Begins to look to me that trying to get your power for free is gonna
cost more than most can afford by quite a bit. Maybe some folks don't
mind dropping ten or 20 grand on something like that but if that's
the case then they've got a lot deeper pockets than I do. For
instance, those 4 brand new batteries I was talking about last
message cost me exactly $4.00 plus the gasoline to go get them. I've
got 12 or 13 absolutely brand new batteries of various sizes and they
all cost me a buck apiece plus some small amount of gasoline. All of
them together would cost the average person about $400 to $500 or
maybe even a tad more. I'd sure hate to think about what it's going
to cost to put up the hundred or more batteries plus the high dollar
inverter needed to produce 1.5 to 3 KW of power for any length of
time. And another thing. What's he going to set all those batteries
on? He won't want them on the ground and he won't want them on concrete
and he most likely can't build a strictly wood bench stout enough to
hold them at any very cheap price so he's most likely going to have
to build steel racks to set them on and that's going to set him back
another bundle plus he's got to figure out the inter-connecting cables
and their connectors. I get my connectors for 69 cents each right now
from a NAPA distributor and I buy 30 to 40 at a time. Don't know what
the cable is going to cost him either but that isn't cheap either.
 
Then there is the cost of maintaince on those cable ends. Mine get
all rusted up and corroded in about 6 months or so and I have to
replace a few about every 6 months. I just did that on Sunday at
the same time I put the new batteries on line.
 
While it's not going to be free or particularly cheap nor all that
easy, I'm planning on building me a backup power system for my house.
I gonna use an older car engine and tranny that I can get for maybe
a couple of hundred bucks and a 10 horse induction motor that's 
rated at 220/440 volts single phase and use the car engine to turn
that. I don't know for sure how much power that will produce, but it
ought to be pretty hefty. I think it ought to produce maybe 30 KW
of power and then maybe I can work on something to burn in it other
than regular gasoline. Propane's too expensive nowadays so that's
out. Maybe natural gas or alcohol or who knows what. I'll have to
build a frame for the system and put it on wheels so it can be towed
if necessary and I'll also have to design and build a good regulator
for it and some means for it to detect when the grid power goes off
and make that trigger startup of the system. I'll also have to have
a system to regulate the speed of the engine so it produces 60 cycle
power and under varying load conditions. Then there will have to be
a system to pulse the motor windings with a D.C. voltage if it needs
a kick start to start it generating. That could take a D.C. pulse of
up to 60 volts so that's 5 car batteries in series that would never
see much use but vital to the system operation. I'll bet I end up
with a thousand invested in that system too, maybe more over time
and I will do all the building and welding plus design and build
most if not all the electronics that's going to be necessary.
 
Bill Bauer
 
Bill Bauer
--- DB 1.58/004358
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