Power Monitoring tools: a “Kill-a-Watt-+” on an Arduino
Report from Bear Kaufmann: A couple weeks ago, Trystan Lea, who runs OpenEnergyMonitor (http://openenergymonitor.org) came by and we worked on testing his system on our in house 10kw Power Pallet. The OpenEnergyMonitor is “a project to develop and build open source energy monitoring and analysis tools for energy efficiency and distributed renewable microgeneration.” The project is developed around the Arduino, thus will integrate nicely with our Arduino based Gasifier Control Unit. Trystan has some cool code and great explanations of the circuits on the site. We tested his system on the skid, monitoring 2 legs of current and voltage from……
British EE betrays Lucas heritage- Lister diesel runs on electronic spark ignition!
The workshop weekend was a rousing success- the highlight of which was likely the Ken Boak and Darryl led effort to convert a Lister diesel to spark ignition for 100% woodgas operation. This settled the long running debate as to whether a spark plug in the precombustion chamber of a Lister will actually light a wood gas fuel/air charge. The answer is yes. It also answered the related question of whether the pull rate of a standard 6/1 Lister is high enough to keep the gasifier hot and above tar making temps. The answer is also yes. This is great……
Next Workshop Weekend: Feb 19-21, 2010, Berkeley, CA.
Gasification PowerExchange Workshop #7: Next Gen GEK 10kw gasifier genset skid and BEK biochar running. Gasification Lecture and Demo: Friday, February 19, 7:30-9:30PM Building, Running and Testing: Saturday and Sunday, February 20 & 21, 11am – 7pm Location: ALL Power Labs, 1010 Murray Street. Berkeley, CA Contact: jim ^at^ allpowerlabs.com Cost: Free if you are a GEK or BEK owner, either through self build or purchase. $100 if you are not. The next of our quarterly gasifier workshop weekends is set for Februrary 19-21. The purpose of this ongoing series of workshops is to help bring more people to successful……
APL called “leader in putting syngas to work,” plus: GEK conquers the Rockies!
Hello everyone, here’s the latest news from All Power Labs on our work with gasification and biochar. We got some great news coverage, better assembly and first fire instructions, more user reports, and as always more research and testing data. It’s all part of our ongoing mission to put the information and tools in your hands, so you can make it yourself, or make it run even better. Hope you enjoy, and as always feel free to get in touch with any questions, feedback, or user reports. -All Power Labs. 1- Farm Show magazine reports on the GEK, calls us……
GEK turns 100, and APL introduces the “TOTTI”
Here’s the latest news from All Power Labs and our ongoing work in gasification. We’re happy to announce the sale of our 100th unit, and even happier to unveil our latest design innovation, the “Tower Of Total Thermal Integration”, (aka: the “Hot TOTTI”) and point you in the direction of some of our testing data of late. GEK turns 100 Actually, make that 107. We’ve just sold the 107th GEK, a pretty incredible number considering we started just over a year ago trying to help give people tools for open source power hacking. Here’s a map of the world showing……
GEK: The new Altair 8800?
ALL Power Labs recently had a visitor from Germany who got the point of why a “Personal Energy Device” might helpfully be made to look like a robot rocketship. His name is Joerg Pfeiffer, and was travelling across the US for Spiegel Online doing stories about energy and the economy. As he is German, and in the US, he of course rented a giant RV and spent most of his time in the desert doing stories about Americans doing weird things. Joerg’s video does the best job to date of explaining the larger context of the GEK. He was less……
Personal Energy Robot: GEK v3.0
Here in Berkeley, at ALL Power Labs, in our Oasis of small scale gasification, the team has had our noses to the gridstone manufacturing and testing GEK version 3.0. The new version’s highlights are: A new injector venturi system that replaces our fan/blower system and a new one-nozzle air inlet collar. There are many other updates, like a new cyclone design which allows for easier clean out. But the best upgrade of all; our new Rocket Legs! And if version 3.0 weren’t enough to get you excited, we have also been developing an auger drying/preheating system, which can be used……