Hey guys, noob here.
I have a petrol car engine, a chainsaw engine, a couple of car engine generators and I might be able to make a tesla turbine.
What can I do with these things? Say, if I want to be 100% off the grid and I start from scratch cut off from water and power but I have an old farm.
Any ideas or pointers where to find info about related?
>>994781
you can use the car engine and alternators, assuming 1 on the engine plus two more in place of the PS pump and AC that's 3kW +/- losses at 12VDC, you can then feed this into an inverter, the efficiency will drop to 65%, so you now have 2kW of usable electricity.
the car engine wont last long on a low load for very long with stock tuning, you'll want to lean the mixture out and adjust the timing to de-tune it so it produces all the required power(10hp) at 1,500rpm and nothing more.
forget the turbine, you clearly lack the funds or experience to fabricate something so precise.
with all this you still wont be completely off grid, you'll have all the power you need as long as the engine is running, however engines wont run forever. also how are you going to take a shit or wash your cloths/dishes without water?
>>994794
No water in the house. plumbing, yes. There's a lake 50m from the main building which will also house the machinery for electricity and water etc.
I have ten 12v car batteries. I forgot to mention this in the first post.
Let's assume I have the turbine.
>>994781
You're going to want to change the pulleys on the alternators because at idle they won't be producing much electricity.
The size inverter you'll need and charge controller will get expensive.
>>994816
If you change the pulleys the engine will no longer run at 'idle'. Increase load increase drive dummy.
>>994781
Tesla engines are a meme. Solar + battery is cheaper and easier.
>>994794
Why not just have the engine attached to an AC generator? Even with piss efficiency he'd be getting much more than 20% efficiency out.
They also just make generators, which are relatively inexpensive and a lot safer than a fucking engine going.
>>994797
Car batteries are not designed to be ran to even less than 95% of their max capacity. Deep cycle batteries would be 25-50%, so a car sized one would get you about 20Ah max. Which in theory sounds reasonable, until you realize even a 1000W microwave is 8.3A. Heating water would be even worse.
Additionally, 120V DC would just plain not work, appliances need AC.
You could switch to a DC system, but you'd be facing similar issues: storing power is just not efficient. Lead acid batteries can go bad within 5-10 years under reasonable favorable conditions (trickle, electrolyte, proper construction). Repeatedly discharging and charging the battery would literally make it go bad within the first year, because deep cycling a battery wears the hell out of it's plates. A lot of the statistics you might see about UPS or stored vehicle batteries takes into consideration that they're only used a few times a year at most, and only a large UPS might be drained more than 10%, compared to a stored vehicle battery.
If you could afford a vanadium battery, that'd literally be the best option. Recharge by solar or generator, and store near indefinitely. I think there's a few other emerging battery techs, but vanadium looks to be one of the best.
Really, what would you need power except for perhaps lighting, if you get heat from wood/coal/whatever? You could get away with a hand-crank LED flashlight for that, or even a box or two of good AA's stored underground.
