Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Here is the autonomous energy system

Daily consumption:
water pump 150 watt x 24h= 3600WH

air pump 30 watt x 24h = 720 WH
others 20 watt x 24h=480 WH
total= 4800 Wh
the inverter is not perfect.it has 85-90% efficiency
4800 Wh * 1.15 = 5520 Wh


Battery capacity:
5520/12 (volt dc battery)= 460 Ah + 20% 460Ah = 552Ah

The less the batteries discharge the longer lifetime they have.
AGP deepcycle batteries can be discharged to the 20% of their total capacity.The ideal would be 50%

http://www.windsun.com/Batteries/Batter ... m#Lifespan of Batteries
if we take in mind that the performance of the batteries will drop in some years,then
460*1,5~=690=>(690-460)/690*100%~=28%(not the ideal but better than 20%)

So:
3x
12V ~ 212Ah ~=636Ah

Wind Turbine
1500 Watt ~12V~11 blade
Runs for 4.5 hours per day for max efficiency ,it will charge the batteries by it's self(125 Ambers when max )
or 9 hours at its half power(~67Amber)

When it works 4,5 hours at half power,charges the batteries at its half capacity

More realistically if it works for 8 hour at 1/4 of tis max power =>375*8=3000Wh
the rest charge will come from the diesel genrator
5520-3000=2520 Wh (the diesel generator will need 3 hours to charge them)
the charger:
2x 30 A 12 automatic battery charger
690/60~=11 hours (for empty batteries)

i can post the links for all the parts of the system to tell me your opinion and to have a total cost of the system.i just forgot to post them previously

You could work on rearing tilapia from fingerlings in a small greenhouse system in winter with compost heating, do trout in the winter and then put the tilapia from the small system into the big system in summer after you remove the trout. That's exactly what I am trying to do although my temperature extremes are not nearly so extreme.

Pretty smart idea.It has concerned me that issue but that is a good solution.
Or a heated greenhouse inside the main greenhouse which will provide and some heating to the main Gh.Just thought of that,may be stupid if i think it better.
For the first 1-2 years it will not be a problem because the acuaculture professor i spoke to said to me that he can give me the fish.But i can't rely on someone else forever.

Hi George

My husband and I are just starting out on our aquaponics adventure and thought we were the only people in Greece to have discovered this system - so great to hear that we are not the only ones!

We plan to set up a small home system, using an IBC tank and growbed and, alongside this, a NFT system. We have been having some difficulties in sourcing some items, such as the growing medium, so wondered what you are using? We thought we might try "Xaliki" (sorry if the spelling is wrong!) which is easily obtainable locally - what do you think?

We also thought of stocking our tank with trout over the winter and tilapia over the summer months, but have not been able to find suppliers of fingerlings here either. Could you suggest who we might contact to get some fingerlings?

This site and the forum are great and we have been spending many hours trawling through both and have learnt lots of invaluable information but, as you are in Greece too, is there any particular advice you would give me?

Naste kala!

Pauline

Hi and welcome GeorgeKara.

Just went trough your topic, and I noticed some.

1. I hope you have listened to TCLynx! Each siphon has its own rhythm and its different even if they are completely the same. Be prepaired for the worst case scenario when they will run the same time, cause it will happen. Without a sump or a spider valve you will surely have floodings. The bigger FT is not a fish friendly solution.

2. I dont know about current greek electricity prices but, sustainable energy is probably still not an economical choice. Calculate the cost of the alternative energy set, and calcutale the return of the investment.

3. Dont worry about the cold winter days. The daily average temps are 4,7 C in january for your location (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ioannina). With a so big water quantity acting as a thermall mass even in a simple polytunnel your system can be easily kept 10C.


Regards: Zsazsa

Hi all again,
especially zsazsa and pauline who are new to the conversation.
During summer we made some significant changes to our system(greenhouse constraction,system,fish etc.)
The basic change is the greenhouse.We are using "natural building" to build a greenhouse from "cob"(sand,clay and straw )with a "green roof".This will allow us to have even more stable temperature in the greenhouse as the walls are 80cm widefull of thermal mass.
I will post some photos of the construction,which is stopped for a while due to the bad weather.

In the picture above door is on west side.
greenhouse:
8m long( west-eat)
5.5m wide (north south)
max height is 2.7m

to zsazsa:
The system will be a chif pist so ther will not be any more problems with flooding
The sustainable energy in greece is high priced but:1)the electricity company needs 5000$ to connect our system to network so a sustainable system priced at 5000$ is a good economical solution.
2)we are going to buy the parts of the system from abroad and put them together by our own so the total price is much less than usual prices.
We are not exactly at Ioannina.The village where we are is about half an hour from Ioannina and here i a little more colder than there ,but i think that with "natural building" and bioclimatic architecture the temerature will not be a problem

@ chuffer:
It is great to hearing from you.
What you call "xaliki" is gravel and you can find it at any size you want.
In my opinion it is a great solution but you have to be carefull about it's ph.some typrs of xaliki can affect the ph of your system.Xaliki is general name of different types of gravel.
As regards the tilapia as i told you is very difficult to find in greece.only in very small quantity and not for sure.I can help you a little bit with trout fingerlings
with regards George

this is a photo of the progress made till today..

Great! We are hungry for more photoes!

Hi zsazsa,
as i moved on a village 6 months ago to make the aquaponics instalation ,i have slow internet connection and i can't upload a slideshow of our progress but when i go to the near town i will upload it.
Construction now is paused due to bad weather and lack of volunteers to help.
It will restart when we overcome these problems,but midwhile we are going to build a smaller (3000lt FT) till january next to our house at an old abandoned building
it is great to hearing from you,
i just love your system,keep leading

The bad thing about the forum being so busy is that you don't get to read every thread. But the up side to that is, that you can find some ones system thread which you've missed for months and it makes an interesting read following what's been happening..

Nice work GeorgeKara, great to see the low tech building methods being employed, I hope you can find more volunteers to keep things moving....