LPG Cylinders, Energy, Taxis, Kitchens

It is possible to heat, power a house using portable LPG cylinders. Such things are common in many kitchens in various countries. Completely off-grid, cheap.

India, TR.. never saw in US, or DE, the image above was from an AU site, cld be prevalent there

Standard cylinder < 15 dollars. Call a number, have one delivered at home, like ordering pizza. These gas companies have stores, everywhere, they have those canisters stacked up, ppl see them passing by. Even some taxi cabs converted to run on this thing..

One delivery company, Aygaz, sold 25 million standard cylinder worth of this stuff in 2019.

Empty cylinders get refilled in a plant. Call the same number, cylinder gets picked up. Like reverse-delivery of pizza

They pack a punch (molecules better than electrons). Ex, standard size 12 kg, keg size cylinder based stove in kitchen, it can go for years with medium to low usage.

Let's verify. High-heat flame energy from an all-electric, single heater stove is 1500 Watts, which is 1/3 efficient [1] compared to gas, standard LPG cylinder = 12 kg LPG, LPG is 46-51 MJ/kg, 1 MJ = 277 Watt hour

print ('%0.2f h' % (46*12*277.7/(1500/3)))

306.58 h

This rings true, if you left stove on at high heat, it can continuously run for >300 hours, have it on 1 hr a day, lasts a year.

Think about how much energy that is, at such a cheap price.

Imagine using that energy to heat up a house, power all electronic items.

Annual energy required for typical house heating is 8,208 kWh, electricity for all other items 3,700 kWh.

energy_req = 8208 + 3700
cylinder = (4*16*46*277)/1000.
print (energy_req / cylinder)

14.602299482027938

Every month, you get 4 of those cylinders (little bigger 16 kg size), you'd be fine.

And just saw there are 45 kg versions

LPG is fossil of course. But same tech could be extended to renewable gases, fuels. Portable cylinders could appeal to low end, off-grid. For high end, on-grid, pipelines are still way to go... Or in bulk, renewables are used on generator turbines to generate electricity.

References

[1] https://home.howstuffworks.com/gas-vs-electric-stoves.htm