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I was building a state of the art, off-grid, alternate energy
lab at my off grid geodesic domes near Ward, CO.
This is where I planned to research some ideas I've had, and ultimately
develop them into some alternate energy products. I believe that my
30+ year background in industrial automation, robotics, and embedded
systems will be very useful in researching and designing alternate
energy products. Unfortunately, there turns out to be no funding for
this kind of project.
One of my projects was a sophisticated Linux-based load controller for
alternate energy buildings. I'm convinced that most alternate energy
buildings are built with a medival engineering style
(build it massivly overkill, and hope it's good enough). I've noticed
that in my own off grid house, my batteries are fully charged by 11am,
making my system "throw away" all the power from the wind generator
and the photovoltaic panels for most of the day. I'm hoping that by
applying modern power management techniques to the whole system
design, I can create a control system that is inexpensive enough to
better utilize small alternate power systems, saving about half the
cost of the power generation system.
I was also working on the power management software, which I'd
taken to calling AbelMon. More details on that is on this page. I've also developed some other software
for off-grid domesteads, which is here.
Currently this only consists of a few spreadsheets I've written to
help calculate various things I use in off grid life, and a linux port
of the dome program.
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