远离电网的生活听起来很浪漫,不用再为污染能源公司、自给自足、绿色能源等买单;然而,在大多数使用替代能源的家庭中都发现了一个“肮脏的小秘密”。没有它,一些离网设备就不能做饭、冷藏、加热水或烘干衣服。那个肮脏的小秘密就是丙烷。
丙烷是“天然气加工和石油炼制的副产品”。Due to a vast majority of it being produced domestically in the United States, some advocates, likeT. Boone Pickens, push for natural gas as a solution to our foreign oil dependence. Yet, natural gas and its by-productpropane are fossil fuels, are non-renewable, andprices continue to climb to record highsmaking it very unsuitable for off-grid living and ideals.
Why Off-Gridders Rely On Propane Appliances
People who live off the grid have to watch large power draws from big appliances. Those who have ample power, such as frommicro-hydro turbines, still need to ensure these electrical draws do not occur simultaneously. For those living on solar or hybrid systems, electrical appliances are simply not an option. Propane becomes their source for cooking, refrigeration, clothes drying, heat, water heating, and back up generators. AsHome Powerexplains:
For decades, cheap propane has been the dirty little secret of “independent living,” the convenient, flexible fuel that can run a generator, fridge, clothes dryer – you name it. But cheap propane, like cheap oil, is gone and probably not coming back.
Of course, there are greener solutions to propane use, but they all come at a cost. For most off-gridders, just buying the panels, inverters, batteries, etc. is a huge expense, and the other projects, such as building a solar hot water heater, get pushed down the list for when more funds or time become available.
In my own off grid home, we use propane for water heating, cooking, and clothes drying. We do plan to install a solar hot water heater to help our on demand propane water heater not have to heat the water as much. Hanging our clothes out to dry is greener solution, but often laziness or ease interferes with this task. We recently purchased a little electric burner to use instead of the stovetop when possible, such as when canning. We heat with wood and passive solar, and we have an electric refrigerator.
AnotherHome Powerarticle explains:
Practical choices are sometimes limited. Electric ranges are not an option for most off-gridders because of the high cost of the extra batteries and RE sources needed. There is no publicly marketed, hydrogenfueled range. I do use mysolar cookersin sunny weather and, when possible, I use my wood heater to cook. However, this does not cover all the cooking I do. It’s not practical to do canning with solar cookers or on top of the wood heater, to give you two examples.
I’m open to suggestions for a viable off-grid alternative for cooking. While a portion of the grid electricity here in the Northwest is produced by hydropower, 80% of it is fueled by coal. Do we stop encouraging people to tie into the grid because of this? We can reduce our use of unclean fuel sources as much as practicality allows. We are a work in progress, with a higher goal.
Propane makes it possible for many people to go off the grid comfortably. We don’t like to talk about it much, as it ruins our self-image as energy independent individuals, but it is a reality of most off-grid life. We are a work in progress, like all human beings!
Image credit:Rufous/Shutterstock
Jeff McIntire-Strasburgsays
我知道跳舞兔的一些建筑上也有丙烷罐。2022世界杯四强亚盘赔率但它们仍然产生了平均美国人10%的碳排放量……所以我认为,如果离网者正在努力减少化石燃料的使用,这个“肮脏的秘密”是可以被原谅的。
Lloyd Altersays
Andy Thomson, the designer of the Sustain Minihome, called propane the “crack cocaine” of off-grid living; he could build a 365 square foot box insulated to the gills and he still needed it for cooking and heat. He experimented with alternatives, like a $25,000 biodiesel powered sterling engine that supplied electricity and hot water but in the end it was back to propane.
The minihome is now in a “green trailer park” and I have it converted to electric heat from Bullfrog green power, all wind and water. The carbon footprint is lower and the horrible noisy propane heater is turned off, I hope forever.
Jeff McIntire-Strasburgsays
这里我想说的是——甲烷消化器会是一些离网设备的可行替代方案吗(我强调的是“可行”)?
