Recycling Batteries We received a very nice letter from Debbie White, Recycling Program Coordinator for Environmental Pacific Corp. at 5285 SW Meadows Rd. Ste 120, Lake Oswego, OR 97035 „ tele: 503-226-7331. Ms. White informed us that her company recycles batteries. They do not use landfills or hazardous waste dumping. They provide safe shipping containers (you pay for the shipping to Amity, OR). Environmental Pacific Corp. pays for the batteries on a debit and credit system. For example, silver oxide or mercury type button cells would give you a credit, while other types could produce a debit. Anyway, they are the folks to contact if you would like to recycle dead batteries. KP Gas Refrigeration I want to offer Nash Williams some information. In HP#9 he asked about converting a gas refrigerator from natural gas to propane. All that is necessary is to change the orifice in the burner to one with the proper size hole (smaller if my memory is correct). This is done frequently with gas cooking stoves. It's quite likely that he can find a stove repairman in his area that will have the orifice he needs. It's a small piece of bronze not much larger than a shirt button and probably costs less than a dollar. Wilbur Loyet, Olmsted, IL Wincharger Mods Dear Home Power Crew: I know you hear it alot, but one more time doesn't hurt. Keep up the good work. Here is an answer to a question in the last issue. Kevin Crawford wrote in wanting to eliminate a Wincharger type airbrake governor for his homebuilt wind generator. A way to do this is to offset the prop axis 3 to 8 inches to one side of the vertical axis. The tail will need a pivot point and a spring to keep it straight back. In higher winds, the increased thrust on the prop will pivot the prop out of the wind due to the offset and the tail will fold almost parallel to the prop. Some trial and error time will be needed to get the right offset and spring tension for the tail. Giving up the Wincharger governor will cause a vibration problem when the wind plant changes direction. A 3 or 4 blade prop will eliminate this problem but if you want to keep the simple 2 blade prop, you might mount some weights perpendicular to the prop to act as a flyweight as the Wincharger governor does. Be sure to mount the weights out at least 2 feet from the hub. Steve Hicks, Mountain Pass Wind Co., 711 North C St., Livingston, MT 59047 I'll second Steve's recommendation about balance about the Wincharger's hub. If everything is not in rotational harmony, then you're going to eat bearings like peanuts. RP DC Fluorescents & Servel Reefer Stuff Dear Home Power, Here are some answers to questions from HP9 and some of my recent experiences. The Elusive IOTA Ballast (Harold May): Iota Engineering Co. is at 4700 S. Park St.#8, Tucson, AZ 85714, 602-294-3292. They give significant discounts and prefer to sell through dealers, the one I know being Mendocino Power Co., 3001 S. State St., Ukiah, CA 95482, 707-468-9963. I have three Iotas in daily use and am much impressed. The Desperate Need For, and Lack of, Battery Recycling (Don Seeberger): The Winter 1988-89 Earth Island Journal (V4, #1, Pg. 17, from 300 Broadway, Suite 28, San Francisco, CA 94133) covers the well- documented environmental effects of "disposable" batteries. Except for the tiny mercury and silver oxide buttons, which are valuable enough to make recycling economical, it sounds like the best you can do is throw dead batteries in a "hazardous waste landfill". New York City, San Francisco, Springfield, MO, and New Hampshire/Vermont will at least help you do this. The Barefoot Guide to Servel Conversion (Nash Williams): Servels regulate their temperature by clicking between high and low flame. The low flame has to be big enough that it doesn't get blown out by slamming doors or basking animals. The high flame has to be small enough that your milk and veggies don't freeze. There is some difference in heating value between natural gas and propane, but the main difference is in the traditional delivery pressures. My Servel has been unused in the barn for six years since I installed PV's (anyone need a Servel?) but if I remember right propane regulators usually come at 11 (is it pounds or inches?) and city gas is often around 6 (whatevers). If you have access to an expert they will change the orifice (the "nozzle" which determines how easily the gas can escape into the burner) to a smaller one, to compensate for the higher pressure of propane. If not, hook the Servel to its own propane regulator, remove the cap at the top of the regulator, and unscrew the slotted adjusting screw underneath (many turns!) until your flame stays lit and doesn't freeze what shouldn't be frozen. In either case, adjust the air supply to the burner until you get the classic blue flame. On mine, you rotate the whole burner tube (the "candle" shape under the actual flame). Be warned that it is too hot to touch with bare fingers and too fragile to touch with pliers - try heavy gloves, and freeing it up and studying its operation before you light it! When you first light a Servel, you may see only high flame for a day or so, and feel little cooling for hours. Not to worry - my theory is that the