Your Questions About Solar Generators For The Home
Betty asks…
What’s the simplest way to hook up a small generator to a home’s power grid?
I’ve search the internet extensively and haven’t found an answer to this question.
I just wanted to play with solar panels and human powered generators and couldn’t figure out the simplest and cheapest way to hook it into my house to get some benefit out of it.
I.E. can i just have my panel hooked into a charge controller and a single battery to act as a float and then an inverter and hook the output from the inverter into a standard power plug in the house? can i push power into a power outlet or is there some system so that power can only come out of the plug?
anyone have any ideas on the easiest simplest way to hook up a panel or a car alternator? I was going to turn my indoor bicycle into a generator by hooking up a car alternator to it… how could i most simply hook this into the house?
admin answers:
You can put power into a plug, just be sure to shut your main breaker off first. And shut off breakers for high draw appliances like AC oven microwave waterheater etc.. When my power goes out I unplug my dryer and plug in a whip that I made that plugs into my generator. If you want to power the whole house you will need to use a 240v recept like for an electric dryer, if you use a standard 120v recept you will only power up one bus bar / half your house.
Yes 12v with an inverter will work, yes you can put an inverter on your car battery and power your house with your running car I suggest getting a deep cycle gel type battery in your vehicle if you want to do that, you should also upgrade to a 200a alternator if you’re going with an inverter larger than 2500watts, a car won’t be near as fuel efficient as a standard generator though, and it won’t put out near the wattage. But like I said before, if it’s only a 120v inverter you’re only going to power up half the house
Lizzie asks…
Who makes the parts for a wood fired steam powered electricity generator that can also heat a home?
Outdoor wood and coal furnaces as add on units to heat pumps are becoming popular now. I’m trying to find a vendor who makes a stand alone unit for powering a riverside cabin home. A 200 amp 240 VAC unit would be perfect, but a 100-150 amp unit would power everything.
admin answers:
Wood and coal good for heating and cooling but using them to produce steam to power a small generator would be too costly. Hippies run 200 amp services using solar panel arrays for lights and fans to move the hot and cold air.
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