needed more head of pressure to ‘force’ the leak.
    But again, 24 hours later, on Wednesday lunch time, it was still floating at the same 250mm mark.
    Energy Module Number Four has a leak (probably)!

    Leak-measuring-gauge-on-27th-after-second-fill


    So we waited another day and today, at lunch time, we checked the level and it is still holding steady. We are now going to give it a few days and weeks and keep an eye on it to see what happened.
    It must be a very very slow leak and we may be able to cope with that, especially that we have found online a possible solution where a suspended ‘blocking’ particles can plug various leaks in ponds or swimming pools etc. It is not the most ideal practical solution because the instructions says that the water needs to be constantly stirred, to keep the mixture thoroughly suspended, and as you can imagine, our tanks are fully enclosed, have multiple internal ‘baffles’ and are buried under the concrete slab and not very accessible. It only costs about £20 for a bottle so it is perhaps worth a try anyway.
    We have checked the other Energy Modules, and Number Five (the big one under the Great Room), Number Two (under Bedroom Two) and Number One (under Bedroom Three) are all still full. Only Number Three (under the Entertainment Room) is also showing only half full. We will have to do something similar with this Module too later on when we have established the various plumbing connections etc.

  • Taken the Plunge and Ordered Solar Panels and Batteries Plus Supporting Electronics

    After considerable discussions, we have decided to take the plunge and invest in some Green Energy solutions. We have ordered seventeen electric solar panels, measuring 2metres by 1metre high, rated at 405Watts per panel. This power rating isn’t set in stone as you can imagine when we got something like our Sun that keeps moving around, hazy skies, rain and the occasional solar eclipse producing shadows and affecting what power we can generate. The solar panel manufacturers all have to measure their panels using a standard 1000Watt testing rig but they also have to quote a so-called realistic figure as if we only got 800Watts per square metre, so these ratings that they have printed on the panels are only a guide and we could indeed, on rare occasions, get more!! But, big sigh, our Good Old British climate, we will likely only get 300 to 350Watts per panel on a very very clear blue sky day.
    So with our seventeen panels, seven on the P roof (overlooking our Patio) and a further ten on our M roof (overlooking our swimming lane), we could be producing 5 or even 6kiloWatts on a good bright sunny day when the Sun is right overhead. Otherwise, we would generate about 2kiloWatts on our P roof in the morning times and then 3kiloWatts later on in the afternoon and evening. We expect to generate about 10,000kWh per year.

    We ordered the panels from a UK stockist because the country now imports so many panels that it is not cheaper to buy direct from China these days. Hopefully, we will get those in a week or so.

    Another collection of items that we have ordered, is the mounting brackets and bars for fixing our solar panels on our roof, going through the slates but maintaining a waterproof seal etc. That is quite complicated shaped pieces of steel & aluminium and it costs almost as much as the solar panels for that mounting hardware.

    Next, we did go direct to a Chinese supplier for our batteries. It is not so common .. yet .. in this country, or rather, the batteries are being packaged into a single product and sold including installation fees added on top and it is many thousands to get hold of that type of batteries and the associated electronics. But, we like to do things ourselves but also, mostly, because we are wanting a much larger battery capacity and no one does a bigger system for a sensible price. So we are ordering 36 “cells”, each rated at 280 Amps Hour at 3.2Volts, measuring 72mm thick, 225mm high and 174mm long. They are about a third of the width of a typical car battery with both of them having about the same power capacity, which is amazing especially considering that they are much lighter and also have very good number of discharge and charge cycles. We are building two 50Volt battery sets, each having 16 cells, giving us about 30kiloWattHours capacity and one 12Volt set with four cells giving us nearly 4kiloWattHours. Each set will have a management computer overseer, to keep an eye on each separate cell and also the whole overall performance as well, protecting the batteries from any short circuits and other faults that may develop and shut the whole set off just in case. These computers are rated at 200Amps. The shipping will take six to eight weeks so sometime in late August or September.

    Another piece of equipment we ordered is a 5Kw hybrid inverter that takes two strings of electric solar panels and transforms those strings into both mains electricity to use generally and 50Volts to charge the two battery sets.. The box will take the power from the solar panels and either provide it as 240V mains electricity for general use and when the house is not using all of the power it will charge the batteries. If the house need more mains electricity than the solar can provide then the box will use the batteries to add extra output. It can be programmed to respond in various ways, depending on our requirements. This box will also act as a battery backup and will power our critical mains electricity usage (up to 5kW) if we have a power cut

    This is a major step for us to be taking right now, but, we really need to do something to help us avoid much of the enormous price increases we all are facing! But, we had always had plans to install solar panels, it is just coming much sooner than we thought, and the batteries have become much more affordable these days and be able to pay off the investments quite quickly.

