I must admit wood gasification is a concept that has always intrigued me. In fact, one of my favorite things about the recent Discovery Channel program
"The Colony," which recently completed its first season, was watching the folks on there build a gasifier to power first a generator that they used to charge their battery bank and to run heavy-duty power tools, and then later they built an even larger version to run a truck they used as an escape vehicle.
And recently a link was sent to me for the
first commercially-available multi-fuel gasifier for alternative home power generation. Dubbed the
Off Gridder, it is capable of running off the gases release by burning wood pellets, wood chunks, wood chips and certain other types of agricultural waste. It is able to meet the power needs of an efficient home in as little as 2-4 hours a day.
Posted in: alternate energy,power grid,self-sufficiency
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4:51 AM
Simple Man
6 comments:
Actually, there have been several small gasifiers for sle before the Off-Gridder. The one currently with the largest installed base, as well as free plans for you to make the same thing as they sell, as well as workshops to learn how to make them work, is the GEK gasifier. See www.gekgasifier.com. GEK is Gasifier Experimenters Kit.
The gasifiers at allpowerlabs are small and poor quality. The GEK (gasifier experimenter’s kit) is a complete waste of money. The gasifiers at victory gasworks are better quality, but are way, way, to expensive. We found a company that sells gasifiers that are better quality, have a warranty, and are lower in price. Their smallest gasifier is as big as the woodygasifier offgridder and is less than half the price. Their website is www.stakproperties.com
The GEK gasifier is designed for experimenting with gasification. Who would want to build anything excessively large just for an experiment?
I can't make comments on whether they're quality is good or poor, since I haven't bought one myself. However, a fairly large number of people have built them from the free plans on the website, and a smaller number of people have bought them fully assembled, and had good results.
As for being a complete waste of money, I would point out that GEK costs about $1 to $2 per watt.
The larger sizes from Victory Gasworks are about $1.50 to $3 per watt. More expensive than the GEK, but they aren't bad machines. Similar with the GEK, many people have bought gasifier gensets from them, and many people have built them from the free plans available on their website.
Stak Properties has no prices on their website. It has no gasifier plans. A Google search for the company shows nothing that isn't a copy of what's on their website. I can't find post on the web by anyone who bought one. If I had to make a guess, I'd say that they're a scam.
I have doubts too.
I have purchased one of the STAK 10K units and I absolutely love it! I use it to run a home made genset that I use on my "up north" property. I have used the gasifier for over a year now with no problems.
The university that I attend uses the STAK 10K gasifier to teach gasification in the renewable energy course. They did a demonstration of it running a generator at a big open house event.
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