Pack Rat Work Shop
Solar Hot Water Mini Power Plants

WorkShop Index Alt. Energy Index

All the drawings/plans here are links to full pages of each type of system. They are the end result of me trying to figure out how I can add some alternative energy resources to my home and workshop while living in a subdivision.
Scaled up, some of these could also be the basic power and hot water for a small home or maybe a vacation cabin in the woods somewhere. These are not what you normally see when looking for solar power! Rankine, Sterling, steam systems and others can be used for small systems, they don’t all have to be big commercial or industrial setups.

                                ‘Minto Based Power Wheels

    These are roughly Minto Wheel based that have modified
     operating setups based on rotary airplane engines.
    They use both propane or freon gas pressure operating on air
      cylinders by itself and gas pressure operating on hydraulic
      fluid and cylinders   Low to High power outputs.

                        ‘Simple Rankine hot water power systems

    These are simple Rankine cycle engine systems that operate a
      generator through various different drive types .

‘The Micro Tide’ Battery Charger System1

The system pumps water or hydraulic fluid back and forth between two
tanks to operate a hydraulic motor or a small water turbine. These are
the original designs when I first started working with these ideas.

Cable drum based engines

These are drum engines using cables and pulley systems. They are
very simple engines a lot like the teeter totter systems below.
They can be also be scaled up big enough to be quite powerful.

Pump Jack Type Hydraulic Cylinder based engines

These engines use hydraulic cylinders to create the system output
drive by pressurizing tanks containing hydraulic fluid. Simple designs
but can have high output capability.

55 gallon drum based engine Configured as a battery charger

This engine is based on a Newcomen steam engine with modern twist.
First of all there is no steam used, only hot and cold water. The drum
contains water and propane gas. This system came from an idea a few
members of the Yahoo HAES (Stirling engine) group were talking
about that I decided to explore a bit more in depth.

‘The Micro Tide’ Battery Charger System 2

This is a simple combination between the “drum” engine and the
“micro-tide” design. I think uses the best design ideas of both of the
above systems.

Hot water powered Opposed Piston Engines

These are simple engines that use the same principle of gas expansion
that the rest of the systems use but in much smaller physical packages

Hot water Powered Pumps and Air Compressors

These systems are configures as air compressor and water pumps
in both small table top size and large high power systems.

Hot water powered Teeter-Totter Engines

These are very simple engine that use the same principle of gas
expansion that the rest of the systems but use gravity to do the actual
work. They are self starting and can have a number of different type
output setups

Hot water powered Nitinol Engines

These are engines that use the “memory metal” Nitinol to create the
movement. These are setup to use solar power and they can output
usable physical or electrical power if geared up to a faster output
speed

NIFTE Engines

These are engines based on a design by T.C.B. Smith. He calls them
Non inertia feedback thermofluidic engines. These are my versions of
his design and a few slightly modified of my own.