Before I start to talk about power, I want to explain the way our solar system works (in terms that I understand). I'm sure that someone will correct me if I make a mistake, but I also hope to include challenges and changes that J can write about.
Imagine a big bucket. This bucket is our battery bank. We have 16 deep cycle batteries in our bank. There is a hose pouring water into that bucket at varying rates...but it is continually trying to fill the bucket. The hose represents the solar power "pouring" energy into the battery bank. Now, on the other end, there are lots of hoses trying to empty the bucket. Some of them are very skinny. Some are very fat. These hoses represent everything that we have on the property that uses energy. The size of the hose represents the power it takes to run each item. One of the skinny hoses might be the 1.5 watt led lightbulb we have in the living room. It drains some of the energy, but very slowly. One of the fatter hoses might be the 1500 watt toaster. It drains some of the energy, but much at a much faster rate than the lightbulb. Also, we don't have all of the hoses running all the time. Some of the hoses, like the toaster, are only on for a short time, but they drain the bucket fast. Other hoses, like the lightbulb, are on for longer periods of time, but they drain the bucket slowly.
So there are lots of hoses trying to drain the bucket. Depending on what hoses are running (the items that take energy to use), at what rate they drain (the power it takes to run each item), and how long we let each hose run, the bucket will stay full or may drain completely. If the bucket starts to get close to empty, you can stop the drain hoses for awhile (turn everything off) and let the refill hose catch up a bit. If you don't think that you can refill the bucket fast enough with the hose, you can refill it by hand (using a generator - but that costs you in gasoline). The goal is to have enough power running into the battery bank to allow for the power draining out without completely emptying the reserves. Hopefully, that makes a little more sense than it did while I was writing it.
Remember I mentioned in the last post that there were some livestock infrastructure items we were going to need to rethink. Here are two of them. A single heat lamp uses 150 watt hours per hour. It's a fat hose and when you are heating a chicken coop in the winter, you generally leave it on all the time. If we did that here, our bucket would be empty pretty quick and our power hose (the solar panels) wouldn't be able to refill fast enough to keep up. A single trough de-icer uses the same 150 watt hours per hour and is generally left on all the time. And we need a de-icer in every trough (about six of them). That's a LOT of fat hoses.
We are already looking into alternatives. One idea is to use a propane water heater and pipe hot water through the chicken coop for thermal heating. This is a cool idea because it uses the pressure from the heat in the pipes to push the water through. It does burn propane, but it is a more efficient way of creating heat than solar. We will also try to use passive solar with the coop. Painting it black so that it can absorb heat would work, but we would need to be able to keep it cool in the summer, so painting may be too permanant of a solution for our needs. Of course, with the coop we will want to make sure to insulate it well.
As for the troughs, we have found lots of cool ideas. One idea is to use a small solar powered pond pump to aerate that water. By moving the water, the hope is that it will not be able to form ice. Another idea is to float a hard piece of insulation on the top of the water and leave only a small hole for drinking. In this hole, you place a hard black ball. The animals depress the ball to reach the water. Good idea, but it may be too complicated. The most direct (and least expensive) approach is to create a passive solar system for the troughs. We paint the inside of the trough black, bury it part way in the ground and insulate all around it. We could even paint the exterior black and use plexiglass on the south side to absorb even more heat. We could also insulate the majority of the surface of the trough, leaving enough space for the animals to drink.
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