DC to AC converter power solutions

[James Milner]

I among others seem to be accumulating batteries which are great dc sources but I am having difficulty in finding a cost effective and large enough DC to AC PURE SINE WAVE converter.
It seems that it is difficult to find either end product or "kit" type converters that may be able to deal with the full common household power requirements.
I have started this thread so that members may share their bespoke solutions.

Please keep in mind that the output varies across the world. For example 240v here in Australia and 120v in the U.S.

I'll open with a suggestion which would be good to rule out or in early on.

Is is possible to use a high quality small scale pure sine wave converter and attach it to a grid tie isolated from the grid, thereby using the sine wave from the converter to feed the Signal following requirements of the grid tie? My concern is will the grid tie follow the signal. Is the sine wave converter stable enough for the grid tie and will the attached sine wave converter heat up or become unstable (blow up) with the loads that the grid tie will push into the household wiring. Would an isolation transformer attached to the grid tie protect the household wiring or is it unnecessary.

Jamie

[James Milner]

John Bedini,
How do you utilise all your battery power?

[ZeusZcid]

Hi James,

I have looked into converting my house to run of batteries also in the past. I found getting a small solar setup like a 1kw to 2kw with a large grid tie inverter say 6k+ was the easiest way to do it. Just have to specify that you want one that can use a battery backup array. Isolation from the inverter and what ever charging method you use was my main problem. In the end I think I found a way to use an Arduino board to run some big relays to switch between the inverter and a 10coiler I was going to buy of John.
I opted to just convert my project room first so I could work out the technical issues first before I moved a large scale house.

Hope that helps Mate.

[Barrie Castle]

I have a bit of a different outlook on the whole thing. I'm into de-centralization. Every individual appliance should have its own battery or bank of them. Using DC to AC to DC again (inside some appliances or could be made to work off of) strikes me as being inefficient & wasteful & not fully utilizing what we've learned here. I'd rather run the chargers we've been building off of crystal batteries, then you can run everything "for free" "forever", virtually maintenance-free. It is actually the appliances themselves that are also poorly designed & are very wasteful. Everything needs over-hauling & once done, we will have complete control over our own energy generation & consumption. If you go into one of the 12 Volt shops that have just started up here (Mt Barker & Ingle Farm), you can see they have a good range of appliances that run straight off batteries. They could be designed much better still, using John Bedini's excellent technology.

I'm not sure how John Bedini currently uses his battery power, but I can recall something where he tried to go "off-grid" & the power company / cartel sent their thugs over to stop him.

If it were me, I'd leave the grid-tie alone. I'd be worried the power company is monitoring it & might drop in for a chat when least expected! I think John K has one of those, but I can't recall what he has done with it.

[John_Koorn]

I'd rather just run off my own batteries and use the grid as a backup. The problem with grid-tie (and part of the reason the Australian government has cut back on rebates) is because there is currently no infrastructure for large scale "mom & pop" solar/wind grid-tie setups.
I believe Perth in Australia sometimes has issues where there are too many home solar grid-tie systems for the grid to handle. The reason being is that your home grid-tie system puts mains voltage back into the grid (e.g. 240v in Australia). This is great for everyone on your local 240v sub-station because what you are putting into the grid your neighbour is probably using.
But what happens if people on your local 240v sub-station are putting in more power than what is being used? Guess what? The power company has to burn it off somehow because there is nowhere to store it, no way to patch it to another sub-station and no way of transforming it to a higher voltage for wider distribution.
This is typically an issue in new housing estates, where mom & pop go to out to work all day and there is no one around to use up all the power that is being shoved back into the grid from all the solar grid-tie setups.

So why not charge up your batteries during the day and use your own power at night when you get home from work?

But what about the feed-in tariff that pays you more per kWh than if I have to buy it you say? Well, that's a scam. Most power companies around here have locked in the feed-in tariff rate for 15 years, but have they locked in the buy-back tariff? Heck no! In a few years the buy-back tariff is going to exceed the feed-in tariff and the crappy panels they are putting on your roof are going to generate less energy every year, so in a few years you'll be back to where you started.

John K.

[Barrie Castle]

Guys,

Check out the Editorial & Feedback in Silicon Chip Magazine for the past two years. They have been against "going solar" in the conventional manner consistently. They can back John K's arguments & a whole lot more. The whole idea is very poorly designed & not thought out well at all.

