What to do with large solar power excessive

[LockH]

Ummm... Sorry. Kinda coming late to this thread/convo. Alongside much? If so, store the excess by pumping it "up hill" (eg pipe etc up to a water tower) using an electric motor, of course. Then, when the "sun don't shine" (eg doesn't usually shine at night, etc), let the water run (usually it will run "down hill" - in a pipe wattEVer - see "gravity"), and reverse that "round and round" thingee (that motors are sorta famous for) to power an electrical generator.

I am sorry if this (idea) is too "old school" for some, or something...

L

EDIT: PS, Having "converted" the sunlight via pipe etc and water tower, (lake), etc. water can also make for a handy-dandy shower. Limited, however, by the number of ladies that may join you at the same time. (See "really big bath"... see "lake", above)

 

[LockH]

Hmmm... Interesting. No comments/thoughts about using gravity and water to store solar power (and water to spin an electric motor/waterwheel etc to produce electricity to eg recharge batteries)? I hope some folks on ES wave and smile as they go by, drifting off into space, or wherEVer they're off to. Look Ma! No balloons!

L

 

[LockH]

No thoughts anybuddy?
Well, re water towers, our friends in Louisville KT mighta seen this big thingee:


That thingee rises near 200 feet, and gets its water from the Crescent Hill reservoir (over 500 feet up, and about two miles away.) I guess these daze folks admire that water tower and think "Would make a pretty condo", and wonder how they pump all that water down hill...

L

 

[LockH]

To the OP... Re "ICE"... How much heat d'you need, for watt porpoise, may I ask?

Here's maybe a huge hint:


(Augustin Mouchot’s Solar Concentrator, 1869)

 

[spinningmagnets]

Use the power to compress air, and then use that later to generate electricity

It's not well-known that the Amish use wind-generated compressed air to run shop tools. they are savvy enough that they do not advertise it since they make money from selling quilts, wood furniture, and candles, etc to the tourists. they get a lot of traction from the "primitive tech" theme, and they know it.

Generating electricity from compressed air is in-efficient, but it works...and the OP's problem is excess electricity, and how to get a few watts when it's cloudy. NiFe (Nickel-Iron) batteries might be hard to get, and they are not very power dense (very large for a few Ah), but on the plus side they last for decades. His best bet may just be a small conventional Lead-Acid battery combined with a compressed-air tank, plus some type of air-motor to turn a generator head.

Stephen Friend on Stuart island built a stand-alone system to replace his diesel generator. Plenty of sun in the summer, but cloudy in the winter. Solar panels ran an electrolyzer to produce hydrogen, the H2 was then fed through a fuel-cell to generate electricity on cloudy days. All the parts were readily purchase-able a few years ago, the selection should be better now. The parts were expensive, but the problem for this application is that they may be too bulky for a boat.

http://www.siei.org/personnel.html

 

[LockH]

Ahh... Didn't/don't recall reading the whole thread, about that "compress air... later to generate electricity" thingee. Yah, otta maybe work if away from the dock, but spinning magnets (sound familiar? Hehe...) and copper, as motor to pump water up (hill, tower, ermmm etc?) maybe can work too? (I still suspect a tub or whole lake of water might be more fun to splash around/swim in than a tank of compressed air? OK, scuba diving otta be maybe fun/productive too.)

Glub glub.
L

 

[TylerDurden]

Perhaps not use gasoline engines, rather use diesel engines. Heat and clean waste vegetable oil with the excess electricity, then use the hot clean veggie to run the diesels.

Cleaning the WVO prior to running can be done with electric tank heaters, a pump and a centrifuge. That could eat up 4kW easily.

 

[liveforphysics]

Pumping water simply isn't enough energy storage to be worth messing with unless you've got a massive dammed reservoir or something.

For example, if you pump 1,000,000lbs (1 Million lbs) of water up 35ft, you've only stored 12.3kWh, which would he generates before noon with this boat. Raise that to a million pound water tank to 70ft up and for your many hundreds of thousands of dollars invested you still don't store even a single day of his solar cells output.


Things that do consume huge amounts of energy involve breaking chemical bonds. I think leveraging the ocean's virtually unlimited metal ion supply would be a good use of having a couple dozen spare kWh. Hydrogen would be the effortless one to extract, but it's a PITA and inefficient to store a meaningful amount. You could extract Sodium or Potassium metal from seawater and store a pretty meaningful amount of energy, though it has it's own PITA aspects of storing/using it.

 

[LockH]

Tks Master LFP... ermmm... for throwing water on my thought (grin). But lessee...1 mill US gal = 8,345,264 pds.approx. (or 1 mill lbs = approx 119,828 gal US.)

The Crescent Hill reservoir holds 110 mill US galls, so say 90+% of your figure, but the "rise" is something over 300 feet. And sunlight does the "lifting" (rain falls from clouds to replenish the reservoir, I guess.)

I was sorta hoping the rain water is still free (hehe).

I gotta "cave", looks like. The size of that reservoir is waaay too big to stuff in the lazarette (a storage locker on a boat, usually stuffed with other... "stuff", etc).

Perhaps the size of the OPs solar panel "array" might be split. Or the batt is perhaps too many WH in capacity? Maybe *that* might be split in two, with some portion left onshore (but fully charged), and only added to the boat batt (weight) when planning to be away for some bit?

Sorta trying to stay "low-tech" (least $$$) here...

L