John B's posts

Donald,

Hydro systems only work if you have a "free" continuous supply of water. Unless you have a perpetual motion machine, you will be using more energy to pump the water back into the tank than you will get from it.

Old fashioned lead acid batteries are still the most economical method of storing any excess energy that you produce, and I think they only return about 80% of what you put into them.

What exactly are you trying to achieve with renewable energy?

The fact that we can agree on half of the equation is quite an improvement. Now lets move on to a cordial exchange about the other half.

If the inverter is delivering 1200 watts then it must be coming from the battery which is the power source. Since P = V*I and I = P/V, the current from the battery would be 1200/12 which is 100 amps.

100 amps is a very high current and that is why the leads from the inverter to the battery is a very large gauge cable.

Hopefully you can now see that a 1200 watt inverter would only be able to deliver 10 amps to a load from a 100AH battery for 1 hour before the battery is completely depleted.

If you agree with that then we can move forward.

John

Tom,

There is nothing fuzzy about the math. It's just a case of confusing Power and Current. When a 12V battery supplies 10 amps of current it is providing 120 Watts of Power. When a 120V device draws 10 amps of current it is using 1200 Watts of Power. The freetricity "engineers" seem to think that 10 amps from a 12V battery can be directly translanted into 10 amps to a 120V inverter and hence their reasoning that you can get 10 kilowatt hours of power from a single 100AH battery. Looks like someone totally missed the Power (watts) = Volts (V) multiplied by Current (I) and it seems like I have been flogging a dead horse.

John

Sorry Nick. You are correct. There is ample evidence for everyone to draw their own conclusions as to what freetricity is providing. There is no further need for me to state my views either explicitly or tongue-in-cheek. I will refrain from responding to any statements from Steve.

I only thought that I did Stevie. Obviously I was wrong. Again! 100 amp hours at 12 volts is 1200 watt hours or 1.2 kilowatt hours. Since your customers are able to get 10 kilowatt hours from a battery you must have put a zero-point physics 10-power multiplier into the inverter. It was silly of me to miss that the first time.

John

Troy,

A typical automotive bulb for a tail light is around 5 watts, and in a 12V circuit it would draw about half an amp.

If your windmill does not deliver enough power to light up a 5 watt bulb then that explains why it can't charge a battery. Although I suspect the engineers at freetricity are going to tell you that now you have a bad bulb to go along with your bad battery.

John

Pay no attention to what Nathan says Stevie. He probably comes from old world physics and doesn't understand the zero-point physics behind your E2D.

In Nathan's world where transfer of power rules apply, in order to deliver 10 amps at 120V the 12V battery would have to be delivering 100 amps and hence it would be depleted in one hour and not ten.

I think I understand how your zero-point 100:1 gearing can get a 40 watt motor on your windmill to deliver 4000 watts for as long as you like, but how exactly do you manage to get a battery manufactured by someone else to deliver up ten times its rated capacity?

John

That's where I became confused Steve. You said that your E2D produces 20 amps at 48 volts (that is around 1200 watts or 1.5 horsepower) but there is no current limiting device or diverter provided by you to prevent that from happening.

One easy way to limit the current would be to use a permanent magnet motor no larger than 1/16hp or around 50 watts.

A commercially available 1.5HP 12V DC motor would probably be about 20 inches long, 6 inches in diameter, and weigh about 50 pounds. That's probably a bit larger than what Troy has. I would guess that a 50 watt 12V DC permanent magnet motor is the largest commercially available motor that could fit into the box shown on the E2D at freetricity.com, but who knows what Steve and his 27 years of R&D have come up with.


Sure thing Steve. I was just paraphrasing what you have on your website. 10 amps for 10 hours at 120V is 12,000 watt hours. If your wind generator produces that in 3 hours then it has a 4000 watt or 5HP motor. And this all fits in a 3" by 8" box? Wow!

Nick,

Please don't delete the Stevie alias that we all know and love. But if you have to then my advice to him is get a new Hotmail address and create another alias. I just checked and the alias "Madison Priest" is available for him.

John

Troy, you may want to have a look at the manual that came with your meter or give me the manufacturer and model number and I can look it up.