I can understand you wanting to use what you've got - might as well, but read up on all the work John Bedini has done with these solar panels. There are installers around giving away slightly damaged panels that deliver good, useable power still. If I ever came by one, I'd put John Bedini's cable oscillator & run my lighting off it 24/7! Then, in the daytime, I'd use the panels to charge batteries either through cable oscillators or using my SSG's, providing I was home to monitor the situation.

[James Milner]

This is certainly an interesting topic, I was chatting to an electrical engineer who advised me I was miss informed regarding the infrastructure not being able to cope with all the solar energy coming into the grid with grid ties. I thought he would know more than me so I shut up! And have been reticent to make that assertion since!
As for me whilst agree with your idea Barrie, I am in not in my "long term home" yet, so to change to 12v all round is problematic and a short term poor investment.
My intention is whilst in my current abode. Get all my technology working reliably and transfer it to my longer term address. Or at least make the change to a 12v system by stages.
I have found getting a decent DC to AC converter either prohibitively expensive and many do not cope with the peak loads a family of 6 can place upon it! My energy use is only going to go up as the kids grow!
Ideally if I was to build I would run dual systems. AC where I really needed it. Or a 12v alternative where I engineered around it.
Can anyone suggest a good large pure sine wave inverter? For a reasonable price?

Barrie, how do you get around your "losses" with such large distances between batteries around the home? Do you charge in situ or run nice thick cable through the walls?
It would be great to get down to details with the effectiveness of running full time 12v dc systems and problems encountered as this IS the stuff that ultimately hampers most interested in off grid technology.

[John_Koorn]

Jamie,

Although I can't help you with a good pure sine wave inverter or even a grid-tie one, I do know that if you are going to install a grid-tie inverter it has to be approved and installed by a licensed electrician. I would start researching some of the Australian solar web sites to see what they are recommending for their installations.

If you want to eventually combine solar/wind with a battery backup system, you may want to consider an inverter that has that functionality as well - rather than just a straight grid-tie inverter. At the end of the day, you'll get what you pay for - just be wary of cheap units that come from China as they may not have passed AS testing. You don't want the power company coming after you to pay for any damage to the grid and you certainly don't want something that could cause your house to burn down!

You'll need to work out what your needs are and what you can afford, but you can save yourself a whole heap of cash if you do your research first.

Hope this helps.

John K.

[Barrie Castle]

See, that's where the problem is. Right there. We've been conditioned for over a century now to think that centralized power generation systems are "the only way". It doesn't work like you imagine. We must change our thinking in this regard. I'll keep it simple:

1. Every single appliance has it's own battery / battery bank... right there... no long wires, no holes in walls, no "infrastructure". Completely portable & absolutely perfect for your "moving soon" situation. Extremely low-budget & will be excellent for the long term, able to completely recover costs in the short term. Charge the lead-acid batteries with John Bedini's chargers... any of them or all of them will work perfectly & run those chargers off crystal batteries, then everything will last "forever" if you charge & discharge within the recommended battery limits.

2. I agree with you 100% on using your time now to get these systems up & running reliably. That's the way You have young kids? That's not a liability as I see it... that's an asset! So many extra sets of eyes... just think what you can do with that! Teach them how they can have anything they want to power, run it very inexpensively & operate between battery thresholds. No kidding... they'll invite their awestruck friends around to your place & you'll have your kids being "wasteful" with energy, doing things like leaving the fridge door wide open (accidentally on purpose - oopps! ), etc, etc - just to prove a point! Anyway, you can have each kid monitor & look after the condition of each battery for each appliance all the time. This is quite easy & safe to do, just measuring a voltage with a multimeter. Just ask John K. His young kids are right into this technology. Check out John K's youtube videos.

3. This is very easy to do in stages - appliance by appliance. That way, you can experience the results one bit at a time.

[ZeusZcid]

Hmmmm interesting I like the idea of having each unit having its own power supply/battery. Tho you still need to plug it into a recharge source. I have been trying to work with a way to charge enough battery using smaller indoor solar cells that can charge things using passive indoor solar while still being inside and not plugged into anything. I do think tho atm at least for me its easier to just use the current technology with an inverter and just run things with small battery pack and inverters. With some independent solar that's not grid tied as backup and to top of my charging batteries. Tho I foresee running around with a battery pack from room to room will get old real quick.

