1) There are now lots of folks making 3 fuel generators, including my favorite Honda 1kW. I want a new one now! (Propane, Natural Gas, & Gasoline). It ought to run for days and days and days on a large propane bottle or ‘forever’ with a natural gas connection. Cost was a bit higher at about a kilobuck. One of these, or more likely it’s 3kW sibling, in the garage (vented outside!) next to the gas clothes drier and I’d be all set. Only thing missing is the co-generation water heater fitting!

I’ve got a 4 cyl 10kw propane generator attached to my house. It’s fantastic! And a dedicated 120 gallon bottle means it will run for quite a long time. It’s got its own dedicated shed as well. Came with the house. One of the guys who services it twice a year says the City of Tacoma (WA) has an identical one used as a backup for their water treatment facilities. It’s definitely an industrial model.

I’d gone off looking for the Honda 12kW Diesel (only to find it was now discontinued: http://www.hayesequipment.com/eb12d.htm ) and discovered this page.

Two things I learned there:

1) There are now lots of folks making 3 fuel generators, including my favorite Honda 1kW. I want a new one now! (Propane, Natural Gas, & Gasoline). It ought to run for days and days and days on a large propane bottle or ‘forever’ with a natural gas connection. Cost was a bit higher at about a kilobuck. One of these, or more likely it’s 3kW sibling, in the garage (vented outside!) next to the gas clothes drier and I’d be all set. Only thing missing is the co-generation water heater fitting!

2) You can get Lister type Diesels already set up for vegetable oil! 3kW and 6kW. These are probably India origin (their Listers are good, but ought to be cleaned and inspected before first use… sometimes some casting sand or paint chips are left inside…) Listers are very ‘funny fuel’ tolerant and since they run ‘way slow’ they tend to last a few hundred years in continuous use ;-) Well, maybe not quite that long… AND it is already set up for a hose to the hot water heat exchanger! If I were on a farm somewhere I’d be placing my order for one of these today.

Almost makes me wish I was living in the frozen north (or central or east) and suffering power outages so I’d have an excuse to buy one. Almost.

I assume that they make 50Hz models for the EU / UK and there is someone selling them there. At any rate, if you have a couple of thousand $$, there is no reason to put up with power outages and it looks like you can have your choice of at least 5 fuels: Diesel, Gasoline, Vegetable Oil, Propane, and Natural Gas (sometimes in the same generator).

Hmmm convert 10 percent of our power in 1 or so years. (About 10% is already hydro et. al.). It will be hard just to get the mandatory public hearings out of way in a year. Looks like power outages again. Sigh.

Many of us still have our ‘preparation’ gear from the last time the government decided to screw around with the electric system. I have 2 generators and can always make my own electricity using gasoline. (One bought before the outages, the other bought during – a little Honda my wife could start.)

Should gasoline become short, I also have a 1 Kw inverter that I bought at Costco for about $70 that can be hooked to my car battery and used to make survival power. The best low cost solution for emergency power, IMHO. My car is an old Mercedes Diesel that runs quite well on salad oil, kerosene, jet fuel, etc. unlike the newer finicky ones; so worst case is I go to the store and buy some salad oil. I don’t expect excess taxation of food.

I agree with you that wave-power and coal are the way to go for the U.K., but even wave-power is out when the ice gets thick!

Ouch! I hadn’t thought about the ocean freezing. We don’t do that in California.

For anyone facing such potential power failures, my experience has been that Honda makes the best generators. They have a dandy little 1 kW unit about the size of an overnight suitcase. Easy to start and runs forever on a liter of gasoline. (well, about 6 to 8 hours depending on demand). It’s enough for lights, electronics, fridge, and basics. (I.e. no dishwasher and HVAC) They have nice larger ones up to a few kW.

http://www.hondapowerequipment.com/products/Generators

Honda’s are Very Quiet. 56 dba for my 1kW unit IIRC. Neighbors don’t even know when it’s running. My big generator sounds like someone paving streets… it is a Briggs & Stratton engine with nearly no muffler. We mostly just use the Honda now, unless we need to wash clothes and run the central HVAC at the same time as an emergency hits ;-) If we end up needing to go that route again, I’m going to sell it to a desperate person living well away from me and buy the Honda 3 kW unit.

If power failures become common, I’m off to the car parts store to get some batteries and rig up the inverter as a UPS. When we have power I’ll charge the batteries and when we don’t we’ll still have basic lights and electronics with no action on our part. (i.e. the ‘basics’ will live off the inverter all the time with batteries float charged when we have power. A large scale UPS.) I’d started buying parts for this when we tossed out Governor Greyout Davis and the issue became moot… though maybe only for a while it seems…

I often wonder if the folks pushing all this stuff down our throats realize that it’s not a good idea to force people to make electricity with a gasoline generator and put 200 lbs of lead and acid in their garage… no, they never see their unintended consequences, only their fantasies of what “ought” to be…

You have no idea how much it galls me that I have to do this kind of stuff just to make sure I have reliable electricity. Lord save me from my government.

