I guess that we will be buying an additional tank for our methane after all.
Over the past few months, we've had several electricity utilities/distributors which operate in our region come to the farm to "inspect our power plant facilities, to ensure they conform to their requirements". This is entirely my fault. Last summer we were accumulating too much methane for our tankage capacity, and so instead of selling the excess gas, that would have cost us some money, we (and I mean me) decided to produce excess electricity and sell it to the grid. Because of all the rules and regulations, we had to specify our overall capacity and timing for the sale of electricity (our capacity is almost 200 Kw) which is a lot but more importantly, it's available 24/7, because it's gas powered. It should be noted that the two generators are large because we burn methane and smaller generators are difficult to adapt to burn unconventional gas, plus they are advanced and can "talk" to our biodigesters...
For some reason, they classified us as a "utility grade producer", which means all kinds of costly inspection. In September, I realized the error of my way and had the main link to the grid permanently removed. As of September 20th, 2023, our farm is no longer connected to the grid. In a rather amusing outcome, we no longer depend on any county-provided services (except for road access). All our biological waste goes to the biodigesters (eventually) all other waste is disposed of via a contract with a private rubbish removal firm.
Back to the inspection. We had another utility come to the farm this week, asking for payment so that they could inspect our power plants. This is how they operate, they come to the farm office with an invoice, in this case for an amount of ₤ 852.17, including VAT. I had the pleasure of telling them to leave the farm, as our generators are no longer linked to the grid. This was the third inspection request this autumn. Each time the inspectors wanted several hundred pounds to inspect our facilities. The best part is that the total revenues for the sale of electricity to the grid was ₤ 512.43.
It's not really a big deal, the truth is that last summer I was being cheap. The company which purchases our S2O gas was willing to take some methane too, but it would have cost us about a hundred pounds, it's more a service than a revenue stream, and they in turn have to process the gas for their own consumers. Again, nothing unreasonable.
Our eldest daughter made the joke that we are now preppers...we have our own food, we have our own energy and we are completely independent from the the government. The only thing we do is pay taxes! It is funny but really unintentional.
What I didn't know is that because we are available 24/7 to the various utilities that operate in the region (there are four utilities and one distribution company), an inspection of our production system is compulsory. In addition, our production is from biogas which is very valuable to them. In short, were made them look good.
Despite our meagre revenues from the sale of power, they treated us as a 24/7 producer. Their first reaction was to effectively impose a cost of nearly ₤ 4,000 for inspection fees (each utility and grid inspects our generators). If we had been base load providers that would make perfect sense, but we were not, and they were uncompromising. Stating that if we provided to the grid, and were not inspected, they would shut us down...so we did the only reasonable thing, and cut grid access.
Like everywhere else in the world, because we produce power, we had to install a system that would shut our system from the grid in the event of a grid power shutdown a very reasonable safety measure. To permanently, shut down our access to the grid, we simply removed the large fuses to the shunt, gave them back to the utility that owned them, and removed our power meter.
Problem solved.
We purchased large generators because of their sound-dampening enclosures (35db at 20 meters). There are no exhaust smells and no residue. You have to walk right next to our generator to hear them (the loudest noise is the cooling fans. We have one emergency LPG-powered generator. It is rather noisy at 70 dB, but it has never operated. We can run the entire farm on one of our two generators (mostly for our warehouse, cold room and freezers).
So for the past few weeks, I have been on the hunt for good-quality pressurized tanks to add a third tank to our current storage.
Note: All the heat on the farm is provided either by direct burners in the high tunnels or gas-powered water heaters in each of the farm buildings. Installing gas conduits is simple and inexpensive, especially when we have the specialized equipment at hand (trenching tool).
Note2: We did consider using heat pumps in the high tunnels, especially for the summer, but it's expensive and simply having burners installed for warming in the winter is sufficient. In the summer we can create substantial ventilation of the high tunnels and our pickers usually work very early in the morning. The shifts start at 6 am for many of them, and they are done by 10 am before the high heat (four hours of picking is very very very long...).
Note3: The 500 we made was net net. for the year. The rest of the electricity we produce reduced our overall electricity bill for the trailing 12 months. In other words, we made more than ₤512.43. That was our net gain...
Note4: Why do we have two generators? We started talking to generator manufacturers in early 2021 when we first considered our biodigesters. Initially, we were going to buy three of four generators to meet all our energy requirements. We quickly figured out that a certain size of generator was required for methane. We found a deal. An Irish-based company had ordered two large soundproof generators for their commercial biogas operations, but because of certification and NIMBY issues (the smell of single chamber biodigesters), they ran out of money. Their bankruptcy administrator was looking to unload their two delivered but uninstalled generators to meet creditor payments. The deal was just too good to pass and represented a 40% discount from new and they were immediately available (we had the funds at hand e.g. Bitcoin windfall). That's why we ended up with two generators for the price of one...
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