Off the grid with Bedini Tech

[Tom C]

Calvin,

you can get the tracker from tesla chargers or from TeslaGenX, Gary builds them for both of us. the easiest way to run your system is this:

1- figure out what your loads are, all of them at peak, then calculate what your loads are in the evening. being smart with your energy usage when the sun is out is most important. if you can keep your evening use to lights and maybe a laptop and the occasional microwave use you can save a lot of power.
2- purchase enough panels to run your loads AND charge your batteries for the day, and enough battery capacity to cover most of your loads during the day and all in the evening. energy management beomes your friend with solar. you can then run purely off solar during the day with enough panels and not need as big of a bank in the evening.
3- yes lead acid batteries, spare no expense, with lead acid you get what you pay for! go with Trojan, Rolls-surrette or Hup. if you can afford it go with a nickel iron battery from Iron Edison or Be utility free, especially if you are planning on living off solar for a long time.

the tracker will get the maximum out of the panels, especially in marginal light times, but it is really best to know what you need before your start. you might need an 80 amp tracker and not a 60. also you need to know if you are getting 12 or 24 volt panels.

Tom C

[Tom C]

spreadsheet for power consumption

as we are all on this journey to self sufficiency, it is really important to calculate loads. thiis website provides some great info and spreadsheets.
Live Within Your Daily 'Solar Energy Budget'

Tom C

[Quigon10101]

I started my alt energy / off grid campaign few years ago with an interest in HHO. I built a HHO generator and augmented my pickup truck mileage some 25% with it. It made me hate IC engines since they are so inefficient and are better suited as gigantic heaters. Then I planned and moved to a rural area and built a new home and set up livestock and agriculture business along with a couple other small businesses in the rural town and on the land I inherited from my father. The first thing related to alt energy that I built here was a biogas digester:

It started feeding methane to my kitchen stove and the 5KW genny quite admirably and I became partly independent in power production and also got a means to produce good natural fertilizer richer in ammonia, humous for the dry, nearly inorganic soil in the lands. Next step here is to install a small lower power tubewell to deliver the used biomass out of the digester back to the fields easily. Another plan is to find a safe and cheap way to compress that biogas and power my pickup with that so we can drive our kids to school and back without having to spend a dime for gasoline. I've already built a CO2 scrubber so on paper its bound to work.

Recently I went solar and got myself some 1200 watts output solar panels and hooked it up with a 1500W UPS that takes 24V DC. This was another step towards independence. The ease, comfort and peace of free and noiseless energy from the sun is something lovely that happened in this scene. However the battery bank now needed to be expanded and properly designed and considered, and the batteries I had were getting old. So I built two 27 plate batteries with help from a friend after buying the boxes, lead for connections, separators, -ve plates salvaged and hand picked from scrapped batteries, and a box of brand new +ve battery plates right out of a big tractor production factory known for their excellent batteries.

The thought of replacing the battery bank roughly every two years haunted me day and night. What if I could... were the thoughts that ultimately lead me here as I started looking for a desulfator or other stuff that could help in this regard when I stumbled upon a video called "Bedini's simple school girl" which, to be very honest, sounded a tad funny but the videos were amazing and held potential so the idea clicked and I decided to build the monopole, which I did a few days ago and am currently learning things about it. Then I spent hours reading and watching vids about the crystal battery and so I bought a couple of 4 AH motorcycle batteries and started experimenting with one after turning it into "alum + SO4". If this thing could be balanced, as Mr. Bedini says, then I would no longer have to have a mini crisis to replace the battery bank by building new batts as often. Right now I was winding a Tesla pancake coil that I saw in another video called "Zero Lenz Effect" by a admirable person who originally inspired me to build the HHO generator, ZeroFossilFuel on youtube. I intend to test it with the monopole.

The hurdle I face right now regarding the off grid idea is the inability to power the electrical items that need high kickstart amps that my custom made 1500W UPS with a unremarkable efficiency is unable to provide. I have some options on the table though. One is to buy a big UPS (A UPS is a inverter with more tunable options and features and sports a transformer to play with voltage conversion instead of the usual electronics only inverters). The other might be build a large enough inductor wound on a big iron core ring, but I'm unsure. The third option would be to replace those AC electrical appliances with DC. Like a DC motor pump, DC air conditioner and perhaps even a DC fridge. If the alum+sulfate battery performs well enough then I'll have more confidence whenever I go off grid. I'm still playing with all these ideas. I don't need a lot of watts. All I want is dependability from these power sources.

[ZPDM]

Tom,

This is about an hour, if you get an hour you will probably like this. It starts off a little slow, well honestly I was hooked from the start and had to watch the whole darn thing. The way he explained fractional distillation so I could understand and then, and my guess is he wasn't at all BSing, running a generator off the wood stove products ... just wonderful. Things could be so different. It occurred to me the other day that we are being kept at the level of fire for energy production and variations on throwing stones for war and aggression. Well, here is "Teslonian Man" showing that we can keep it at the level of fire and do quite a heck of a lot.

Only problem is he has like 200 videos

[Tom C]

pretty interesting!

