I'm betting using multiples of the same unit mounted on several of the houses in the complex, feeding into a central storage unit. You might be able to obtain the systems at a better price buying several and by standardizing the systems, you can have a parts inventory on hand for failures. You'll also be able to keep the entire community up if one or two individual units go down.

 

That's one reason , why if you can access the grid as part of your system , it should be part of it .
Also to my mind there are a couple of approaches , learning about the tech. , but from a larger perspective [ from what I have gathered from your posts ] .
The KISS factor , is the largest part of how I look at many things , and helps to keep cost down , reliability & efficiency high .
I am mostly self taught on this subject , which helps to think outside the box , as compared to learning in a group [ which can lead to accepting old or wrong concepts ] .
I would suggest a subscription to Home Power magazine , there are many sources of info , but from what I've seen most lead to higher cost systems that stay tied to someone income stream [ wasting you energy / money ] .
I ability to drop links into threads is broke , since a Firefox update .
If someone wants to do a site servery , you should on the correct road , if someone wants to sell you a system without a servery , send them packing .

 

Nice site John! http://www.homepower.com/home/

 

Ah, the KISS factor, one of my favorites. Yes indeed, this will be a very strong factor and as a result may by default eliminate some of the newer technology.

I already have a subscription to Home Power. Lots of great info there.

I too think out of the box for may of the technical things and as this project is new and revolutionary for this part of the world (and to some extent, also the states) we have the freedom to do what many have shied away from. It is exciting to look at this from a different prospective. That is one reason I am doing extensive groundwork and then later may give parts of the project to engineers to design around our guidelines.

 

We've got a friend that owns a B&B north of me. It sits at the base of a small mountain. On that mountain, on their property is a LARGE spring. When the house was originally constructed by the previous owner, the entire water supply was a 2" pipe, stuck into a pool at the spring, about 200' above the house. As the story goes, the original owner blew the pipes in the house 3 times before they found a way to regulate (redneck) the water pressure. I've tried for years to get them to invest in a small hydro-generator to offset the cooling costs in the summer. When they converted it to a B&B they went on city water for the house, just to be safe. They still use the gravity system for their irrigation and pond in the front lawn.

 

What's truly amazing is that... YOU HAVE A FRIEND!



J/K buddy!

chaikwa.

 

Yeah, but he doesn't have any friends.

 

That explains it!



chaikwa.

 

Hey!!! Dont be picking on my friend

 

I was expecting something a bit closer to the equator where its 80 to 90 year round. And as far as old folks feeling cold sooner than others, my draftsman is 70 and complains if the office gets above 72 degrees.

500 houses at a meer 100 amps of 220 volt service is about 11 MW. I doubt you will find a single gen set commercially available. Have you considered a battery array similar to what parts of alaska uses. you loose a bit of overall efficiency, but it will let you store the power from the good times to use during the bad times without having to run a diesel gen set.
Another heat and power option (depending) is a biomass boiler. it will depend on the availabilty of biomass.
You also have methane scavaging from waste treatment (solids mostly).

 

Are you in an area where you might be able to utilize wind turbines for your power? from that you could utilize a electric water heater for your radiant floor heat as well as house-hold water..
kill 3 birds with one stone..

 

I dream of having a large spring or any place with running water so that I could play with hydro electric stuff. In this state there is not much chance of that. There are two other states that I have looked at that has abundant running water, but at the moment can't move there for other reasons re this project.

 

Don't know anything about the Alaskan battery arrays, so will have to dig into that.

Presently looking into biomass boilers and some of the newer inventions that were primarily developed for the US army to turn garbage into electricity. We are planning on treating all the black and gray water produced. As water treatment is a bit of a unknown where we are going to build, we are considering going to a larger treatment plant than we need and treating some of the water from the local community to produce a bit of an income.

 

This is a windy area at times. The problem is that we get days of reasonably brisk wind and then a few days of almost nothing. However, that does not totally rule out wind power and we are also looking into that.