[Barrie Castle]

Hi ZeusZcid,

If you have built & load tested any of John Bedini's Battery Chargers (SSG, TWM, Cable Oscillator, etc, etc), you will see how much better at charging a battery they are than any conventional charging technique we have today. Have you got John Bedini's latest book? Near the back, it has maybe eight pages of advantages in a chapter over conventional charging techniques, plus another chapter on other advantages. You can also get a copy of John's book from your state library to read. One of the problems with solar / conventional charging is that it will murder your expensive batteries. Run a comparisson load test as the 1.10 SSG instructions ask & you will see, run after run, how conventional charging is destroying your battery, whereas charging with radiant energy just makes your battery better & better with each run. I've been working on a switching system for the SSG to charge batteries without you having to be there to do it all manually & swap them onto your load at the right time as well as log all the results. CISCOR did a massively complex one on the old forum. Nothing stays the same forever... run around with battery packs one day; auto switching the next! Start small & simple, maybe using what you have at first & document charge times & load times using conventional techniques. Buy up on 12V / 24V / 36V, etc appliances & ditch the inverter, then record charge & discharge times again. Charge radiantly & record charge & discharge times again... use the COP spreadsheet each time to make it easier. Finally, modify each appliance to incorporate the rotational energy from JB's designs. For example, run a fan conventionally, measuring wind speed as well. Record everything as before, but this time, modify your SSG or TWM to give the same wind speed & notice just how much better the charge & discharge times are, how much better the COP figures are & know that your battery will last "forever". You can use that principle to design blenders, air conditioners, etc, etc & eventually run your whole house off of batteries & watch your financial savings grow as everyone else faces massively rising energy costs. Invest & rest. I used the fan example as it's very simple to do & summer is on its way :-)

[rdvideo]

Hi there, been interested in your discussion since I have an all electric house and have been slowly working to do something to help with the bill. I started with the SSG at the beginning of this year. I was looking for wind turbine info since I am in an area that gets some good wind at times and strong. That's how I came across the SSG on YouTube. On the subject DC to AC converters, I have done a short Google search for DIY DC to AC inverters and found various inverter circuits to build yourself if you can get the parts and the inverters are for 120v or 240v output and that's determined by the output transformer used in the circuit. I also used the fan trick too to help keep cool while discharging a battery for the SSG experiments.

I have been looking into grid-tie systems and here in the states, the electric company, by law here, has to pay you for any extra power put back into the grid. They can tell that you are putting power back into the grid because your electric meter will be running backwards, reducing your total kWh. Having DC powered devices is a cool thing now that I know about the SSG, but to modify an AC powered device to run off of DC, you better know what you are doing or something will go BOOM! I know, I had it done when I built a circuit during my younger years that I did not follow the data book, e.g. experimenting, and literally blew the top off of the IC component I was playing with and it did make a loud pop too. Then I seen for the first time, the insides of an IC (Integrated Circuit). At my previous job at a US defense contractor, I was able to look at the "chip" inside of an IC after that time at 2000x zoom, really cool "markings" the manufactures put on the chips. One example is the picture of the Star Ship Enterprise in the corner of the chip that you can only see with a 2000x microscope, showing how small you can print something.

I have been working on adding a "pancake generator" to the SSG, so while it is charging/reconditioning a battery, it is also generating extra DC power from the rpm's of the SSG to charge another battery/battery bank for extra power for lights, fans and I think a refrigerator (an efficient one) too. From what I found online, I have my SSG setup to be a self-runner, hopefully. I still need to do some work on that side of it, but pickup coil and extra magnets are set. Just need to setup the timing for "back-popping" the primary battery. Since I like making things, I am having fun with the SSG and the possibilities.

[teej_seeker]

Hi there, been interested in your discussion since I have an all electric house and have been slowly working to do something to help with the bill. I started with the SSG at the beginning of this year. I was looking for wind turbine info since I am in an area that gets some good wind at times and strong. That's how I came across the SSG on YouTube. On the subject DC to AC converters, I have done a short Google search for DIY DC to AC inverters and found various inverter circuits to build yourself if you can get the parts and the inverters are for 120v or 240v output and that's determined by the output transformer used in the circuit. I also used the fan trick too to help keep cool while discharging a battery for the SSG experiments.