Tom C

[aln]

Tom C,
you wrote "you are better off running the primary side of your monopole off solar with a cap in parallel to protect the array from the spike..." on post #32 of this thread, how do you guage the size of the cap? Thanks Aln

[John_Bedini]

Solar Tracker III

To All,
Very good stuff.
A little about the Solar Tracker III.
The Solar Tracker 3 is a new design starting from the input to the output. The tracker is a liner amplifier design using Wakefield heat sinks forced air cooling. The most important thing about this unit is can the solar panels drive the amplifier to full power. The unit uses high power PNP transistors and a comparator for battery level. It is safe to use the inverters with the Tracker 3 as the tracker will supply the load to the inverter at the same time keeping the battery charged. I do not pot these units as they can be repaired if need be. The Fan in the unit only runs when the sun is on the panels. The red battery level light maintains stability of the circuits at night and only requires 50 Ma to keep the circuit stable. The Tracker uses the potential of the solar panels, Example, if your panels are rated for 12 volts and open circuit is 22 volts and under load you can maintain 18.5 volts your getting everything out of the charge regulator. If the panels can not maintain that the charge regulator will adjust to the proper current and if need be drop out if the voltage is to low. if you can not maintain the current then you must add panels to bring the unit to the correct level. The trackers are manufactured by ME and is on first come basis. They range from 10 amps to 350 amp levels 12 or 24 volts , they are set up to add circuits to expand them. One of the circuits can turn on all the lighting at night as they do at my house, yes my house is using the experimental new units to power all out side lights and will soon be powering my office out side off the grid. I will post some pictures of what I have done. I did the experiment now for 8 months using cheap harbor fright panels, why did I use the panels because they are true low light panels but are lacking the protection diodes that is why so many complaints the panels loose power. If you run power back through these type panels they will loose 1/2 the rated power out put. Most people never check this out so when the cheap panels fail they blame the panel as no good. The Trackers has the diodes built into it so they have been working fine. I have also tested the 35 amp hr battery they sell it is a true deep cycle AGM battery for the 65 dollars . The battery has maintained in low light conditions at 15.2 volts now for 8 months . My current draw at night is about 3 amps all night long with the led lights I have made, and will post pictures of that soon. If the SSG is running in solar mode then watching DVD 33 is the one you need as it goes into three modes of operation, I would run the SSG in generator mode with solar and that does not require a 10 coil machine to achieve what you want but it does require a liner regulator. More later about the Tracker III
John

[Tom C]

To All,
Very good stuff.
A little about the Solar Tracker III.
The Solar Tracker 3 is a new design starting from the input to the output. The tracker is a liner amplifier design using Wakefield heat sinks forced air cooling. The most important thing about this unit is can the solar panels drive the amplifier to full power. The unit uses high power PNP transistors and a comparator for battery level. It is safe to use the inverters with the Tracker 3 as the tracker will supply the load to the inverter at the same time keeping the battery charged. I do not pot these units as they can be repaired if need be. The Fan in the unit only runs when the sun is on the panels. The red battery level light maintains stability of the circuits at night and only requires 50 Ma to keep the circuit stable. The Tracker uses the potential of the solar panels, Example, if your panels are rated for 12 volts and open circuit is 22 volts and under load you can maintain 18.5 volts your getting everything out of the charge regulator. If the panels can not maintain that the charge regulator will adjust to the proper current and if need be drop out if the voltage is to low. if you can not maintain the current then you must add panels to bring the unit to the correct level. The trackers are manufactured by ME and is on first come basis. They range from 10 amps to 350 amp levels 12 or 24 volts , they are set up to add circuits to expand them. One of the circuits can turn on all the lighting at night as they do at my house, yes my house is using the experimental new units to power all out side lights and will soon be powering my office out side off the grid. I will post some pictures of what I have done. I did the experiment now for 8 months using cheap harbor fright panels, why did I use the panels because they are true low light panels but are lacking the protection diodes that is why so many complaints the panels loose power. If you run power back through these type panels they will loose 1/2 the rated power out put. Most people never check this out so when the cheap panels fail they blame the panel as no good. The Trackers has the diodes built into it so they have been working fine. I have also tested the 35 amp hr battery they sell it is a true deep cycle AGM battery for the 65 dollars . The battery has maintained in low light conditions at 15.2 volts now for 8 months . My current draw at night is about 3 amps all night long with the led lights I have made, and will post pictures of that soon. If the SSG is running in solar mode then watching DVD 33 is the one you need as it goes into three modes of operation, I would run the SSG in generator mode with solar and that does not require a 10 coil machine to achieve what you want but it does require a liner regulator. More later about the Tracker III
John

great post John thanks! so just to clarify you would power the SG with the tracker like it was a charge controller with batteries paralleled on the output. and then put a linear regulator on the SG output correct?

Tom C

[aln]

Bought first solar panel yesterday, after a couple more panels a Solar Tracker III will be in the mix. (from TeslageneX of course Thank you John Bedini.

[Allen R.]