Your meter should be set to DCA which means it is measuring DC Amps. If you get a reading of zero, then do it again using the 2 amp setting instead of the 10 amp. If the current reading is higher than 10 amps then you will probably see the display on your meter flashing which indicates that you are getting a reading higher than what your meter is set for.

Don't be surprised if you have to go all the way down to the 200ma (that's milliamps or one thousandth of an amp) to get a reading. 200ma is 0.2 amps.

You may also have to use the +ve lead of your meter as the input and the 10amp lead as the output, but the little manual that comes with the meter should make it clear how to measure current.

John

You seem to be running in circles Steve. How does the above compare with what you had to say in post #65?


Will a Sears 2/8 amp 12V home battery charger really cause more damage than a device producing more than 20 amps at 48V when placed across the terminals of a 12V battery?

Troy,

It looks as if you indeed have an ammeter that can measure up to 10 amps which is probably much more than what your E2D is producing. Ohms is a measure of resistance. In Physics V = I x R where V is the voltage, I is the current, and R is the resistance measured in ohms.

To measure current, your meter needs to be placed in "series" with the positive lead coming from your E2D.

Connect the +ve lead from your E2D into the 10amp input of your ammeter and then connect the common lead out from your ammeter to the +ve of the battery that you are trying to charge.

If you can charge the battery with a battery charger and it holds a charge then there is nothing wrong with the battery.

John

Steve,

I don't see any charge controller included in your system. Perhaps I was wrong to assume that there was some sort of voltage regulator build into the DC generator and thus there was no need to have a charge controller.

Now you say it has an output of 21V in eight to ten MPH winds, but the output jumps to 48V in about twenty MPH winds.

If the voltage output increases as wind speed increases, can you explain where the voltage control is taking place so that Troy does not end up putting 48V across his 12V battery?

John

Troy,

Try putting the wires on a 12V bulb and see how brightly you can get it to shine. You can get one out of the tail light of your car to use as a test if you don't have one handy.

I am slightly confused about a previous statement that you made.

You said "I actually have had access to five diffrent freetricity 1200 watt units. They all have produced voltage and the newest produce pretty high volts so long as they are unloaded. Now when you put them on a discharged battery it takes well over 15mph wind to get these units over 13v."

Did you sign up as a dealer and purchase five units or have they sent you five different units after you couldn't get the first four to work for whatever reason?

John

Ray, 1200 watts is 1200 watts (120V x 10A) whether it is supplied for 10 hours or for 10 minutes. Now here are a few areas where your argument falls flat on its face:

1. A 100ah battery might well provide 10 amps for 10 hours, but after a few charges and discharges it would no longer be of any use. For deep-cycle batteries, a discharge of 50% is the maximum that is recommended if you expect the battery to last more than 2 or 3 years.

2. Here is a quote directly from the freetricity.com website:
"3 to 5 = 10 x 10
Three to Five Hours of Wind Gives you ...
Ten Hours at 10 Amps = 10 Kilowatt Hours"

The clear implication there is that the E2D will generate 10 Kilowatt Hours of electricity in 3 to 5 hours.

Now you are saying that the maximum output of the system is 1200 watts or that it can theoretically produce 6 Kilowatt hours of electricity in five hours. That's 1200watts x 5 hours.

Do you think you can make up your mind on the power output of the system?

Another point worth mentioning is that power rating of a renewable energy system is the amount of energy produced by the renewable energy source, and NOT the rating of the inverter. Anyone can purchase a 5 kilowatt inverter, but if you only have 2 kilowatts of solar panels then you have a 2000 watt system. No ergo required. In fact, its probably a good idea to have your inverter rated about 20% higher than the maximum continuous power that you are using.

John

Troy,

One way of hazarding a guess at the amount of power your E2D produces is that it must (should?) comply with the National Electrical Code (NEC).

If we take a nominal voltage of 20V (for easy math, even though you are measuring it at 13V) then a 1200 watt system would have 60 amps of current.

To safely conduct a current of 60 amps, the NEC says your wire size must be AWG #6 minimum. Now if your E2D was provided with say AWG #12 wire, or the standard size for most household wiring, that has a current carrying capacity of 20 amps. That means that your windmill could not produce more that 240 watts (12V x 20A)and still be operating safely.

I don't know if it has one, but look for an Underwriters Laboratory (UL) sticker on the unit which will have a number on it that you can lookup to see what the independent test results on the unit were.

