for off-grid northerners, at least.
Update, May 2010: The technology still seems viable and excellent for anywhere that will have a source of heat present anyway. BUT… TEGPOWER is stunningly, shockingly incompetent as a business. They aren’t dishonest, at least, but they’re so spacey they almost might as well be. We sent them a check because they give a discount for not using a credit card. It took 22 days for them to cash our check. It then took two full months before they finally shipped all the pieces of our order. They didn’t have stuff in stock. Then they sent our stuff to another customer. They had one item shipped directly to us from their supplier. Some of the items were shipped (nearly two months after we placed the order) by an overnight method which cost $40 dollars per box. Given the amount they spent on shipping, I don’t have the sense that they even made any money on our order. You get the feeling that TEGPOWER is a couple of high school nerds working out of their garage, who assembled the website as part of a science-fair project and never expected to have any actual customers. Buyer beware!
Bob was drafted by one of our local farmers to help her design a greenhouse with heated beds — using no electricity. He spent a whole evening bouncing ideas around with me (not that I have any expertise, mind you — it was sort of an exercise where he could think out loud). We imagined variations on thermo-siphons, where you heat water in pipes that go through a woodstove, and then the pipes would carry the heated water beneath the soil in the beds… But the problem is that this kind of system would require terraced beds, since hot water in a thermo-siphon has to travel upwards — and if you imagine trying to split the system between several beds, some closer to the heat source than others — it quickly takes on too many finicky variables to be practical. And we envisioned stoves (like “rocket stoves”) where the exhaust pipe would go under the beds, heating them with its gases. But again, multiple beds posed some difficulties.
“She needs a little electric water pump,” we kept saying. The elegance of multiple small water pipes was hard to beat, but the water would need to be propelled by a power source.
“But what about the hot stove that she’ll have right there? Isn’t there some way to generate electricity from all that heat?”
We both looked at the little fan we have on top of our own woodstove, a pricey little gadget that seems more toy than tool. It doesn’t move much air, honestly (if you put your hand right in front of it you can’t even feel any breeze) … but there is some technology there which turns heat into electricity. We dove into the computer to research how heat can be turned into electricity — and suddenly our whole vision for our own home electrical system was transformed.
It turns out that you can now buy thermo-electric generator modules which you can attach to the outside of your woodstove, and hook up to a reservoir of cool water. The temperature difference between the hot stove and the cool water generates electricity… at less than the cost of an equivalent solar panel! The cold side of the thermocouple would be supplied by a reservoir of cold water, kept outside and piped in. It will be the way out of our wintertime propane dependence, during these dark days when no amount of solar panels can produce any power to speak of! Our woodstove is hot probably 20 hours a day right now; if we could be generating power during all those hours? It would be amazing.
So, when we come back from Nicaragua in February, my project will be bees and Bob’s will be to set us up with a thermoelectric generating system. If it works as promised, I think almost everyone who lives off-grid in these cloudy northern regions would be as excited as we are. Check out the Tegpower website — it’s truly a revolutionary technology.
Plus a tiny one would power our neighbor’s hot water through pipes for her greenhouse beds.
Oh, and yes… our truck is once again running. I live with an Engine Whisperer… it took him 10 minutes to charm it out of its dark oily little sulk.
Almost a blue moon
Darkness, quiet… you can feel the end of the year like tide going out. Blue moon tomorrow, once in a blue moon. I feel shadowed and rather bleak, from parts of life that can’t be written on a blog. It’s interesting to create this public almost-diary, in a medium which feels totally personal (just me and my laptop here on the sofa in the quiet woods) and yet actually every word I write, about myself or anyone else, leaps absolutely out of my control the moment I click on “publish”. So, suffice it to say that the moon seems distant tonight.
But here’s something sweet:
We have a neighbor who has worked at post offices for 25 years. The last 9 or 10 of these years, she’s been postmaster here on the island, handing out our mail on the three days each week when the mail boat makes the trip. After tomorrow, she will be retired and free… she’s been counting the days for months now.
Our New Year’s Eve party will celebrate both the New Year and our friend’s new liberty. (Plus during her workday tomorrow some folks are planning some improvisational theatre surprises for her; I can only write this because I know she won’t read it.) The night-time party will (of course) be a potluck; maybe I’ll bring a loaf of the bread that’s in the oven right now, and a jar of the relatively successful marmalade I produced today.
I’m glad the nights are getting shorter now, even if only by a handful of seconds, and I’m glad of a celebration.