I have been looking into grid-tie systems and here in the states, the electric company, by law here, has to pay you for any extra power put back into the grid. They can tell that you are putting power back into the grid because your electric meter will be running backwards, reducing your total kWh. Having DC powered devices is a cool thing now that I know about the SSG, but to modify an AC powered device to run off of DC, you better know what you are doing or something will go BOOM! I know, I had it done when I built a circuit during my younger years that I did not follow the data book, e.g. experimenting, and literally blew the top off of the IC component I was playing with and it did make a loud pop too. Then I seen for the first time, the insides of an IC (Integrated Circuit). At my previous job at a US defense contractor, I was able to look at the "chip" inside of an IC after that time at 2000x zoom, really cool "markings" the manufactures put on the chips. One example is the picture of the Star Ship Enterprise in the corner of the chip that you can only see with a 2000x microscope, showing how small you can print something.

I have been working on adding a "pancake generator" to the SSG, so while it is charging/reconditioning a battery, it is also generating extra DC power from the rpm's of the SSG to charge another battery/battery bank for extra power for lights, fans and I think a refrigerator (an efficient one) too. From what I found online, I have my SSG setup to be a self-runner, hopefully. I still need to do some work on that side of it, but pickup coil and extra magnets are set. Just need to setup the timing for "back-popping" the primary battery. Since I like making things, I am having fun with the SSG and the possibilities.

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Hi rdvideo,

I am very interested in converting AC appliances to DC to run of batteries that have been charged by the SG radiant chargers. It seems that you have done some work here. Can i know what are the pitfalls to avoid in retrofitting AC appliances to run on DC?

sincerely,

teej_seeker

[Barrie Castle]

G'Day rdvideo,

John Bedini has a whole DVD out detailing his experiments with using wind power to run a basic SSG... been out for many years already, which would be worth a look at.

Yes, you need to make sure the equipment is out of warranty first, but if you can get hold of a schematic & / or a PCB layout, it should be easy to tap into the circuit. It's likely the voltage requirements will be other than multiples of 12V & in either case will need to be regulated. There are buck & boost controllers available that you can adjust to suit your equipment's needs for very little $$$. I can get one locally for less than $30:

http://www.jaycar.com.au/Power-Products-Electrical/Power-Conversion-%26-Transformation/DC-DC-Converters/DC-to-DC-Step-Up-Voltage-Converter-Module/p/AA0237

But it's cheaper & better to custom build your own using an efficient blocking oscillator design. Failing these options, another common fix is to use a switchable Car Laptop Power Supply:

http://www.jaycar.com.au/PRODUCTS/IT-Products/Connectivity/Power-Products/150W-Car-Laptop-Power-Supply/p/MP3472

When I acquire the means, I'll upload how I converted all my equipment.

I love your idea of a "pancake generator"! I've had my own ideas along those lines myself. I plan to add a fan directly to an SSG & use it to run another fan attached to a generator which I'll use to keep the SSG's primary battery topped up. I can't recall from college applied physics what the name for that effect is called (anyone?).

[Barrie Castle]

Hi Teej_seeker,

Yes, the biggest pitfall is getting enough of the right information in the form of schematics & / or PCB component layouts. Just trace through the mains to the first used section of DC power & read off or estimate from component values & markings or measure with a multimeter what the voltage & current ratings should be & whack in the right DC at that point using the methods I wrote about in the previous response.

Actually, most of the work has been done by others, as Youtube videos will show you. Some years ago I watched how a New Zealander (these people are well-known for their abilities to successfully tamper with everything from fruit to sheep to cars & beyond!), ran power tools from 90V+ worth of stacked 12V batteries!!! Having tested them over time & compared with conventionally driven AC ones, he concluded that on batteries, his power tools were quieter, smoother, performed better & lasted longer than those using AC! No inverter, just stacked batteries straight into the mains plug!
I couldn't believe it! It must have been taken down by now, but here's another one similar:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Run-AC-Tools-on-Batteries-Directly%2c-without-an-Inv/