    Spending less than £10,000 now will give us enough free power to mean that yearly electricity bills will be tiny for 20+ Years to come!

  • Deep Analysis and Simulations of Green Solutions using Real Weather Data

    As everyone knows, we are facing a future climate of massive energy price increases and we are particularly at a disadvantage with our current setup, with the way our Temporary Living Quarters are constructed. Since they were only temporary, we had originally put in minimal insulation into the walls and ceiling, but the Sun Corridor is the main culprit in terms of energy losses, especially during the Winter and Spring months.

    We have plans to reduce this loss for the next Winter / Spring periods, by shutting off half the Sun Corridor and also insert additional insulation into our bedrooms and living room too. This will hopefully reduce our running costs.

    But, this really made us think about the whole world of renewable energy, capturing the solar energy in both electricity and thermal forms. Plus, also, what to do with this energy once we have caught it. This means some form of a storage system like batteries or underground water tanks. We have already explored the Thermal capturing and storage side of things, after all, we have five very large water tanks buried underground and they are ready to store the Sun’s energy once we have assembled the thermal solar panels on top of our Garage roof.

    So, Stephen has been analysing and running simulations of what our house needs to keep it warm, what sort of electricity we might need to keep the “lights” on and what values of sunshine and temperature we get here. He found both NASA and ESA datasets describing the last ten years of recorded temperatures and sunshine falling on our corner of the world. He calculated the building’s energy losses, the solar gains via the windows and Skylight (as the Sun moves around the sky in the different times of the year etc.) and looked at our historical electricity usage. He then calculated the energy usage (heat & electricity) and generation for each hour of the day and night for a least a year.

    Then, we started adding various combinations of Green solutions to the simulation runs. Like for example, our built-in solar electric panels in the Skylight (2200Watts over 11 panels), then extra panels on our P roof (faces slightly East of South) with various sizes, then did the same on the M roof (faces slightly West of South) with various number of panels as well.

    All part of the simulation runs, are the calculations of how much money we would save on our electricity bills, and changing to combinations of different Green Solutions.

    This includes our buried Energy Modules and also the Thermal Solar that we will have on the Garage roof too, all this got into the mix too.

    So far, we have not looked at batteries yet, but we are getting a turnaround time of about 3 to 5 years to pay for the cost of the solar panels and the associated electronic control gear to handle it and that is assuming today’s prices of 20p per kiloWatt Hour. Just imagine how quickly we could pay off the investment if the price of electricity goes up even more, like 30p or 40p per kiloWatt Hour!!

    But, this setup is purely a daytime only solution, and only when the Sun is shining too. We recognise that there will be times, perhaps quite a lot, where we don’t get enough sunshine to cover the basic energy requirement of our household. So, Stephen started investigating batteries, in particular, lithium-iron-phosphate (LiFePo) batteries that are designed for more robust applications and there is a growing market for these types. We can get hold of large batteries that has very good long life cycle times, in the order of six thousands (6,000) deep discharge and charge cycles. And, if the size of the battery is such that we only need one cycle for each day, then we would get about 18 years of life out of them. That is plenty of time to pay back the cost of buying all the batteries, with the money we would also save.

    So, Stephen did many more simulation runs with different battery capacity, taking the solar electric to charge them up, but, also using national grid electricity during the off-peak night-time to tap into cheap nighttime rates and concluded that we could also pay back the cost of the batteries in the same 3 to 5 years.

    Remember after the payback period all further savings are pure profit meaning the house will need very little money for heat and light.

    This is very interesting and there was a great deal of discussions between us all, weighing up the pros and cons, what can we afford upfront and what we needed to do right now, to fend off the future price rises. We will decide soon, very soon.

  • Module Number 4 Repairs All Done!

     Today, we finished off the re-assembly of the Energy Module number 4, with the placement of the thick insulation boards around the outside of the module and then the lid on top.

    We did have to shift it slightly to make room for these side insulation boards but apart from that, everything went back in more or less.

    Module-4-Repairs-Finished

    Module-4-Repairs-Finished

    The “mess” of everything lying out and about, all went back into the hole and the sandy soil put back on top!

    Tomorrow, we resume doing the foundation trenches.

