On 09.05.19 09:16, Gene Heskett wrote: > Good thinking Erik. I suppose the next Q is how far down is it to the > water table? And thats a job for a wind mill tower... But you knew > that. What would be neat is a big remote switch rod running up the tower > to a clutch to disconnect the wheel from the pump jack when the tank is > full, and connect it to an alternator for battery charging. A dog clutch > could handle that as the normal water pump fan doesn't turn that fast. > About a 10x gear up to an alternator ought to give some usable wattage > for the batteries.
Although a mill and a lathe help with maintaining a windmill, they're scarily expensive here in the 21st century, and susceptible to the increasing energy in our atmosphere. A high velocity microcell can wreak havoc in a small area, and Murphy can smell an expensive windmill at forty miles, I figure. The electrical engineer in me thinks an electric pump and a few more panels on the PV array are a darn sight less maintenance effort in the long run. Turned on only when there's good sun, the only required storage is in the water tank. (No extra battery cost.) There's over 200 Ha (nudging 500 acres) of eucalypt forest on site, so steady wind is a good bit less than right out in the open. > I spent a couple years of my early life on grandpa's farm in Madison > County Iowa, several miles "off grid" as that was long before the R.E.A. > It was just how it was in those days, a farmer was self sufficient or > starved. We ate well, very well in fact. Big glass single cell lead > acid cells, about 5 gallon size, 10 of them gave us a bit if light in > the evenings, lights in the barn to milk the cows by and ran the maytag > washer after the put-miss-put backfired and broke grandmas ankle, first > electric washing machine in rural Madison County by quite a few years. > Yeah, that Madison County, made famous 80 years later by Eastwood and > Streep in Bridges. I was over quite a few of those bridges in a team of > horses drawn wagon back then. A simpler, but not always easier time back > then. There's quite a comparison between that "can-do or do without" upbringing and city kids now sitting indoors in a big house on a 300 m² (0.074 acre) block with no back yard, playing video games and watching "Bluey", a serialised cartoon in which dogs play the roles of children playing in back yards, which the real children don't have. I don't see this "progress" progressing to a happy conclusion. Wouldn't trade my farm upbringing for modern childhood. (My father used to say "A good kite flies best in a headwind." Well it taught some resilience as well as what elbow grease could do, and where to find it.) There's an old "32 Vdc" lighting generator somewhere in Dad's old shed. They must have had matching light globes back then. Erik _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