John

Troy,

Measurement of voltage, to a great extent, can be meaningless in many cases. However, if you can stick an ammeter in line with your output to measure the current being produced then the power output of the unit will be the voltage (V) multiplied by the current (I).

To charge a battery the output voltage of your charging devices obviously has to be higher than the voltage of the battery. I don't know if you remember the old Vandergraph generators from high school, but they produced voltages in the thousands of volts. Fortunately, the current output was low enough to make the total power output negligible and hence it was OK to put your hands on it.

I suspect that the current (I) output from your windmill at 13V is in the milliamp range, ie less than 1 amp, and is not likely to give a significant charge to a battery over a few hours. However, I would be interested in hearing what your reading for current and hence total power produced is as my initial guess at what power it would produce was in the 5 to 10 watt range. That would give you a current (I) reading of around 0.5 amps.

John

Dennis,

I don't think there is any need to address Steve and George as if they were two different individuals. lol.

The current website is even more amazing than it was before, and with plans to change it this week who knows what we are in for next.

It says 3 to 5 hours of wind gives 10 amps for 10 hours and that equals 10 kilowatt hours (sic). Nevermind that 10 amps for 10 hours at 120V would in fact be 12 kilowatt hours. The amazing part is that a small garden ornament windmill can produce that amount of power in 3 hours. It must be the bargain of a lifetime to have a wind generator rated at 4000 watts and selling for a mere $1200.

It's an outrage that Wikipedia would deny them the opportunity to share this with the rest of the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Pepees50

John

Nigel,

I think you can find the answer, with very good explanations I might add, to your grounding and other questions here:
http://photovoltaics.sandia.gov/docs/John_Wiles_Code_Corner.htm

John

OK. I see what you mean. I thought the Freedom Combi only came in a 24V model.

I will defer to those with more battery knowledge and experience that I, but I think "string" refers to the number of batteries it takes to make up your base voltage. In this case you effectively have 8 "strings" of 1 battery each.

While you are unlikely to experience a problem with 8 new batteries, as they age there is a possibility that one battery will be fall below par and reduce the performace of the other 7 batteries. For this reason, many would have recommended that you purchase eight 3V batteries instead and arrange them in 2 strings of 4 batteries.

I think that I read somewhere that systems should have no more than 3 "strings" for proper monitoring and performance. Perhaps others can chime in with their experience.

Wouldn't that be 4 strings of 2 batteries in series with a 24V system?

Kenneth,

You could try contacting this BBB since they already have a file open on freetricity.com
http://www.labbb.org/BBBWeb/Forms/Business/CompanyReportPage_Expository.aspx?CompanyID=100038657

I spent many months looking at various systems, as I had my leg in a cast and unable to go anywhere. lol. In the end I decided to go with all solar panels as anything with moving parts requires maintenance, and also because we get over 300 days of sunshine every year down here in the Caribbean.

I don't think that you're going to find any "small" windmills producing 5kw of power. All of the manufacturers are a bit sneaky in that they give you power ratings under ideal conditions which is usually winds of 28mph and higher. In lower wind speeds the output drops off quite dramatically. If your average wind speed is less that 15mph per day I wouldn't bother with a windmill at all, and don't trust anyone who tells you that your roof is a good place for a windmill. It should be on a pole at least 50' high and then you have to deal with permits, noise, neighbours etc.

John

Is it possible for you to take some pictures of what you received and post them on this site?

I'm sorry to hear that you did not receive what you expected. If you paid with a credit card you might still be able to dispute those charges. That's usually a good way to get people to resolve disputes.

John

Nathan, I think you need to give us more information on exactly what (and why?) you are trying to achieve.

You might be able to find a large Schottky diode (or use several in parallel) that can prevent current flow between two batteries, or at least current will only flow from one to the other. I have come across configurations like that where a large battery system charges a smaller one, and the charge in the smaller system is preserved for emergencies, but both batteries would not be connected to the same load.

If you place the diodes in the line from each of the battery banks to the inverter then those same diodes that prevent current flow between the batteries would also prevent current flow from the inverter/charger back to the batteries so they would never get charged.

John

Nathan,

Go to any marine store and they will sell you a battery switch that allows you to select between OFF, BATT-1, BATT-2, and BOTH.

