Pictured above is the Hotwatt coupled to a genset for power and a water heat storage tank to store waste heat. Behind the Hotwatt is a mobile battery pack for this demonstration.

So back to our lazy man approach.

1. One day a month you gather your branches, pallets, or other feedstock and get it prepared for the gasifier by sizing and drying it to spec. Bag it up and set it to the side. If you aren’t prepared to invest one day a month prepping your feedstock, then this technology might not be for you.
2. When you wake up in the morning you simply fill the Hotwatt with a load of wood, then press start. Pour yourself a cup of coffee and come back to start up the genset and go back to your day.
3. The Hotwatt powered genset will recharge your battery pack while the forced hot air heats your home. Perform your most load intensive tasks while the engine is running so that you don’t drain your batteries. The residual stored heat and power will be used throughout the day to maintain your comfort. After a few hours the system will shut off based on the timer settings.
4. In the evening you walk over to the unit and repeat step 2.(coffee optional) The house is then brought up to temperature again for the night and the batteries are again recharged.

By harvesting every scrap of energy stored in the wood you can use much less than you think. By running the engine around 4 hours per day you can greatly extend its life and lower your service costs and any noise.

With very little effort you are now in charge of your own grid. It’s operating at just above the cost of your time and it’s in balance with nature. Simple.

Please note that we sell only the Hotwatt and genset at this time. Batteries are easily purchased locally from an off-grid supplier and hot water storage tanks are available on the internet. Set-up costs should include a plumber and an electrician.

Thanks for reading!

Unlike the 972, the 1.6 liter with no name is fully electronically controlled. For the demo they added a supertrap muffler and flywheel weights to simulate load. The result was one hell of a smooth demonstration. “You sold me.”

The Push Towards Gaseous Fuels

The results of EPA tier 4 emissions standards on engine manufacturers like Kubota is increased cost for compliance. Bill, the Kubota Rep told me that it costs several thousand dollars to make a diesel comply, whereas a natural gas engine only costs a few hundred. With developing nations making all sorts of biogasses, there is an expanded market for Kubota gaseous fuel engines.

Being a 3 cylinder engine we can get a really clean vacuum signal for manual automation of our controls. The customers that buy our units want them robust and we deliver.

Stay tuned for the photos of the completed 5kw DC genset. When the 1.6 liter hits the market we plan to make it our AC power offering.

We look forward to seeing this project finished out later in the summer.

His goal was simple. To have a stainless steel gasifier to use and to leave in the museum of his small town for generations to come when he passes. So it is with great pleasure that I got to send him home with a Victory gasifier, but not any unit, the first unit. The original. It’s been all over the West and now it was time to make its way home to Steve’s house.

What I like about working with Steve is his no nonsense quality driven work ethic. When I needed help setting up for the Biomass Fuels Summit he was there at 6 in the morning. When we opened up the shop for monthly meetings he would give the best presentations. For an old crudgemudgin he is a positive influence and we thank him.

I know how much he hates biochar, so in good fun I gave him my biochar unit. It will come in handy for all those pine needles. His revenge will be burning stickwood in it.

Cheers Steve!

The response from Europe has been very enthusiastic. They have a much more developed appreciation for the CHP features and small efficient size.

Our next major release for the Hotwatt will be a matching genset for customers that don’t currently have an engine. The DC genset will give universally usable power and integrate well with battery storage and pure sinewave inverters.

We took the best and made it better

We are now super insulating the Hotwatt. This performance boost will allow us to  extend the range of feedstocks and push more waste heat into our heat exchanger. Our results with shredded wood have been very positive and we may add it as an approved fuel in the near future.  The Hotwatt is designed to be the most versatile & efficient small gasifier ever brought to market. We are now able to provide a chp solution even if you run an air cooled engine.

Micro CHP vs. Stuck Pig

The Hotwatt needs no additional heat inputs to run at low loads, in fact it has heat to spare. Competing gasifiers are so inefficient that they have to pump engine heat into their units  just to maintain their operation at low loads. Losing heat like a pig loses blood. Shoddy plumbing part and burn barrel construction is the culprit for this waste. It’s like continuously pouring water into a leaking bowl to keep it full. Lot’s of psuedo-engineering talk is used to confuse and distract from this obvious shortcoming. The engine is supposed to heat your home, not your gasifier.

We hooked up a Relaxation tub to the Hotwatt to capture some hot water, heated air and made 2kw of electricity with a standard genset at 1/4 throttle.

Built into the Hotwatt is an advanced hot water heat exchanger that drains the waste heat from gas production and puts it into use for hot water storage. The hot air heat exchanger also pumped out 90-95 degrees of heated air at 300 cfm.

Water was heated with 6500 btu/hr of waste heat based on 125 gallons.

The efficiency of the Hotwatt in terms of usable energy and a miserly appetite for wood continues to amaze me. You are looking at the personal computer of renewable energy. If you have wood waste, how can you not own one of these?

We are continuing to push the Hotwatt to new levels of performance. In our next release we are adding ceramic insulation and some other goodies.

Since we are going to be pressure feeding the system I wanted to get an air fuel measurement gauge to tell me visually if I am giving it too much fuel gas. The goal of the system in stage 1 is one driver control and 1 visual feedback. The sensor will give us the visual feedback, while the basic automation handles the gasifier operation.

This particular sensor has an analog output signal that we can use for performance logging and control functions that will be used later.

We have the gasifier mounted up in the truck now and we are working on the flare-off stack. Found a funny and loud intake whine from our modifications to the intake in a recent trip over to Johns. So I am trying to track that down before we get back on the road.

There was a plastic piece in the intake that we swapped out for a metal replacement with flange for our throttle body.

We were able to fit the assembly snuggly into an open area. The stainless u-tube is to get our gas in without interfering with our cables and it has a nipple for air mixing later.

Soon we will have cab mounted throttle control. Next post we will bolt the gasifier together in place and finalize the location of our diverter valve and flare off.