[RE-wrenches] Array direct farm machinery?

Steve McCarney stevemccarney54 at gmail.com
Fri Jul 20 07:13:50 PDT 2012


Could the site use any refrigeration? There is a family of fridges called
"ice lined" and these store energy in the form of ice, avoiding the need
for a battery. Some are made for solar direct drive operation, but at lower
voltages (12-24 vdc nominal). They have reasonably long "autonomy" times at
constant hot temperatures (tested at either + 32C or +43C). Most will offer
5+ days of autonomy in those hot conditions.

Try Sundanzer (USA), True Energy (UK), Dometic (Luxemburg), Haier (China)
and Vestfrost (Denmark). All of these companies have these and all are
prequalified for vaccine storage by the WHO, however the companies would
let you know if they offer similar products to fit your needs. Sundanzer
also could supply a small freezer.

Steve McCarney, Project manager
Solar Electric Light Fund

On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 5:20 PM, Eric Youngren <ericyoungren at gmail.com>wrote:

> Howdy Wrenches,
>
> We are thinking up new ideas for powering agriculture in the rural
> developing world to propose for the new USAID "Energy Grand Challenge for
> Development" <http://www.poweringag.org>
>
> One idea is to build PV array direct water pumping systems for irrigation
> that could be converted to power productive use farm machinery for grain
> milling, oil pressing or other farm processing jobs after the harvest is
> in.  The idea being that after the harvest they don't need the irrigation
> pumping for a bit and the PV array could be switched over to drive a motor
> to accomplish a mechanical task.  For that matter if it was an easy swap
> (Anderson 2 pole connectors, dual battery boat switches, etc) between the
> pumping load and the machinery load the same PV array could be used on any
> given day to either run the pump or the machine(s).     I'd like to avoid
> batteries altogether and I'd like to allow a single 1 to 3 kW PV array to
> accomplish multiple array direct mechanical tasks.
>
> This is just a brainstorm at this point,  maybe this is a crazy idea and
> not worth pursuing, but I'd be really curious if anybody has any experience
> doing anything like this or any other ideas to bring to the table.
>
> Any ideas?  Thanks!
>
> Eric Youngren
> Solar Nexus International
> www.solarnexusinternational.com
>
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