Climate Change terrorism hitting close. | Poal: Say what you want.

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[–] • 3 pts

It would be prudent for you (and everyone else, myself included) to start seriously looking at power generation that can supplement a unreliable power grid. Similar to people who live in South Africa who need to have a secondary system to cope with the regular interruptions to power supplies.

I'm looking at a system that is based on solar hot water as an energy source, with the hot water serving as an energy storage medium. This has the benefits of not requiring expensive and limited life span batteries, being able to be made without the need for complex technical components (like PV solar cells) which require sophisticated supply chains. My system, which I'm currently in the early design phases of, is basically a low temperature (~80C) organic Rankine cycle system, using Methanol as a working fluid (boiling point of ~65C), air conditioning radiators as condensers and a small Tesla Turbine turning an axial flux generator. In addition to the solar hot water heaters, basically any heat source that can heat up water to >70C would be useable, so for winter periods when there is insufficient sunlight to heat the water, a wood fired water heater or pretty much any other heat source could be used to add energy to the system. The biggest challenge is in configuring the water (energy) storage in such a way that the maximum useable heat can be extracted from it. You don't want to have to heat up all of the stored water to working temp, but rather to have a portion of it at or above working temp, and the rest close to ambient, as you add energy to the system, you want to heat a small volume up by a large amount, rather than heating a large volume up by a small amount. This, I think, is the key to getting it to work well, and I haven't figured all of it out entirely yet.

Alternative options, such as traditional fuel generators (gas or diesel) might be viable with the assumption that supplies of the required fuel will be readily available. Or, something like a syngas powered generator could be used if sufficient wood is available.

It would be prudent for you (and everyone else, myself included) to start seriously looking at power generation that can supplement a unreliable power grid. Similar to people who live in South Africa who need to have a secondary system to cope with the regular interruptions to power supplies. I'm looking at a system that is based on solar hot water as an energy source, with the hot water serving as an energy storage medium. This has the benefits of not requiring expensive and limited life span batteries, being able to be made without the need for complex technical components (like PV solar cells) which require sophisticated supply chains. My system, which I'm currently in the early design phases of, is basically a low temperature (~80C) organic Rankine cycle system, using Methanol as a working fluid (boiling point of ~65C), air conditioning radiators as condensers and a small Tesla Turbine turning an axial flux generator. In addition to the solar hot water heaters, basically any heat source that can heat up water to >70C would be useable, so for winter periods when there is insufficient sunlight to heat the water, a wood fired water heater or pretty much any other heat source could be used to add energy to the system. The biggest challenge is in configuring the water (energy) storage in such a way that the maximum useable heat can be extracted from it. You don't want to have to heat up all of the stored water to working temp, but rather to have a portion of it at or above working temp, and the rest close to ambient, as you add energy to the system, you want to heat a small volume up by a large amount, rather than heating a large volume up by a small amount. This, I think, is the key to getting it to work well, and I haven't figured all of it out entirely yet. Alternative options, such as traditional fuel generators (gas or diesel) might be viable with the assumption that supplies of the required fuel will be readily available. Or, something like a syngas powered generator could be used if sufficient wood is available.

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[–] • 2 pts

if you can get hold of it if somebody is not going to destroy it (or rob it) if you have some reasonable sun (beware the winter-summer difference, it is a LOT)

get solar panels + battery and a diesel generator for when things mess up