Chicago is home to several engineering firms that design power generation projects around the world. When I was going to night school for an MBA, I used to ride the train with some of those guys. They told some great stories, some of them might have even been true.
Supposedly one of them built a hydroelectric project for some African country that generated more power than the entire country could use. They were supposed to divert the water around the turbines, but they had screwed up the design. There was a huge drop after the dam and the diverted water was eroding the base of the dam. So they had to generate electricity and then get rid of it. The solution was to pump the excess electricity into pipes they put in the river below the dam. Water was boiling and dead fish were everywhere. At least that’s the story they told. They also told stories about electric plants in the middle of the desert where the only way to get a ground was to flood the sand with seawater. They claimed you could get shocked from touching a fire hydrant. Or perhaps they were just good story tellers. Then you have those gizmos in the roofs of locomotives that turn the electricity from dynamic breaking into heat, complete with fans. Now maybe they can put Tesla batteries into locomotives and store the power from dynamic breaking. From: Harold Bledsoe Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2015 2:44 PM To: af Subject: Re: [AFMUG] This is going to make a great UPS Yeah you can AC couple and if it is clean enough it will turn on. But then you need to do something with all the power... -Hal On Tue, May 5, 2015 at 3:24 PM, Chuck McCown <[email protected]> wrote: Most string inverters that are used on solar these days go to 600 VDC input with many now doing 1000 VDC inputs. So that gets the one side going. I wonder if you could use a UPS on the output side of a grid tie inverter to fake it into putting out current. -----Original Message----- From: Bill Prince Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2015 1:22 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] This is going to make a great UPS If going DC, there are some challenges doing DC-DC conversion from a battery that is storing at 350-450 volts. There are off-the-shelf inverters if you're going to AC, but that is beyond the range of DC-DC converters that I'm familiar with. Might have to use an inverter for no other reason. bp <part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com> On 5/1/2015 11:12 AM, Seth Mattinen wrote: On 5/1/15 10:38, Bill Prince wrote: I would want to run it DC, but it ain't bad. We're paying in the neighborhood of $1500 for about 5KWh with SLA batteries, so this would be a serious consideration. Actually it is DC, says "inverter not included". ~Seth -- Harold Bledsoe
