Alternative energy from the Aquarium

[bs21]

Just kickin around some things i have been thinking about lately as with further devlopment could be alternative energy sources to power the home aquarium. This is a post to get some discussion going about possibilities and possibly existing products allready available etc... so the idea:
quick background: i was watching something on TV about alternative energy sources and they talked about solar, wind, hydro etc.... and also have a friend with a boat that has a small wind generater and some small solar panels to help power boat electronics and helps charge the batteries.
So what i was thinking about is with all the constant water movement through the aquarium would it be possible to replicate what a wind generator or hydroelectric plant acomplishes in the home aquarium by creating some small generator in line after a pump or overflow where there is constant water motion? not sure the ammounts of electricity that would be able to be produced....maybe it would be minimal nad not worth it but it seems like an interesting possibility.
Also thinking of the small solar pannels....I'm not completely familiar with the way the solar pannel interacts with light (as in what type of light, is there a certain spectrum etc....) and the way it uses it. But would it be possible to utilize lightfrom the aquarium to generate power this way? Also maybe a minimal ammount that would not be worth it but with further development could be interesting to see a completely self sustaining aquarium. Would never have to worry about power outages again plus the extra that would be produced at night when lights or off and potentially put energy back into the grid.
Again just some thoughts. feel free to comment if you think its a possibility or not or thoughts etc.....maybe some of you have thought about this also

 

[reefforbrains]

What you are talking about is more like a perpetual motion device.
Any change from one form to another of energy would be counter productive because of drag and resistance making it just a complicated way to actually waste energy. Your input required to generate would be far greater than your output from above mentioned draws.
The exception would be to make a large skylight over your tank and then line the inner walls with solar panels. The light flowing through would light your tank while the panels would pick up a bit of extra feeding a battery for smaller appliances in your system.

 

[culp]

yea you would use more electricity than what you get out of it.
its the biggest rule of energy. converting energy from one form to another you will lose a lot of energy.

 

[pezenfuego]

Originally Posted by ReefForBrains
http:///forum/post/3023876
What you are talking about is more like a perpetual motion device.
Any change from one form to another of energy would be counter productive because of drag and resistance making it just a complicated way to actually waste energy. Your input required to generate would be far greater than your output from above mentioned draws.
The exception would be to make a large skylight over your tank and then line the inner walls with solar panels. The light flowing through would light your tank while the panels would pick up a bit of extra feeding a battery for smaller appliances in your system.
That's an interesting idea. That would truly help save energy. I bet it would pay for itself pretty quickly. Has anyone tried this?

 

[reefforbrains]

On the blue board there are several that have done it.
Most however are off the beaten path and full custom jobs. Once you have committed to a 1500g tank in your home, cutting a hole in the ceiling is not a big deal by comparison. For most hobbiests this is too perm of a option for smaller tanks.

 

[daltrey]

It's called solar tube lighting. If my central air duct wasn't directly above my tank I would install it myself. Probably save $40 a month in electricity.

 

[bs21]

I was just thinking with electricity probably being the biggest regular expense for my tank and probably others. that it would be awsome to have a self sustainable tank as far as electricity is concered or even half sustainable....anything to cut down on the costs.

 

[scsinet]

Originally Posted by bs21
http:///forum/post/3026531
I was just thinking with electricity probably being the biggest regular expense for my tank and probably others. that it would be awsome to have a self sustainable tank as far as electricity is concered or even half sustainable....anything to cut down on the costs.
You'd do far better to think about using solar, wind, etc to generate power for your tank. The other guys are right, since you are using energy to create that flow, what you'd get out would always be less than you put in, as oppose to natural hydroelectricity, which converts natural energy to human usable - electricity.
But if you are interested in this, really look into solar and wind power. Solar is one of the most compelling, because the government is offering some pretty good tax credits and subsidies. To really reap the financial benefit of solar, you have to be a pretty heavy user... but most of us reefers are heavy power users.
I myself have been trying to find a way to power my tank with my ego. I figure I could even get those upgraded halides if I did that. So far I just can't figure out how to convert it. I'm so incredibly smart though... it's just a matter of time... ooops... there I go again!

 

[wattsupdoc]

Yeah, keep strokin' that ego buddy, it'll get big enough soon enough...

Then just explode and start a whole new galaxy....

JK>JK>>>You left yourself open there.

