














Comments     Threshold


RE: Compare to normal TEC's?
By joe4324 on 1/20/2011 12:34:46 AM , Rating: 2
On a second note, If I could spend 200-300$ plus some DIY fabrication and experimenting and figure out how to pull a few amps of continuous 12v+ DC power so long as the wood stove was loosing heat out of the flue well then I would be on board to give it a shot!

Just for fun! Lets assume that:

My wood stove looses 40% of the BTU's of the wood out the flue (I'm sure mine is worse than this actually!)

So, 40% waste heat. At 7,000 BTU's per pound of seasoned firewood (this is a low'ish number) I'm loosing 2800 BTU's out the roof.

So, if I could somehow harness 50% of that energy to run through this new device (say a section of Aluminum flue pipe with a plate built in to bolt this TEC to it then heatsink it etc) That gives me 1400 BTU's per lb of wood.

1400x.14% = 196 BTU's, eh, thats not much... a little more conversions...

196 BTU = 0.0574419298 kilowatt hours, or 57 Watts.

Hey thats not so bad actually!

I burned 65Lbs of wood three nights ago when it was -16F.

65x67 = 3.7 Kwh power production for the day?

That sounds too good to be true...

Lets cut it in half just to assume everything works half as good as this stupidly ideal senario...

65lbs of wood burned @ 40% heat loss = 3.7KwH x.50% = 1.85KwH.

That still sounds too good to be true... Even if I got half that again it would be worth investigating. I will burn 6000-8000lbs of wood this winter (and this is a very small amount compared to most!)

dreams of KwH....

RE: Compare to normal TEC's?

RE: Compare to normal TEC's?


RE: Compare to normal TEC's?
By superPC on 1/20/2011 6:12:47 AM , Rating: 2
sorry, i missed that part where you said the calculation is for per pound of wood. 3.7 kWh per day per pound of wood is great. if you burn 8000 pounds of wood each winter that that would generate nearly 30000 kWh. that would save you 3000 $ for the whole winter electric bill! awesome. that makes me want to use this thermoelectric generator all around my house.

RE: Compare to normal TEC's?