Kipchogesays
In many developing countries they just put a lid with a valve on the septic tank and have a hose that goes straigh to the gas-powered stove. Hyper low tech.
Some of my off-grid buddies cook on “rocket-stoves”, hyper efficient twig burners with so little smoke that you can use them inside in a drafty house. Of course, drafty houses aren’t appropriate for many climates.
用电加热/做饭并不是一种明智的能源使用方式。埃默里·洛文斯(Amory Lovins)将其比作“用电锯切黄油”。It takes about 20-40 solar panels to power an electric burner in real time…
Jennifer Lancesays
My alternative energy prof. in college used a similar analogy to describe splitting an atom to toast bread
Kevin Kinneysays
Well, methane will still produce CO 2. I would look to a substance that is 100% clean and green like seawater or regular fresh water. Water burns at 5000* with a little mosture as it’s emmissions. No CO 2, so you can use it to cook, heat, and power with. Their is so much for you to learn. I have designed a system that works very good and will change the world one day. It’s called; Seawater Energy Systems (SES) and one day it will be marketable, it is a mater of funding now. You can start by learning about Stan Meyers, Solar Power for the batteries needed… yes, I have designed a way to your a generator without power/fuel. That is the question to ask and figure out the answer. I did and you can to one day. Good luck. Oh, keep ventilated and sparks away from your experiments.
S. Cieszkiewiczsays
Can you explain how water burns at 5000 degrees….?
Joesays
所以,为什么不把电网连接起来,随着时间的推移,随着资金的增加,增加更多的替代能源,同时使用木砌体炉尽可能多地进行烘烤,加热——可以用线圈加热这些炉子里的热水,最终可能用于发电??
Jeff McIntire-Strasburgsays
In some cases, a grid connection’s not available (this may be the case with Jennifer — I know she lives waayy out). And, of course, some choose not to connect. Wood-fired heat/hot water are also options — my uncle does that even though he is grid-connected.
Jennifer Lancesays
是的,我的宅地没有电网供电。我们必须有替代资源,否则就无法生存。
Jennifer Lancesays
Cooking with wood is not fun when it is 100 degrees out.
Jonathan Colesays
Actually, this is a very good time to solve this problem. The fact is that most off-grid systems are frequently producing surplus electric power. If the batteries get charged up during the daytime, then the charge controller turns them off or to a very slow rate of charge. There is really no reason why this surplus could not be put to use to generate hydrogen gas for cooking and other purposes. To do this would require some engineering, but I believe that such a product that would replace propane with hydrogen for small to medium energy-intensive uses, would be well accepted in the market place. Cooking for example requires a very small amount of gas. There is no reason that a hydrogen on-demand system could not meet this requirement. I have thought a lot about how to accomplish this, but I am working on other things at the moment athttp://lightontheearth.blogspot.com/. If there are any engineers or folks experienced in gas combustion system that would like to take a crack at solving this problem, I would like to hear from you.
Kevin Kinneysays
是的,你说得太对了。水中的氢和氧是未来的燃料。我设计了一个BB-Q,炉子,加热器和推进项目,我正在工作。我有一个完整的系统叫做海水能源系统(SES)。产品包括能源、燃料和海水淡水。这是我80年代的爱好。我的卡车用水作燃料补充。听着,我的系统会让我有市场的一天,它现在只是一个资金的问题。所以,一定要小心。现在,像我一样了解斯坦·迈耶斯,我通过了斯坦的作品,他的作品和尼古拉·特斯拉对我帮助很大。 I will have something very easy and safe for you to just add water and turn on to the desired effect… You get it, a rare gift. Be careful and Good Luck.
Chris DeMorrosays
Propane and petroleum and natural gas are all incredible sources of energy, with either propane or CNG being the “cleanest.”
The real issue here though is that you can only reduce your carbon footprint so much, and there comes a point where going farther does more harm than good. Is it cleaner to just buy and hook up a low-emissions propane system, or invest great time, money, and energy into something marginally cleaner? How much comfort are you willing to sacrifice for going green?
