Quote:
Originally posted by Chris W.
How much fuel would you use? Well, let's guesstimate that your fuel consumption at 40% engine load would be about 260 g/kWh. That translates to roughly 2.16 gallons per hour if you were running at full load of 26.8 kW, which you would not be. If you were running at an average load of 4 kW, which is fairly high for an typical house unless you have the oven or A/C on, you would probably burn fuel at about 300 g/kWh, but that's only about 0.4 gallons per hour. So that would give you an idea of how much fuel you would go through.
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I calculated my average consumption throughout winter, it is about 6 kWh. So According to Chris W. the powerplant should consume about .6 gal/h. So that's about 14.4 gallons per day, 100 gallons per week. More than 2 45-gallon drums. That's a lot of WVO...
I would still need a peak capacity of maybe 20 or 25 kWh so that I have plenty of juice if the hot water tank is on while I'm cooking and it's -30 outside.
As for the WVO solidifying, I think the garage the powerplant would be in would stay sufficiently warm from the engine heat to prevent this.
sulely this would be a fun project, but do I really want to haul 100 gal. of WVO per week? I could collect it throughout summer, but I would still need about 1500 gal. to get through the winter. Something to think about.
This thread is turning out to be much more informative than I expected.