reaction doesn't begin to take place until the hot side of the plumbing reaches some essential temperature, and the flame is not nearly big enough to heat it quickly. Once the guts of the machine are good and hot, it can start working on cooling down the box. The majority of the energy input seems to go toward keeping the guts hot and the reaction available - my Servel, which lived outdoors, used nearly as much fuel in winter as in summer! The Low-Pressure Guide to Palomas (Timothy Traquair): The newer Palomas, in order to keep from burning themselves out by running when there is no water inside the tubing, need to see a certain pressure drop between their inlet and outlet ports. They don't care at all what the absolute pressure is, only that there is significant difference. Just like with electricity, pressure drop (voltage) is equal to flow rate (current) times resistance. If almost all your resistance is at the end of the line (a low-flow showerhead, for instance), almost all your pressure drop is found there, too. And very little of it is found across the resistance of the Palmoas tubing, where it is needed to cut the thing on! If you remove the showerhead and let the water fall out of the pipe freely, then the resistance of the internal tubing becomes proportionally much more important, and the heater may come on. The resistance of the internal tubing is also variable - with the temperature knob! When you turn it to hot, it cuts down the flow rate (increases the resistance) through the tubing. With about 5 pounds of pressure and an old-fashioned gusher showerhead, I keep mine operating from medium through hot, but if I turned it to cool it shut down. Another temporary system which was much beloved, even with its quirks, while I was building a real house to hang my solar hot water system on. The Fire Line on Projection Bulbs (W.E.S.): You get a bright, white light by upping the voltage across an incandescent lamp - which ups the temperature and stress on the filament. Projection bulbs take this to the max, running so close to the edge that their rated life may be 5% or less of an ordinary 120V lamp. Unfortunately for themselves, incandescent lamps tend toward self-destruction; the hotter they get the lower their resistance becomes and the more power they accept (power = current squared times resistance). Luckily for you, Kodak provided a fuse which interrupts this process before the much more expensive bulb vaporizes. What I've seen over and over is the projector switched on as the first load on an engine generator, causing it to over-rev for a minute as it picks up the load, and taking out the bulb before the show even starts. My answer is an adjustable autotransformer "Variac", with which you can bring the voltage up slowly from zero to the brightness you need. Running on your inverter it may buzz ominously, but should not be harmed (DON'T try to use the common wall-switch sized dimmer unless you want to hear a truly frightening buzz!). Knowing when you have it set correctly is almost impossible, because no meter I've ever seen will measure the output of an inverter usefully. Set it so the projector is not quite as bright as it is without the autotransformer; or maybe you could measure the brightness of the screen at a fixed distance (with your light meter!) while running on someone's mains power, and then reproduce that at home with the inverter power and autotransformer... If you don't have a Variac in your junkbox, Fair Radio Sales (Box 1105, Lima, OH 45802) lists a 3A model for $18.00. The Ultimate Backwoods Mac Printer: I just spent two weeks thoroughly testing the GCC Write Move, a 3 pound, 192 dot-per-inch, ink jet portable printer. It uses the software GCC developed for their PLP "Personal Laser Printer", and Bitstream outline fonts which exactly duplicate the PostScipt fonts in the Laserwriter NT(X), letting you proof laser output with exact line endings and page layouts. (Except, of course, that you can't feed it PostScript programs, or Illustrator documents, and it doesn't know anything at all about "fractional widths".) (And not all of the TNX font set is available yet....) Any output in the Mac's internal QuickDraw format can be previewed on the screen and printed at full resolution, no"jaggies", at any point size your program will allow, and can even be reduced down to 50% or enlarged up to 200%! The output is rich, dark black right out to the last drop in the (easily replaceable, HP compatible) ink cartridge. It is sharper on special ink jet paper, but to my eye, and especially for proofing, looks acceptable on regular tractor feed paper. The Write Move prints "high quality" faster than an Imagewriter in "best" mode, but it takes a few seconds to a minute to prepare the page before printing starts. You can select its internal kerning and track kerning which will respace the characters within a line but leave the total line length unchanged (and equal to the Laserwriter's line length). There is also a draft mode which is about as fast as the Imagewriter II's draft mode, but instead of psychotically spaced-out words, the Write Move draft mode is a single pass version of the high resolution print - quite nice looking and