NIgel Williamssays
“…without [propane] … couldn’t cook, refrigerate, heat water, or dry clothes…”
Really!
1. Change what you eat! Green veges raw straight out of your garden are best not cooked. Dont fry your steak and eat it hot, salt and dry it in a solar dryer, store it and eat it cold. Lick your plate, pots and utensil’s clean and you dont need hot water for dish washing. When you must cook then a solar oven (insulated box the sun shines into) and solar cooker (parabolic mirror that concentrates the sun to a point where you put the pot) do a great job. So you have cooked meals when the sun is out and raw or preserved food when its not. A new domestic regime for some, but a very gentle and easy-to work one.
(My solar cooker just burned a big hole in the neighbour’s fence, which I have to fix!)
2. Refrigerate what? Use all vegies fresh from the garden and root-cellar or dry the rest. Eat fruit and berries off the trees, and bottle or dry the rest. Dry your meat and hang in bags in a cool place. Fresh milk when the cow is near, else its stored long term as cheese. Use a ‘safe’ like grandma did – at least a tin cupboard hung on a tree in the shade or dug into a cool bank.
And someplaces it snows from time to time. A bit of head shakin’ would go of if an off-gridder was running a propane fridge when they are up to their axles in snow eh! If it gets that cold then make an icebox which would last you thru the year.
3. Heat water. What was that for again? You wash body with a cup of cold water and a cloth. Wash clothes in cold water. If you must then there is probably solar water heater supplier near you who would be willing to help for the usual fee, else make your own.
4. Dry clothes! You are not serious are you. Wash them when they are really dirty, hang under the verandah until dry.
But thanks for the thought-provoking essay, as from what you say these are real issues for many. Reliance on propane leaves you in the hands of the oil companies, which is where you do not want to be.
A lot of the way forwards involves just looking at where you are applying your effort and cash. Make a plan to be a step further on every year every month, and you will be ‘free’ pretty soon.
Joesays
至少你在考虑如何更可持续地生活的影响。我们大多数人都不知道。每天早上,打开开关是令人欣慰的,所有现代化的设施都在那里。
The great benefit of websites like this- interconnectivity accross time and space is to share ideas as to how to make our lives more sustainable. One idea would be to start on this web site a continuint idea site for sustainable issues- such as transportation, heating and cooling, how to handle wastes, how to build sustainable systems, it could be specific such as how to cook (options available), how to heat and cool, how to get around etc,
In your case evidently you do not have access to a source of energy that is totally sustainable and so you are forces to live and use propane- friends of mine that use it – one problem beyond sustainability is the cost of propane.
但是,通过思考这些问题并向社区寻求帮助,表明我们在解决这类问题的能力上存在差距。通常情况下,系统还没有完全实现——燃料电池可以用于加热、发电、提供热水等,但它们价格昂贵,仍然需要一些燃料(天然气、丙烷、氢气等)。太阳能最初的开发和实施是昂贵的,但成本每天都在下降。我可以一直说下去,但我不会停下来说,每天都要继续探索如何更可持续地生活。
David Guionsays
如果我们能让更多的美国人使用丙烷脱离电网,我们将在很多方面变得更好:更低的全国碳足迹,更少使用化石燃料(和煤炭),更少依赖进口化石燃料,等等,等等。用丙烷来补充太阳能(和/或风能)的能源在我们的整体能源使用背景下似乎并不那么肮脏。事实上,对许多美国人来说,丙烷可以让他们在不放弃太多便利的情况下实现生活方式的绿色,这是一个新闻。
I’m very grateful to the “dark green” people who are leading the exploration of sustainable living, but the majority of Americans will never go that far. In fact, when the “dark green” start lecturing the “light green” about hanging on to some of their cherished conveniences, I wonder if it doesn’t form a disincentive even to try.
By the time a critical mass of Americans turns from brown living to light green, the “energy anorexics” will have found multiple ways to do without propane. The light green will follow at a distance–perhaps at less of a distance if the dark green can resist smugness.