  • Day 2 of Module Number 2 Repair

     We carried on with the repair work on Energy Module number 4, the module living underneath the entertainment room. We pulled out, on one side, the vertical insulation foam boards and then pulled out the bottom 4 layers, all 480mm thickness!

    Module-4-Repairs-Most-of-insulation-removed

    Module-4-Repairs-Most-of-insulation-removed

    We could now look under the remaining insulation blocks around the edges and we dug out the silt from underneath and then tried to push down these vertical blocks of foam but they started twisting inwards so we ended up having to remove all the insulation anyway!

    We dug out all the loose soil and got it back to the smooth flat bottom. This time, we remembered to drill our hole to push down the temperature probe conduit properly underneath the module!

    Then, we started reassembling the whole unit back together again, keeping all the pieces together as they were originally fitted. We got as far as getting all the plastic crates back in place and it is all wrapped up in the rubber sheeting including the plastic cover too.

    Module-4-Repairs-Tank-and-base-reinstalled

    Module-4-Repairs-Tank-and-base-reinstalled

    Tomorrow, we will finish the repair job and good riddance to the whole saga of rain water flooding our energy modules for the last time – we hope!

  • Repair of Module Number 4

     We switched over from doing the foundation trenches and its shuttering boards, over to repair the Energy Module number 4 that had risen. We thought we might need the use of the mini-digger during the chore of getting the module back into proper alignment and depth again.

    So we started by removing the dirt off the insulation panels forming the lid, lifted that lid off and revealed the rubber / plastic wrapped Aquacell crates.

    Module-4-Repairs-Top-removed

    Module-4-Repairs-Top-removed

    After lunch, we managed to pull out the plastic crates without the sides falling in, but we did have to get the water pump out and remove another 200 to 300 litres of water still in the bottom!

    Module-4-Repairs-Pumping-remaining-water-out

    Module-4-Repairs-Pumping-remaining-water-out

    The problem is that the bottom boards, all 4 layers of it, will need to be lifted out so we can see what has happened and dig out the water borne silt that landed under the module during the thunderstorm flood we had a couple of weeks ago.

    We resume with that task tomorrow or Monday.

  • Emptied Module Number 4

     We started the repair process on Energy Module number 4 (the entertainment room – also the smallest module) by emptying the water out and putting it into our other modules. We had well over 2000 litres to drain. We used a powerful water pump with a filter to suck out and move the water using ordinary hose pipes and we got about a rate of 900 litres per hour so it didn’t take too long.

    Then this afternoon, while we had the equipment out, we also drained the swimming lane and chucked the water down our proper rain soak-away module. The meter reported that we shifted about 1800 litres when the level got to about an inch left in the bottom.

  • All 5 Modules Now In Place!

     At Long Last, we have finished all 5 energy modules, all buried in the ground and all full of water. The only signs of their presence is the red white hazard tapes marking out the locations and thin pipes sticking out of the ground.

    Plot-after-all-Energy-modules-finished

    Plot-after-all-Energy-modules-finished

    It has been a long haul, which included the repair of Number 3 (it got lifted by a flood of rain water), some 50 days of work to install all these Energy Modules, they contain a total of 35,000 litres of water, which can store about 10GJ (giga-joules) or about 2700 kWh of free energy from the sun. It is a big investment of time and money but we should see a payback quite quickly over the first few years of operation once the house is built.

  • Day 8 of the Great Module Number 5 – All Done At Last!

     This morning, we finished off burying the last of our Energy Modules, Number 5, with sandy soil and covering it up too.

    The warning red/white hazard tape was wrapped around the perimeter of the module to keep our heavy machinery off that area.

    Module-5-Finished

    Module-5-Finished

    So We are All Done At Last! Phew!

  • Day 7 of the Great Module Number 5 – Finishing Touches and Filling Almost Complete

     Today, we finished off the installation of the insulation panels on top of our Energy Module Number 5. At the same time, we started pumping water into the module, we will need over 16,000 litres of water to fill it! Also we sliced off the excess pieces that were sticking up above the module level, and inserted the various conduit pipes and inspection tube too.

    Module-5-All-Insulation-and-pipes-done

    Module-5-All-Insulation-and-pipes-done

    We chucked all the “rubbish” bits into the gap alongside the module and buried them with the sandy soil we are pushing back in.

    Module-5-End-of-Day-7-Nearly-finished

    Module-5-End-of-Day-7-Nearly-finished

    Tomorrow, we will finish off the filling around the module plus another whole day of putting water into the tank.