easy to read. The hardware is really a Diconix (Kodak) 150, with GCC-designed ROM's inside. It comes with cable, power adaptor, fonts, driver program, print spooler program, batch printing utility, paper, and ink cartridge - everything but batteries included. No Kidding, you can put five C nicads inside the print platen(!) and print for over half an hour per charge! And the charger is built in! Needless to say, power consumption is all but insignificant, and the noise level is a new low which makes the Laserwriter seem offensive. I have only one reservation, which is that there seems to be no way to use the Write Move with any computer other than a Mac (like the laptop with which it would be so handy), or with a Mac program which assumes a "dumb" printer - like TMON (series nerding only...), OverVue (designed in the days of the 128K Mac), or the thing you wrote in BASIC which uses Aout or Bout. Oh, yes, if you use the spooler program, you must dis-install it and restart your Mac before you can use that serial port for anything else - or a crash is guaranteed! For around $500., at M.A.C. in Berkeley, CA the Write Move makes an Imagewriter seem quite dull. The Solar Flue in Operation: One of the fantasies included in my energy- independent home is a solar flue - a 4" deep by 42" wide by 24' high- glass-front black box up the south side. When the lid opens on a sunny day, natural convection draws the hot air in the top of the "greenhouse" collector down through the center of a concrete block thermal mass and then through a 20' concrete labyrinth under the house, before exhausting it above the roof peak. Incoming replacement air can come into the greenhouse, or from a floor-level vent on the cool and forested north side of the house (it hasn't ever been hot enough here to consider artificial cooling). The airflow is not rapid, but like PV's it is persistent, and I can measure about eighteen degrees of heat loss between the top of the greenhouse and the end of the labyrinth. If I just wanted to move air instead of fighting gravity pulling hot air down a cold tunnel, I'm sure I could have quite a draft going! The bug in this project has been materials - the flue is sheetrock taped and painted black, and the sun has cracked the tape off and is about to go through the paper to the already crumbling gypsum. Anyone have a (hopefully natural) better idea short of sheet metal? The Declining PV Output Mystery Solved: For about a year it had seemed there was never enough power, but with all my panels wired together it was hard to tell if there was a real problem or not. Finally I rewired everything so that I could easily measure the contribution of individual panels during operation, and found one-third of them fade out to zero after an hour or so of charging. I sent two back to the factory, and they repaired them. Turned out there is one non-redundant solder connection to the back of a cell in each panel, and it was failing once it was hot. The catch is that disconnecting a panel and putting an ammeter across it would "shock" the connection back into operation, sometimes for another hour or so! And a voltmeter would always read correctly, because it draws almost no current. Anyway, a few minutes with a razor knife, soldering iron, and silicone seal, and I'm back to full power. Hope these reports help someone else along the road to energy independence! Loren Amelang, Box 24, Philo, CA 95466 Loren's letter arrived printed on the Write Move printer. We're impressed. The resolution is good- just shy of laser quality. It also uses about 1/5th power of the watt hungry laser. RP Servel Info Hello Home Power, Excellent magazine, it gets me "fully charged" whenever it arrives. We've lived since 1976 without grid power and now power a family of six with a combination of propane, gasoline and photovoltaics. Don't sell the Servel's short. Remember these units are 40 and more years old and still percolating. If kept clean and well tuned they can be acceptably efficient, without ozone eating chloroflourcarbons. A mostly legible copy of a Servel service manuel is available from Earthmind, 4844 Hirsch Rd., Mariposa, CA 95338. For Nash William's Servel Question, only the diecast aluminum or steel body burner can use LP gas. The orifice can be changed, Earthmind can lead you to one, or a handy appliance person can adopt one, maximum hourly BTU's range from 1800 to 3800, depending on the model. The thermostat has to be adjusted with a manometer. All models take up to 10.2 inches water column maximum flame, minimums range from .4 to 1.7. To Timothy Traquair's Paloma water heater question, our experience with gravity water is avoid any uphill runs with your pipes. Any trapped air will greatly diminish flow and pressure. Your plumbing should be able to drain itself dry. And keep the largest diameter pipe you can. Volume can offset some pressure losses. An idea to anyone with kids, most slot cars/train sets operate on 12 to 18 VDC and will work off your battery bank. Be sure to fuse it, 3 amps or less. Something I'd like to see in Home Power is some schematics for adapting cordless hand tools to charge off alternative power. Thanks, Bell-Dereske, RR1, Box 660, Branch, MI 49402 24 Volt Stuff? Hi! There are many 12VDC products, but where are the 24VDC? Can you or your readers tell me any sources? 