Thanks for the info on the Tracker3. Glad to hear that they are inverter safe. My mom and i both need to get one. I have ten sets of those HF panels.

[Faraday88]

how can you put a liner regulator on the SG out put.. you get spike there..?? what are you saying Tom C Im baffled..!
rgds,
Faraday88.

[John_Bedini]

@ All,
Please let me explain. The Tesla Solar Tracker 5 has been re-designed and is not the same thing as the early trackers. The new tracker is a real robust unit and is capable of up to 350 amps at 12 volts at 24 volts it can be built up to 150 amps. These units use a Wakefield type design forced air cooling. It is a linear regulator power amplifier design. The reason I have changed the Tesla charger is to stop the failure in the power fets as everyone is different coming from the factories over seas. To use the Tracker 5 your panels must push at the maximum voltage. The low light panels I run at home and my system in it's experimental form supplies about 3.5 amps all night long lighting up the yard with Led lights, you can read outside with what I have. My 24v panels at open circuit can do 43.3 volts which is what the Tracker 5 wants. The low light panels at 12v can push 22.5 volts. The Trackers can be made with automatic lighting to turn on lights up to 20 amps, but we can make them do 40 amps. My system is designed to do just that. The tracker 5 is safe with inverters as it will not cause any glitches as other charger do. I have spent a very long time design this unit and plan on posting video of this unit working and driving loads. We should talk about all of these things here on solar. The problem is that this unit is very costly to build and I never want to see it back because of failure, if your batteries are good it will maintain them. The batteries should be pushed to about 15.3 volt if you ever expect to have any power off grid, you need everything you can put into the batteries during the sunlight hours. I will talk about Harbor Fright Panels next and what can be done with them.
John

[John_Bedini]

how can you put a liner regulator on the SG out put.. you get spike there..?? what are you saying Tom C Im baffled..!
rgds,
Faraday88.

The same circuit that is in the Tracker 5
John

[John_Koorn]

@ All,
Please let me explain. The Tesla Solar Tracker 5 has been re-designed and is not the same thing as the early trackers. The new tracker is a real robust unit and is capable of up to 350 amps at 12 volts at 24 volts it can be built up to 150 amps. These units use a Wakefield type design forced air cooling. It is a linear regulator power amplifier design. The reason I have changed the Tesla charger is to stop the failure in the power fets as everyone is different coming from the factories over seas. To use the Tracker 5 your panels must push at the maximum voltage. The low light panels I run at home and my system in it's experimental form supplies about 3.5 amps all night long lighting up the yard with Led lights, you can read outside with what I have. My 24v panels at open circuit can do 43.3 volts which is what the Tracker 5 wants. The low light panels at 12v can push 22.5 volts. The Trackers can be made with automatic lighting to turn on lights up to 20 amps, but we can make them do 40 amps. My system is designed to do just that. The tracker 5 is safe with inverters as it will not cause any glitches as other charger do. I have spent a very long time design this unit and plan on posting video of this unit working and driving loads. We should talk about all of these things here on solar. The problem is that this unit is very costly to build and I never want to see it back because of failure, if your batteries are good it will maintain them. The batteries should be pushed to about 15.3 volt if you ever expect to have any power off grid, you need everything you can put into the batteries during the sunlight hours. I will talk about Harbor Fright Panels next and what can be done with them.
John

Hi John, the new Tesla Solar Tracker 5 sounds great. How does it go with batteries that may be sulfated from using another type of charger that doesn't push the batteries up into the de-sulfation range? Is it able to rejuvenate these batteries and extend their capacity and life?

Also, how does the TST5 perform in low light when the panels aren't putting out the maximum voltage? Does it still work as well with other than Harbor Freight panels? I have 8 24v panels on my roof that are tied to a grid-connect inverter and would love to be able to use a TST5 to charge batteries with them instead of getting a measly 8c/kWh from the power company.

Looking forward to a video of a TST5 in action

John K.

[Tom Cerullo]

This topic is of great interest to me
I'm building an off grid cabin; the reason being property is 700m away from power line.
Here is my current setup:
Bergey 1KW wind turbine
700W solar panels
Magnum pure sinewave inverter 7200W @240volts
880 ah 24volt battery bank ..8 x 6volt batteries in series /parallel config.
Kubota diesel GL6500 gen / autostart.

over the past two years I've built two bike wheel ssg's from scratch while in the yahoo group.
last year I started making a cad file for the complete 10 coil monopole and it's complete.
I'm getting close to when I'll have time to start the 10 coil build... so since the forum is fired up again .. if you all care to hear about my experiences with the process
I will gladly share here if anyone is interested . I'm obviously trying to build an energizer that can help me supplement my off grid setup .
my battery bank has less than 10 charge/discharge cycles and now its been over 3 years ..I've done equalizer charges twice per year ...by generator inverter charging.
The batteries are basically at 12.9v across... charging sees batteries go up to 13.5 then settles to 12.9v.
I dont spend much time posting... but my hope is that the 10 coil build will pay off and help supplement my power supply when i have no wind no sun no diesel !
Heaven forbid!
Thank you
Tom Cerullo