At any rate, a small standby generator and a medium sized UPS works wonders, add in a wood insert to the fireplace & a camp stove and you’re all set. About $2,000 all told I’d guess. Best of luck to all my relatives in the UK dealing with this in years to come.

The industrial source had a hot liquid that required cooling, and rather than build a cooling tower and waste the heat to the atmosphere, cooled the hot liquid against a closed loop of circulating warm water. The warm water became hotter, and was pumped into the town or city where it heated homes and businesses.

Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California

I understand that even ten foot down the temperature is a constant 10C. That is a great resource when the temperature is -5C but less useful when the external temperature is 12C! I have some friends in Switzerland whose village taps into a geo thermal source and his total energy bill is around 150$ Contrast that with our silly energy prices. I would love to generate my own but its not practical- far too costly for any return and doesnt provide the power when its most needed-in the winter.

TonyB

I am constantly championing wave/tidal for the UK with the arguement that its predictable, limitless, doesn’t create ugly scars on our most beautiful landscapes, and no part of our country is further than 70 miles from the sea.

Unfortunately the windmill and solar power companies have got the ear of the Govt. Both sources would have been totally useless here for much of the winter what with cloudy skies and little wind at times. Does anyone here remember the Salter Duck from the seventies (obviously I’M not old enough but someone else told me about it…)

I would gladly invest in some sensible wave co but there are very few credible ones out there-astonishing when you think 70% of the planet consists of their raw material

TonyB

by E.M.Smith

Don’t some of them become overacting star ship captains and blast everything that doesn’t wear a too tight skirt?

I think that’s the same as a comedian, perhaps unintentionally so.

“Does England have LNG offloading facilities?”

Milford Haven (a fjord and one of the deepest natural harbours in the world as well as one of the busiest by tonnage) in Pembrokeshire (“the little England beyond Wales”) is near to completing the largest LNG terminal in Europe. The constructors, Chicago Bridge & Iron Company, are also riding the crest of the alternative wave with their recent windmill tech aquisitions.

All puns intended.

There is also wave power. Waves are always present, are not as ugly as tidal nor as expensive, are just as ‘renewable’ as geothermal and very safe. It’s also easily distributed about an island… no single point of failure cable to Iceland. Small modular sizes for isolated towns and rocks ;-)

See: http://www.oceanpowertechnologies.com/

Ticker is Nasdaq: OPTT or London AIM: OPT (a volatile start up phase company. On a fairly clear bottom and with reasonable prospects as a gamble, but very volatile… $14 to $4 in 1 year, then up to $10 and back to $6 in one month…) I’d like to buy some as a statement, but don’t know if I could live with the bouncy bouncy…

They make a ‘power buoy’ that ought to also work well for floating research systems, oil rigs, maybe even ships at sea ;-) The U.S. Navy is putting a field of these in off of Hawaii (these are not toys…) and they claim up to 100′s of megawatt fields are available / possible.

I think it’s a neat technology, but I’m not so sure as a stock. There are other similar companies, but this is the only traded one that I know of. One has a snake like floating thing and is putting a field in off of Portugal, I think, and IIRC it was also a UK company.

A field of these about 100 miles by 1 mile would supposedly power all of California. I think I saw a claim that 100 x 100 miles would power all of Great Britain. (About 150 km x 150 km) Basically, you have far more wave power available than needed and only a small part of the ocean needs to be planted with the buoys. And unlike windmills they don’t macerate birds and most of the device is below the water so unseen.

I’d rate it better than coal, nuke, wind, solar et. al. for someone with lots of ocean… though I’d sleep better with some nuke or coal base load too…

Don’t some of them become overacting star ship captains and blast everything that doesn’t wear a too tight skirt?

But I’m not worried, how many flapjacks can a hungry Canadian eat anyway? It’s that pissed off polar bear that has me worried… have to turn on the pool heater and put out the oversized pool chairs!

LNG Tankers? TGP Teekay Gas Partners… nice dividend, uptrend off a low price… hmmm… Does England have LNG offloading facilities? (I think I’m going to buy some TGP…)

Los Angeles’ forecast is for 70 F temperatures over the weekend. Windy, too, so we will probably get more wildfires.

http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.1.8.2009.gif

I work near DC and, looking out the window, I don’t see 5 feet of water lapping at the doors of my building, so I’m thinking this is an error of some kind.