Hot Idea for Electricity from CNC
Oro Barton CNC Electronics instructor and Stephen Davis CNC Power Engineering instructor -photo Anwen Roberts
Prince George, B.C.- Exciting research at the college of New Caledonia in Prince George could help greenhouse operators extend their growing season.
CNC power engineering and electronics instructors and students have completed a research project that uses new technology to produce electricity from the heat of a wood stove.
The Thermoelectric Generators (TEG) research project showed electric current can be produced from any hot surface, and have a wide range of uses, including power recovery in cars and charging electronic devices in the backcountry.
CNC’s Applied Research and Innovation Department received a $20,000 grant from the Omenica Beetle Action Coalition to determine the potential for converting heat from woodstoves into electricity, with application in the greenhouse industry.
From a cost perspective, the technology is on-par with solar panels, with the added advantage of being more reliable. “Basically you can control how much wood you burn and when, so you can control the electricity that is generated, which of course is not the case with solar panels,” said researcher Oro Barton. “The wood stove has the added advantage over solar panels in that you can generate electricity continuously at night and during winter days with reduced hours of sunlight.”
Greenhouse producers looking to extend their growing season often heat their greenhouses with wood stoves, and this research helps them use new technology to produce electricity to run LED lights as well.
“This is not brand new technology, but using it in greenhouse applications is new,” explained Hardy Griesbauer, director for CNC’s Applied Research and Innovation department. “It’s free energy, other than the initial costs of buying the supplies and could add two months to the beginning and end of the regular growing season.”
The research team successfully produced enough electricity to run a 40 Watt light continuously, or to charge a battery bank that can then be used to power a lighting system for several hours a day.
The researchers examined the input and output of energy and looked at different wood types on electricity generation. CNC also completed a cost-benefit analysis of the project so growers can see if this kind of technology is a benefit to their operations.
“This technology is well-suited for any off-grid application that has wood supply,” Barton said.
College researchers are now looking for industry partners to further develop this technology for off-grid applications.
Comments
yeah, off-grid living!
your turn sm
I can hardly wait to see those installed in every home in PG. Burning wood is considered carbon neutral so another source of clean electricity and heat your home to boot! Those units are smokeless aren’t they?
As long as christy and crew only allow feed in tariffs for big run of the river projects and keep the little people out of the programs nothing will ever happen in renewables . It’s a crime against the people of bc . It keeps us from growing a green economy . It keeps out jobs for electricians , installers , sales , electronics engineers ,truckers and many more . Ontario is leaving bc in their dust in renewables and this is only the case because of feed in tariffs . What a shame . What a stupid stance . Net metering is a jobs killer and she knows it .
Why do we have to be carbon neutral?
Actually Ontario’s energy policies are a disaster. Do you want to pay their rates?
No. I don’t want to pay for electricity at all . If I was in Ontario I would pay the thirty grand for a solar farm of my own sell my surplus to Ontario hydro for 42 cents a kW for the next 20 years with an roi of 7 years on my plant . Every roof top could be a power plant . There is absolutely no need to destroy our wild rivers . Btw the run of the river folks get three times as much as the Ontario solar plants . There’s a really good reason for christy not wanting to let us little folks into the game but it isn’t good for us .
Price aside, you do know that run of the river if far more environmentally friendly than huge dams, right? I know people who have lived off grid for years, either solar, hydro or a combination and it didn’t take 30 grand to get it up and running. And these aren’t small cabins, they are houses running everything the average person has in their house. If you are near hydro lines you can tie into the grid in BC too and sell your excess power to them, in fact, they are obligated to buy it from you. So not sure why you think Ontario is the cats meow. Maybe watching to much survivorman off the grid, aye? His for sure cost 30 grand plus, but only because he contracted everything out, including using a chopper to bring in lumber, something most normal people wouldn’t do.
Ataloss – check your info, BC Hydro paid a bit over 60 cents a kWh to IPPs last year. The rest of the money is for transmission and the like. If you get a solar panel and sell power to Hydro they will pay you 9.99 cents a kWh under the net metering program or you could wait for another call for power
It says LEDs. The question is how much power in Watt or HP it generates and how it compares with an older wood burning technology of say steam engines? You can always generate electricity by manually turning a rotor (like a bicycle dynamo).
you missed the point on this one prof.
This is an alternative to electro-mechanical generation.
Think about it, what happens to all the thermal energy off just about anything: the fridge coils, the furnace, the hat water tank, light bulbs, etc.
By being able to capture that wasted thermal energy and even trying to control it with cooling, we become more efficient.
Granted, the energy return will be less than the original input thermal energy and especially the the original electrical energy, but capturing something is better than capturing nothing.
Combine that with ataloss’ suggestion of cladding every structure in solar panels,and we could be on to something.
Centralized generation is an archaic concept from the dawn of the electrical age.
Centralized generation is an archaic concept from the dawn of the electrical age.
Now that’s is funny, read this http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/13/nyt-robert-f-kennedy-jr-and-david-crane-have-no-clue-about-how-grid-tied-solar-power-actually-works-with-the-grid/
Germany in trouble with its so called renewables
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/27/germanys-co2-and-energy-policy-about-to-falter/
I’ve seen these little TEGs tuning a small fan on wood stoves. That’s all they could turn, so how much could the average stove generate? I’d like an answer to that.
I wonder if they used a water jacket inside a wood stove to produce steam, could they generate a lot more?
read the story, it about a completely different method of producing electrical power.
it is a direct conversion of thermal (heat) energy into electrical.
I guess it is then a solid-state approach with no moving part. Based on one of the thermoelectric effects. Peltier-Seebeck?
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