When ever you convert any energy into another form of energy you have losses. Now, we can get a lot of energy from the power of say Niagara Falls. But no way could we ever capture the full power of it. The problem is converting energy requires some type of work. Work utilizes energy. So No form of creating energy can ever be 100% efficient. Now, you could recapture some of the energy being used in your aquarium. But you'll loose some of the tank efficiency by doing so. For instance installing a small generator in line on the return pump line would create resistance to the flow, thereby causing some of the work to be wasted. Additionally, you would possibly need to increase the pump size to get the same flow(possibly). This would to some extent negate the use of the generator. Added cost would also be involved. How much depends. Would you ever be able to recoup the costs? Maybe...
Definitely capturing the wind, the sun, and the rain (why don't we see any means of rain generating? Down spouts with small alternators?) Would be a much more effective means...But still costly. Solar panels are coming to reasonable prices these days. Wind generators are following suit, to some extent. In order to be fully off the grid, you need both. to run a 180 ish... Both would be best. Smaller scale, but both.

 

[locoyo386]

Originally Posted by ReefForBrains
http:///forum/post/3023876
What you are talking about is more like a perpetual motion device.
Any change from one form to another of energy would be counter productive because of drag and resistance making it just a complicated way to actually waste energy. Your input required to generate would be far greater than your output from above mentioned draws.
The exception would be to make a large skylight over your tank and then line the inner walls with solar panels. The light flowing through would light your tank while the panels would pick up a bit of extra feeding a battery for smaller appliances in your system.
Hi there,
If I understand this correctly you would have solar panels on the sides of the tank. The skylight would let sun rays enter the house and hit the solar panels. One problem is that the panels would be mostlikely parallel to the sun rays. Not much electricity will be produced, the most electricity will be produced when the rays hit perpendicular to the solar panels. As mentioned the most cost effective would be solar panels to run the tank. This would not be very costly either since the power used by the tanks is not very high. What would be the watts used on an average? You could get 200 watt modules.

 

[scsinet]

Solar power systems heavily reap the benefit of the economies of scale. In any solar installation, I'd put in the largest system I could possibly afford, and use a grid-tie inverter, so whatever I produce above and beyond the tank's needs would get used by other things in the house.
Still... it has to come down quite a bit before I'll get interested.

 

[locoyo386]

Originally Posted by SCSInet
http:///forum/post/3066338
Solar power systems heavily reap the benefit of the economies of scale. In any solar installation, I'd put in the largest system I could possibly afford, and use a grid-tie inverter, so whatever I produce above and beyond the tank's needs would get used by other things in the house.
Still... it has to come down quite a bit before I'll get interested.
I thing that AC would be my first priority, lol. That is what I plan to do in the near future, but I plan to run the whole house with solar power system. It's not a bad choice, though it's still early in the game at about 20%-30% efficiency.

 

[scsinet]

Originally Posted by locoyo386
http:///forum/post/3067043
I thing that AC would be my first priority, lol. That is what I plan to do in the near future, but I plan to run the whole house with solar power system. It's not a bad choice, though it's still early in the game at about 20%-30% efficiency.
The big problem is that most of us don't live in an area that gets enough sun. Assuming you get 12 hours of full, hard sun a day, year round, even a cheapo system from that famous site where you bid on stuff takes almost 7 years to return, assuming no maintenance or other ongoing expenses.... at least by my calculations.
Of course nobody actually gets that much, and most of us don't live in a part of the country where we could even expect to get anywhere near that. Lots of folks don't even see themselves living in ther houses for 7 years.
IMO, if I lived in an open area where I could really go for this sort of thing, I'd do wind power. It seems like you can get a LOT more for a LOT less, but I'd imagine that a wind tower with moving parts would have higher maintenance costs.

 

[locoyo386]

Originally Posted by SCSInet
http:///forum/post/3067446
IMO, if I lived in an open area where I could really go for this sort of thing, I'd do wind power. It seems like you can get a LOT more for a LOT less, but I'd imagine that a wind tower with moving parts would have higher maintenance costs.
Is wind power more efficient than solar? How do figure wind is more cost effictive than solar? I would imagine that different parts of the state would benifit from different types of energy sources. In california, at lest were I live, I think that solar would be a better bet than wind. On the other hand, people in Chicago might benifit from wind more than solar. Not sure where you are, but here solar is not bad since we get alot of sun during the year.
I am not too familiar with wind towers but at what speeds do they start to generate electricity (at least enough to make them useful)? It would be cool to compare the two, as far as efficiency, reliability and cost.

 

[acrylic51]

Why couldn't you use a small solar panel to power just portions of your tank needs? Would that be possible?

 

[jstdv8]

Isnt the idea to gain back some of the lost energy? Not to actually power the hole tank off of the hydroelectric power?
I have an overflow that drops 5 feet before it dumps into my sump, I also have 3 waterfalls on my sump Surely you could get a small return on your power through this as a supplement.

 

[scsinet]

Originally Posted by acrylic51
http:///forum/post/3265552
Why couldn't you use a small solar panel to power just portions of your tank needs? Would that be possible?