You should be able to get one that handles up to 200 amps for less than $30.

That should enable you to decide if that's really what you want to do.

John

Some photos here:
http://www.news.com/Photos-Solar-Decathlon-heats-up-in-D.C./2300-11386_3-6213302.html?part=dht

Perhaps it's a bit late now, but I came across this a couple of days ago.
http://www.homepower.com/files/featured/TurbineBuyersGuide.pdf

Actually, there are several articles worth reading on this site.
http://www.homepower.com/


John

Floyd,

This is complex and may be beyond the scope of this thread.
First you need someone with A/C knowledge to size your system. If you purchase an oversized system then it will cycle too often, and if it is undersized then it will remain on all the time. Neither of those scenarios is efficient.

Now lets throw out some numbers for arguments sake. Say you want a 1 ton system to cool a 20' x 20' room. 1 ton is equal to 12,000 BTU. A 12,000 BTU unit with a SEER rating of 12.0 will require 1000 watts to operate (BTU divided by SEER) and more than that in reserve to start up the system. That is 1kwhr of energy for every hour that you want to run the A/C system.

You can make the argument than running a compressor from 12VDC is more efficient that running it with 120/240VAC, but the sheer volume of units manufactured for the 120/240VAC market drives the price per unit much lower and the majority of technical developments is in that direction.

I don't know about RV A/C units, but A/C for boats is very expensive, although admittedly they operate in harsher environments.

I have 28 x 120W PV panels feeding into an Outback GTFX2500, and the inverter trips immediately if I try starting my 3 ton A/C unit with it. However I have run a 12,000 BTU portable a/c unit on it, but I am not impressed with the cooling capacity of that unit.

Here is a link to a low voltage A/C unit that I have been keeping tabs on for about 3 years now.
http://www.solcool.net/

I have been waiting for independent verification of their claims. Unfortunately, when they started selling some sort of stems that you can put on your tire valves that will improve gas mileage by 30% they lost me as a potential customer.

I wish that I could tell you there is a way to cheaply use PV for summer cooling, but if there is I haven't been able to locate it. Meanwhile, I concentrate my efforts in keeping the heat out.

John

It was probably a SMART car made in Europe by Daimler-Chrysler. Introduction to the US has been delayed and the engine will be larger and thus a lower mpg.
http://www.smartcarofamerica.com/

If that's not the one then you might find something here.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/

I use that site to keep track of developments in battery technology, but more than likely they would have mentioned the event that you described.

John

If building the windmill is not a problem, then you need to select a DC generator that will deliver optimum power at the rated torque of your windmill.

The more power you want to produce the more torque you will need. Power is power, so from the perspective of torque required it doesn't matter if you do it with a high voltage and low current or a low voltage and high current.

Here is one of the many sites that will sell you a DC generator.
http://www.windstreampower.com/

However, as previously implied, you simply cannot get more power from a windmill just by attaching a larger DC generator to it. If your windmill only has sufficient torque to produce 10 watts of power in 15 knots of wind, and you attach a 100 watt dc generator to it, the only thing you are likely to see is the blades of the windmill stop turning.

Building a decorative windmill with blades that turn is one thing, but having them turn against the resistance created once a decent sized DC generator has been connected is something quite different. That might be the point that James was trying to make in his reply.

John

If you purchased an Xpower and that did not work for you then the E2D will be worse. The Xpower is a 1500 watt modified sine wave inverter, and the E2D from freetricity is the same with options of 300, 500, or 1200 watts. The only question is whether the rest of the system has the capability of recharging the battery, and I guess you have already seen my views on that.

The BBB report is really not all that bad.
http://www.labbb.org/BBBWeb/Forms/Business/CompanyReportPage_Expository.aspx?CompanyID=100038657

My only concern is that their fax number is in Arizona (501 area code), and their physical address at 40378 Vista Road in Hemet appears to be the home address for someone named Eddie G Rebai. Kind of makes you wonder how Frank Jennings and Carl Vetts managed to install 70,000 systems without a physical presence somewhere.

Another small concern is that the BBB states "We know of no licensing or registration requirement for companies engaged in this company's stated type of business." which kind of lets them fly under the radar if you like.

John

OK. Now it makes sense. I though (by changing kw to kwh) he was suggesting that 30kwh per day was the maximum that could be sold.