24 volt lighting of all kinds, motors, fans, anything. Thanks, Nancy Dooley, Gakona, AK 99586 The only reason that there are lost of 12 VDC products is automobiles. Try surplus houses, like Fair Radio Sales (address above), for military (24 Volt) bulbs and motors. How about 24 Volters, where do you get your DC appliances? RP Dear Home Power People, On a recent visit to a Radio Shack store, I noticed their 12VDC nickel- cadmium battery charger on sale ($8) and bought one, thinking this was an easy way to start using nicads on my PV system. The accompanying literature states the charger draw, 280-285 mA for 4 D cells (the charger itself rates the output as 150 mA max.). When I got home, I re-read HP#4 re: nicads and discovered your warning about factory made (120vac) recharges. Does your warning apply to the 12VDC model? If the 12VDC charger is OK, can I use it for extra capacity nicads? Kal Winer, Burkettville, ME P.S. David Doty (HP#7 Q&A) suggested Sears carries a 14" color TV that would run on 12VDC. The Sears catalog DID list such a TV but it's a catalog misprint and runs on 120vac only. The Radio Shack 12 Volt Nicad recharger uses resistors to limit the recharging current (that why it's only 8 bucks). As such, its performance will depend greatly on your system's voltage when you are recharging the nicads. If your system voltage is low (under 12 VDC), then the charger will take more time to fill the cells. If the system voltage is higher, like 14+ VDC when the PVs or whatever are producing, then the charger will refill the nicads more quickly and at a higher recharging current rate. This charger suffers from the same problems as the 120 vac powered models. It's designed to be inexpensive, and not to take optimum care of your expensive nicads. This means it is unadjustable, and uses DC to recharge the nicads instead of pulses. If you are using constant current sources to recharge nicads, it's best to give them a slight overcharge to insure that they are fully recharged. An extra hour or two on the recharge does the cells no harm. See HP4 for a tech discussion of nicad recharging. No problem with using this 12 VDC recharger on extra capacity nicads, simply recharge them for a longer period of time. I watch my nicads and call them full after their voltage has reached between 1.45 and 1.60 VDC under a C/10 rate of recharge. The final "full" voltage of a nicad cell will vary from type to type and manufacturer to manufacturer. Watch yours cycle with a voltmeter and you'll quickly discover the exact voltage when they are full. RP Golf Cart vs. Deep Cycle Batteries Dear Home Power, Love your magazine, it has really helped me learn electricity. If you have time to write or even if you want to print this in your Q & A's, could you please answer this question. It has been recommended to me to buy either Trojan L16W's (six of them) or 8 (220 amp golf cart deep-cycle batteries), for my photovoltaic system. The price of the golf cart batteries are slightly less than half the price of the Trojan L16W's but according to this person they have half the life of the Trojan L16W's. I am sort of low on cash and I thought the golf cart batteries would work fine for the next few years till I get more cash. I know absolutely nothing about golf cart batteries. Are they any good or am I buying junk? I am going to but a Trace 2012 inverter, with battery charger, etc. and have 8 ARCO 47 watt (M75) panels. If you think buying golf cart batteries is a mistake, please let me know. Aloha, Nick, Kealakekua, HI Golf cart batteries will not last as long as the L-16Ws. Over a ten year period, the initially more expensive L-16W will be about 40% cheaper to buy and operate. The person mentioned informed you correctly, the golf cart batteries can be expected to last about 1/2 as long as the more rugged LŠ16Ws. It's a matter of bucks up front vs. long term costs. And I'm afraid that the decision is still yours. RP Wire Loss & Voltage Boosting Dear Home Power, Thanks so much for the inspiring publication! My husband, Tom and I have been experimenting with solar power for several years. Initially in our homemade camper - running lights, radio- cassette player, 5" color TV and a fan from a battery charged by rooftop solar panels. We are now in the process of buying land and building a small cottage, which will be electrically solar powered (as funds become free to invest in upgrading and expanding our system). We are choosing to do this because of our commitment to, and enthusiasm for SOLAR POWER, rather than for financial reasons. Since hooking up to the utility company, in our location would be easy and relatively very cheap! Out panels are located about 100' from a commercial powerline and Tom jokes that we'll be able to tell the power company to, "Kiss Our Amps". Anyway, HOME POWER is making it much easier for us to materialize our dream - in numerous ways, But -- We need shade in our Southern Illinois summers and wanted to live amongst our deciduous hardwoods with a small southern clearing for a little sun loving garden and some winter sun for our