Originally Posted by Jstdv8
http:///forum/post/3265959
Isnt the idea to gain back some of the lost energy? Not to actually power the hole tank off of the hydroelectric power?
I have an overflow that drops 5 feet before it dumps into my sump, I also have 3 waterfalls on my sump Surely you could get a small return on your power through this as a supplement.

There are two ways to power a tank (or anything else for that matter) with alternative energy.
The first way is to just power the entire thing - or one entire piece of equipment - from an inverter that is fed by your solar panels or alternator (hydro). The drawbacks here is that you have to have sufficient power to run whatever you are running totally, and if the system stops working, whatever you are powering will stop too.
The second way is to use a grid tie inverter which allows you to inject power back into your home's electrical system. This is the only real way to go, because it allows for maximum offsetting. Say you used the first method, and you bought a solar system that could generate 500 watts, but you only plugged a 200 watt device into it.. that's 300 wasted watts that you paid for. With a GTI, anything in the house can use that power, and the full capacity is always used. Because it's parallelled into your home electrical system, if the solar/hydro system stops producing power (cloudy day, night time, etc), the ultility simply picks up the slack. As a matter of fact, in most cases, you can put in a system that is larger than your entire home's nominal load, which means that your whole house and then some is powered by the system except during peak hours. During these non-peak times, your electric meter will acutally spin backwards and you'll be selling power back to the utility. Many folks deploy huge systems to do just this. Then they don't receive a bill, but a check.
Unfortunately, the GTI is expensive. We all learned in physics in high school that you can parallel batteries to double the output current. Well you can't do that with AC without synchronizing the waveforms and doing a bunch of other special tricks. The GTI takes care of all this for you.
Anyway, my point is that everything that is needed drives the costs up. Generally speaking, the smaller the solar system, the longer it takes to return on investment, not the shorter. You could easily spend several thousand dollars to produce pennies worth of electricity per day.
On the hydro side... the efficiency of hydroelectric power (particularly DIY setups) is so low and the amount of usuable energy that the falling water is capable of producing is so low, you'll probably never have a return that is worth all the dinking around you'll need to do to make it work.

 

[acrylic51]

I really wasn't talking about or looking for a return on my investment. I'm just looking to take some strain off my household bill. Even If i'd only generate enough power to run my tunzes and my wavebox, exhaust fan in the fishroom I'd be pleased.

 

[scsinet]

Originally Posted by acrylic51
http:///forum/post/3266287
I really wasn't talking about or looking for a return on my investment. I'm just looking to take some strain off my household bill. Even If i'd only generate enough power to run my tunzes and my wavebox, exhaust fan in the fishroom I'd be pleased.
You and I don't often disagree, but this doesn't make any financial sense to me.
Hypothetically speaking, why would you spend $1000 to save $5/mo on your bill? Or $100 to save $1.00/mo?
If the equipment costs sufficient dollars that the time it takes for the savings to catch up to the initial investment will take longer than the equipment's life cycle, then you aren't saving anything.
Say the equipment can be expected to last for 10 years.... so that's 120 months.
So if you spent $1000 on equipment, you'd have to make sure it saves you at least $8.33 on your bill every month just to break even, let alone save anything.
That's the problem with the alternative engergies thus far... they are so expensive that the outlay often isn't made up until beyond the expected life expectency of the setup.
Now, if being "green" is the goal, and you are willing to lose money to accomplish it then it might make more sense, but if easing your bill is the primary goal, then you need to consider the intial investment, what you expect to save, the life expectency, and how long you are willing to wait before your intial investment is recovered, if ever.
Just to use a practical example... yesterday I stumbled across a solar panel at a surplus store that produces 20 watts for $70. This does not include the inverter or a casing to make a solar panel withstand the elements (since it'll be outside), or the necessary bits to hook everything up, or the labor costs (whether it be paying someone or sweat equity).
With inverter inefficiencies, let's guestimate that you will get maybe 17 watts out of the system on a perfect, bright sunny day.
17 watts for about 8 hours a day, assuming PERFECT WEATHER all year round.
0.017kwh * 8 = 0.136kwh/day. At the average of $0.10 per kwh that's a savings a day of 1.3 cents per day, or about $5 a year in savings. That makes the investment in just the panel of $70 take 14 years to pay off... all to save a whopping $0.39 per month in electricity.
Of course with economies of scale the costs per kwh produced go down (and open the door to government subsidies). I've run the numbers on large scale systems and the best I can do is a 11 year return.

 

[scsinet]

One thing I thought of...
If you are running things like Tunzes and exhaust fans.. you could skip the inverter part and run those things directly off the panels (Tunzes being low voltage drives and exhaust fans being made possibly using computer fans), if you have the means to DIY a regulator for the tunzes, and the means to build a controller that will switch to utility power when there is insufficient sunlight.