Anyone use an alternator?

Re: Anyone use an alternator?

dmiller wrote: »

I'm curious if anyone has a more than basic genset setup for emergency or occasional use. An alternator with an external regulator does a nice job charging batteries on a boat.

It seems a big bank down to 50% in poor weather needs a huge amount of DC to bring it back up. Are there massive AC to DC battery chargers?

I'm also curious if anyone uses pumped water for backup energy storage with the idea of producing power in cloudy periods.

I've heard automotive alternators are a poor choice, even as a "cobbled together" genset. (they heat up, standard regulators are too low for deep cycle batteries)

An AC geneset with a charger with good power factor seems to be able to get the most into the batteries.

I have 9,000 gallon of pumped water in 3 tanks, 160' elevated, and it takes me 6 -8 days to fill them from solar. Would only take a couple of hours to drain via 2" pipe, and I doubt I could recover much of my energy expended to pump them up.
Best commercial plants are not really efficient, they just pass the bill along to ratepayers.

Taking into account evaporation losses from the exposed water surface and conversion losses, approximately 70% to 85% of the electrical energy used to pump the water into the elevated reservoir can be regained.[1] The technique is currently the most cost-effective means of storing large amounts of electrical energy on an operating basis, but capital costs and the presence of appropriate geography are critical decision factors.


http://www.sce.com/communityandrecreation/campedison/

Re: Anyone use an alternator?

Yes to both questions.:D

http://forum.solar-electric.com/showthread.php?t=5850

In Georgia, they pump the water from Sinclair back up into lake Oconee, for use the next day.

Re: Anyone use an alternator?

There have been a number of folks here who have been advocates of, and users of Diesel powered DC battery charging. In searching this site (quickly) have been unable to find any such reference.

Seemed that 'Alpha DC Power' made some of these products, but in a quick scan, cannot find it at their site .. so must be incorrect. A friend uses such a unit on his blue-water sailboat. Works fine.

Am just now working on fixing a problem with the irrigation system, so back to the trenches.

Some of the signature lines of posters here have some reference to DC Generator chargers ... Perhaps more later .. Good Luck, Vic

Re: Anyone use an alternator?

Plan is for the diesel to spin a 240vac 4 pole alternator, and let the xantrex charge controller @ PF=1 convert that to 48V for charging. Not too much in the 48V range, which is what I needed.

Re: Anyone use an alternator?

Regarding "Massive AC-to-DC power supplies/chargers, I do use a 60 VDC 50 Amp output DC Power Supply -- 120/240 VAC input, thorugh an MX-60 as the CC, with a Honda AC genset. The DC PS is NOT PF-Corrected, but works great for the B battery bank. This DC PS was about $60.00 from an electronic recycler. This unit was very well made, and even had a capacitor bank on the output -- was surplused from an electroplater IIRC.

Have seen some posts here from those who have built Engine/Alternator (Auto or Marine type), but do not reacll amny here who had done so. And GreenerPower has linked to an inexpensive AC to DC PS which IS PFCed, and $99. on the first page of this thread.

On the AC Diesel genset thing, Hardy is an integrator IIRC, they buy engines from here, Alternators from there, etc for many of the units that they offer. This is a very common practice, and often yields a genset at a lower price. Hardy still handles the small Kubota gensets, which are supplied as a finished product from Kubota, I believe.

http://www.hardydiesel.com/kubota-diesel-generators.html

Think that am drifting farther off the topic. Vic