If you google “Jean Pain Method” you’ll see some good articles about this concept. He developed this over a period of 10 years and according to his measurements, the energy required to harvest/process the wood (fuel for chainsaws, chipper, tractor, truck) was 12% of the energy he captured from each system. When he factored the energy-cost of the actual equipment, plus the fuel, the energy required was 26% of the energy returned from the Mound. That doesn’t factor the HUGE additional value of the compost this creates, to build up soil, a tremendously important asset for food-production and real sustainability.

Since he also captured methane (natural gas), he converted ALL of his motorized equipment to run on NG, meaning ALL of the energy-input requirements were produced from this system with ZERO fossil fuels, and ZERO net greenhouse gas emissions.

Graham, what is your definition of sustainability, if this does not meet the bill? I will bite my tongue in response to your uninformed judgment that this is “not sustainable” and give you a chance to revisit that opine.

My project is an experiment using a WASTE-STREAM of leftover wood-chips (leftover from jobs done by local tree-service work and power-line clearing), capturing the energy from the natural composting process without burning anything, and the end-product will be several tons of soil-building compost for my land. We used a total of 1 (yes, ONE) gallon of diesel-fuel for this project and 40+ hours of manual labor.

So far we have spent a total of $0 on this project and it will offset at least 300 gallons of propane use (that’s what we have been using for hot water over an 18 month period), and it will likely offset 20% of our winter fuel-needs, which would mean we’ll reduce our wood-burning by 2 cords over the next two winters.

IF I can figure out how to capture/store the methane from the inner chamber, that will give me the energy equivalent of another 400 to 600 gallons of propane.

By the way, as of this morning the water from the mound was up to 120 degrees (and it was 28 degrees outside).
Cheers
gb

A) Freezer Unit – Made by Vestfrost – Model MF 314
Electricity consumption is rated at 2,71 Kw/24 hours
The device should run 24 hours per day
Desired autonomy (reserve power) is 4 to 5 days a month, to continue working when skys are cloudy, or there is no sunshine.

B) Refrigerator – Made by Vestfrost – Model MK 304
Electricity consumption is rated at 1,67 Kw/24 hours
The device should run 12 hours per day
Desired autonomy (reserve power) is 4 to 5 days a month, to continue working when skys are cloudy, or there is no sunshine.
The average peak sunshine per day for the country is 6 to 8 hours. Following are the equipment ordered to make up the generators:

If you did not purchase any of the equipment, then you have an arguement.