Quote:
Originally Posted by teoman
Look at Cogeneration.
IF you are using the LPG for heating, an internal combustion engine turns most of its energy to heat. So you can get your heating that way with the additional benefit of getting electricity.
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Not a bad idea, but I think an engine running 24/7 is much more expensive than buying electricity. My primary heat source is wood, so wood gas could be a thing, there's lots of standing dead ash (hard wood) in my state. I've wanted to build a gasifier just haven't really dedicated much time to side projects like that.
I've done the math on my corolla engine before, assuming at idle it creates enough power at idle and it didn't consume more fuel than the engine with no load (it most likely will), according to the scan gauge it eats about 1 gal per 3 hours which ends up being 8 gals per day. Even at $2/gal that's $16 per day. My power bill is sub $100, I used to have it way down like $30. Anyway, at $100, 30 day month, that's $3.33/day. Our heating season is roughly 6 months here and I probably use around 12 face cord of hard wood which is around 2 face cord per month. $16 for fuel * 30 = $480/mo vs electric + rough cost of the wood I use ($60/face cord going on the high end) is $120 (2 face cord) + $100 (high electric bill), = $220. Less than half the cost of a small (1.8L with low rpm peak torque) 4 cylinder gas engine idling for a month.
It's hard to beat massive corps that can do things at massive scale. If I recall correctly, even if I mimic what they do and turned a turbine but did it at home owner sized output, it still is massively less efficient than larger scale. Besides that, they likely buy their fuel in massive quantity via contracts, so probably get some of the best prices on the market too.
It's pretty interesting it's fairly close, 2:1 ratio about, I didn't conciser the heat off the engine for home heating as a secondary benefit.