home. So, our best spot for our solar array is now 600 feet round trip and we must fight line loss. Tom, has gotten an idea from an ad in HP for a line current booster. He's wondering if this "black box" could handle 350 watts worth of photovoltaic power, if the panels were wired for 60-72 volts. Or, if there are any other such devices on the market that would, and are affordable (Key). We are trying to weigh the cost of 0000 copper wire against other possibilities - perhaps #6 wire and the right "black box". We plan to use 12 or 24 volts in our home. Does anybody have any insights into this long line endeavor? Also, does anyone have any info on a very efficient woodburning, hot water heater? I read of one in a letter in HP4 and tried to contact the writer, but haven't received a response. This one was a Mexican "Calentadora", reputed to heat 30 gallons in 15 minutes, with a handful of kindling. This would be very practical for us. Where might we acquire one? There was a letter in Q & A HP9 about disposing /recycling spent batteries, that didn't answer the question. What to do with our deep cycle lead acid batteries when they inevitably die? We know the lead can be recycled through scrap yards. Is there any way of neutralizing the electrolyte? Also, I hope and assume that as you improve and expand HP, you will maintain some simplicity, so that they remain recyclable or biodegradable. Though most of us are building HOME POWER libraries, (or passing them on), it seems important to have the option to recycle them, into updated info on newspaper or back to the Earth - if need be. But I'm sure you guys have already thought of that. Lastly - I once, 16 years or so ago, read that Solarex had converted a complete factory, which produced solar panels, to SOLAR POWER. I have since heard no news of this. But feel that if it continues to be successful (as I hope) this is IMPORTANT NEWS! People sometimes suggest that so much energy is used in the production of solar panels, that this might offset energy gains. I don't think there is much basis for this question anyway, but a solar powered factory would make that a non-question, as well as show how solar power can be applied to factory needs. Has anyone got an update on Solarex's solar factory? Again thanks so much for HOME POWER! Patricia Ganyard, Tom Owens, Pomona, IL 62975 P.S. Enclosed is our donation/subscription Tom's idea will work, he's talking about an inverter basically. Invert the PVs DC power into ac and then step it up in voltage through a transformer, and then transform it back down in voltage and rectify for battery recharging. This solution is complex and inefficient because of all the hardware in line (each component is <100% efficient). Low voltage electricity has always been a problem to move around. The line losses are great and copper prices keep rising. Consider placing the inverter and batteries out with the PVs and running 120 vac to power the entire house. I know that you are thinking 12 or 24 VDC usage in the house, but in your situation the most efficient and least expensive solution is as I've suggested. In days past, we used to steer folks away from inverter only operation. But today's power inverters (Trace & Heliotrope) are so efficient and reliable that we install many successful systems where all the usage is 120 vac. I've no info on the Calentadora, but I'd like to have one myself. How about it, readers & RE dealers, where can we buy wood fired hot water heaters? The sulphuric acid electrolyte used in lead-acid batteries can be neutralized with ordinary baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) and water. Simply add baking soda and water until the fizzing stops. The products of this neutralization process are relatively benign -carbon dioxide, sodium sulphate and water. In the past, it took more energy to make a PV panel that the panel would produce in its lifetime. Well, this is NOT true anymore. Modern PV panels produce more electricity, last longer, and are more efficiently made. When you put a PV panel in the sun, you are doing your bit for the Free Lunch. Solarex is only one of several companies using PVs to make PVs. Sort of a "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" proposition. We totally approve. Some companies carry PVs even further. For example, the folks at Kyocera practice what they preach. Kyocera has set up a 50kW PV system on the roof of their facility in San Diego. This system produces about 8,000,000 Watt-Hours of electricity in a month. The panels are wired up for 480 VDC which is fed into an Omnion 50,000 watt inverter producing 480 vac, 3 phase power, for Kyocera's use. And now here's the icing on the cake, when Kyocera is not using all that power, it's sold to the public utility for public use. So if you're using power in San Diego, a part of it is from sunshine, whether you've got PVs on your roof or not. This system is one of the largest, privately-funded commercial PV installations in the western US. John Pryor, Karen and I had a tour of this system when we were in San Diego recently. We just drooled, 912 of Kyocera's hot-rod, 59 Watt panels flexing their silicon muscles in San Diego's intense sunshine. What a sight! RP