Jennifer Lancesays
好点!我希望我给人的印象不是自鸣得意。那不是我的本意。
Uncle Bsays
Effective Solar powered refrigeration from modified Einstein cycle fridge , and cooler underground temperature differentials? Some Canadians exploit ground temperatures using heat pumps for entire home heating/cooling schemes ! How much is hidden, some even deliberately from us?
Tell All site : some of the corporate manipulations here!
http://www.cosmoloan.com/funding/3-world-changing-innovations-held-back-by-corporations.html#comments
Ontario Canada farmers make methane from manure, run whole farms, even export methane fueled electricity to grid for a bonus cash crop, then use the slurry for top-soil building, relatively odorless fertilizer. Gobar Gas you Google you see! Basics are clear here. Aquaponics, fresh veggies and fish for protein, the only one i did not try before my stroke!
The “communal” notion, the one that strikes fear in the hearts of the modern American, but was the life-blood of early America shows its ugly face even here – not enough communication of ideas, arguments, nuggets of information in free exchange – not like the Barn Raising Bees my grandmother spoke of at all!
The Great Corporate American Propaganda Whore fears marijuana, hemp, and ‘communists” even eradicating the communal spirit of the Old West, and before it, the familial approach even to harvesting has been erased from the American mind! Fact is, sharing expenses for transportation by trains, trams, public means were deliberately erased by Genera motors, by tearing up the very rails they ran on in America! We have forgotten so much, so much was condemned, more simply removed from the history books, even free ranging of cattle discouraged from the East, the fencing salesmen, the forerunners to the Whore and her exhortations, her declarations, her mesmerizations of our collective identity as Americans.
在加拿大,冰是在冬天从结冰的湖泊中切割出来的,然后储存在木材厂厚厚的锯末下面,直到夏天需要的时候,然后用马车运来,由“卖冰的人”挨家挨户地卖,这是一个完全被遗忘的行业。
my propane “Servel” frig – totally motor free, would have been easy to adapt to even a Fresnel lens heating any liquid and by thermal siphon circulating to the heat chamber, and by exposing the “cooling coils ” at the back to colder under-ground temperatures in the summer months could have improved efficiency.
We must search out, share, and discuss all “Off Grid” information free of the profit motive and like the Ubuntu O.S. free on the web, refuse to pay the corporate tax on ideas.http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4971tells of the safer Thorium LFTR-reactor America let pass, and tells why too – you will be astounded and embarrassed when you see this! China has since taken up the cause, thank goodness and soon enough humanity will benefit.
用压力装罐的方法将菜园里多余的农作物用于冬季种植是一种能源密集型的做法,但一旦你掌握了诀窍,就不会那么糟糕了。我保存压力罐头食品长达四年之久!干土豆-切成扇贝,用抗坏血酸防止在切割时褐变,可以保存多年,干燥,装在瓶子里放在架子上,通过加水,浸泡和正常烹饪的方式恢复。家里酿造大麦作物的方式非常有收获和惊喜!满是庄稼的后院产出了数加仑的啤酒!看看你会看到的食谱!酿酒,一种一直受欢迎的大黄酒,可以制成甜的,香槟,干的,甚至餐桌酒-所有从一个蔬菜和熟练的业余爱好者的手!瓶回收!德国酸菜大丰收!我做了塑料桶满,使用葡萄酒气体起泡器(空气锁)-仍然吃该死的东西! Great food value all you need is cabbages, salt, plastic food grade barrels, and patience – cut her up fine, don’t use the green leaves – free winter delight~ Pickles were a favorite – rows and rows of jars filled, the years the cucumbers did good! Even gave much to neighbors! Did dill, sweet and sour, bread and butter pickles, beets, onions (caution here! special onions only) peppers both hot and sweet, beans – yes! fresh young yellow beans make a fantastic winter treat when pickled, even carrots sliced into nice bite sized sticks, not too thick now, and dilled, garlicked lightly, Did all my herbs by sun drying then bought a proper dryer – very effective, but requires electricity, and gets a bit hot to my tastes, too fast too. Even made garlic powder with dried garlic corns, and a spare coffee grinder. Canned chicken, salmon, sucker-fish, pickerel, rabbit, beef, deer, turkey, big caution here! All pressure canned to USDA specs only! See their site for proper instructions!
