Quote:
Originally Posted by SVOboy
Now, I figure there's not gadget made yet, but I was wondering what the actually probability of tying up a generator to the grid would be? Easy? Hard? Anyone have any DIY resources?
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I did this a year or two ago. I used an old single phase 1/3 hp induction motor and one of those bike trainers with a fan. I removed the fan and put a small lovejoy coupling on and mounted the whole thing to a wood board. I mounted the motor to the board aligned with the coupling. I monitored the power thru a mechanical watthour meter like utilities use. I could tell the direction of power flow from the spinning disk. It worked
, but not well for my pedaling abilities
. I could back feed only 20-40 watts while maxing out my pedaling power. Most of the power was used just getting the motor to pass zero power (between using and making power). Plus the ratio was a little too high feeding a 4 pole motor (1725 rpm). I believe 3 phase induction are the most efficeint way to do this but there have to be capacitors of a certain value on the unused phase(s) (I'm currently looking into this for wind power). Either way, small scale induction grid tie hasn't appeared to be very practical. I did the same trainer set-up with a DC motor and had a much more efficient set-up, but no grid tie. You could always try matching a dc motor with an Enphase grid tie inverter
. That would probably be the more efficient way of doing it with grid interaction.