Super insulation – areogel silicon based – not popular but what else has been off-sided from popular markets? Well worth the nights Goggle-ing around? Always wanted to dry peas, never got to it. In love with Straw Bale, Stack Wood, Cord Wood construction – may fine and very successful examples here in Ontario Canada. Good on you for a nice site! I will be back.
Neilsays
I keep seeing on sites like this and solar power sites how electricity is pretty much out for off grid cooking.
对许多人来说,这是可以的,但对其他人来说,这可能是最好的选择。
A 12 volt fry pan for instance uses between 140 and 180 watts BUT it will cook a meal in a very short time. between around 4 minutes and 15 minutes for me( mostly around 8 to 10 minutes).
这意味着平均大约25到30瓦特小时,我认为一个人吃一顿合理的饭,或者在某些情况下两人吃一顿小餐。
Yes there are limits and some things that make it more doable.
Always use a lid, chop steak into chunks, things like that make a big difference. Get to know your appliance and take the power off just before finished can help if it really comes down to a matter of watts. They are only around 6 inches so you will not cook a huge steak.
我没有断网,但我使用我的12伏frypan小电池和太阳能电池板,一个星期几次。我刚吃了两份牛排蘑菇三明治,用的是从超市买来的切得很薄的牛排,烹饪时间大约是7分钟。今天晚些时候我还会再吃同样的东西,两顿饭的总耗电量可能不到40瓦小时,这将来自一个50瓦的太阳能电池板上的小电池。
Maybe for some this could be used alongside propane. A small enough battery can be used dedicated for this with a small solar panel seperate from other off grid systems. For the really committed you could even charge the battery by using things like hand crank generators or bike generators. There are lots of other 12 volt appliances for cooking too. A 12 volt sandwich maker uses as little as 60 watts and while it will take longer (around 15 minutes to toast one sandwich I think ) which might mean you need two for a real time meal, that is still only about 30 watt hours for two. For a family it would be pushing things but for one person would be good.
As for drying clothes from propane (or any heat sourse where I live at least) that is a luxury and unnecessary. here at least clothes dry very quickly most of the time.
Hit Shopsays
NIce post.
Kitchen Appliances pakistan
Jack Panellasays
I don’t have a solution for cooking, but I came up with a solution for refrigeration that requires no fuel, electricity or heat. See US Patent 4624113 (University of Chicago representing Argonne National Laboratory on behalf of the USDOE, assignee). I refined the invention for common refrigeration. Seehttp://skyfridge.blogspot.com
geraldsays
how much would you pay for a gravity free energy device that can be built to produce
a mechanical output to turn a generator 24/7 .
what is your requirement in kwh
一个5千瓦的24/ 24小时,应该可以为您提供足够的能源用于加热和烹饪。
may be building larger units for comunity grid
Johnathansays
太阳能制冷是有成本的,如果你已经有一个现成的设备,它会便宜很多。直流制冷的伟大之处在于无需使用逆变器就能提供食物保存源,并且需要一个面板和两个深循环电池。We offer solar chest freezers that can be turned up to operate as refrigerators (should the need arise) with no modifications: Feel free to take a look here:http://www.c4pinc.com/solar/solar-freezer/
Jesse Canesays
丙烷是一种非常清洁的燃料。就其本身而言,它不是温室气体,燃烧丙烷每单位能量释放的二氧化碳比燃烧煤炭少44%。再加上太阳能和风能,你就拥有了一个真正清洁的电力设备。
Michael McDermottsays
An outdoor kitchen with a rocket stove as a more ecological cooking alternative.
Cheers! Bless