LaMar's off grid cabin

I just love learning how other people live off grid, especially when they are doing it in a very similar way to how I live. LaMar Alexander has done all of this and more, we may be in different places, but we both started out with small and simple systems, cobbling together this and that, building an independent life one piece at a time.

LaMar has graciously shared his life with the rest of us, in book and video format, here are some interesting and educational videos about how he is upgrading his solar systems. There are 4 videos in this series, you can view them here or click on the links to view at YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajp0VkWZ9Jk

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrkyMKb73co

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EylS_Kt0gQ

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n7e9ttcmlM

 

 
LaMar has written a great book about how he built his off grid cabin and the systems that are part of his off grid cabin, this IS a “how to” book about building an off grid cabin, a great companion book to Nick’s book Off The Grid-Inside The Movement For More Space, Less Government, And True Independence In Modern America I own both books and found lots of great information in them.

Solar newbies beware

Don’t believe the awful ads which promise you “free power for $200″, or “build your own solar panel for $200″. Several of them appear on this site from time to time, despite that we are doing everything we can to stop them.  Many are from Chinese spammers, and a particular bunch of conmen called energy4free, or earth4energy or Get-Cheap-Solar-Panels.com, amongst many other aliases. These slimebags ask you to pay for an e-book which directs you to some other sites and offers to sell you components for a solar panel that will never work. Of course it would be quite wrong and immoral to suggest you should click repeatedly on their ads whenever you see the Earth4energy logo. We do not recommend that.

We have complained to Google but that did no good. Every time we find the ads we delete them, but they pop up under some other dodgy URL.  Please email us if you find any ads you think we should delete.

IF the federal government was really worried about the planet’s destruction it would force power companies to adopt a German model and pay people more for generating green power, and ban solar rip-offs like the above.

The solar tax rebate is mainly aimed at grid-connected homes, and although I can’t say its a bad thing in itself, I certainly don’t like that the State-based incentives tend to discriminate against off-gridders.  But the new Obama stimulus incentives might allow new off-grid properties larger grants for power and water.

Right now, the power generators are treating people who put energy back into the power grid as if they had somehow fixed the electricity meter – refusing to pay them any more once they have “zeroed out” their own electrical usage. In Germany, where solar power is a significant contributor to energy, I would get 50c, instead of the 10c I get here.

The contribution from solar is most important at times of peak demand in the heat of the day in the cities, when the faraway power stations are losing a lot of heat in the transmission lines.

Now back to that claim of “free energy for $200″: If you were to spend $10,000 on renewable energy for your house, you’re not going to get that back for many years. But it would bring your power bills down by a large amount.

So how much would it cost to take your home, with say a couple acres  completely off the grid? `If you do everything really well, you should be able to spend $5000 of your own money plus the $5000 grant from the Government.” For water and sewerage, allow another $5-8,000. In most cases, if you have a couple acres or more allow $15,000 of your own money and you need never get another power or water bill.

David Crane, the CEO of NRG Energy, is not your typical power company executive, as becomes clear from his interview with a Yale University  student magazine, e360.

NRG is a Fortune 500 company producing electricity for up to 20 million U.S. households. Crane is still neck-deep in hydrocarbons, with more than 90 percent of NRG’s electricity production coming from natural gas, coal, and oil. Crane  believes the electricity market is about to be transformed by the widespread adoption of solar panels on residential and commercial roofs, and electric cars in garages,

Crane told e360: “I think the most important thing is to make the American public aware that now they have energy choices in a way that they never really did. You don’t just have to settle for using electricity in your house that is supplied by coal-fired power plants on the grid. And you don’t just have to put oil that comes from the Middle East in your gas tank. By far the biggest opportunity for those of us on the electricity side is transportation energy.

I mean the people who were opposed to climate change legislation used one of two tactics. They either said, “Well, we don’t believe it’s happening.” Which, of course, is just a bald-faced lie. Or the second part of the one/two punch is, “We can’t afford to do anything about it because a synonym for the word “green” is “expensive.” But looking forward, electric vehicles will be far cheaper to operate than internal combustion engine vehicles. And solar panels on the roof will provide power more cheaply than taking power from the grid.

The electricity side of the energy sector is 50 percent coal and 20 percent natural gas and 20 percent nuclear. The transportation side is almost all oil. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re on the left or the right of the political spectrum, no American wants to keep importing 3 million barrels of oil a day from the Middle East. So there’s huge public policy benefit to shifting the transportation sector to something other than oil.

e360: Could you talk about NRG’s move into utility-scale solar, and also your vision long-term of large-scale solar, versus distributed [smaller-scale] solar power?

Crane:So far most of our business has been utility-scale solar — gigantic plants in the desert. The biggest solar [project] we have is 295 megawatts. That’s something like 6 million solar panels. Those projects are really dependent on two things, because they cost over a billion dollars: the Department of Energy (DOE) Loan Guarantee Program and California’s 33 percent Renewable Portfolio Standard, and the fact that the two largest California utilities have been willing to sign long-term agreements in order to meet their requirements [to obtain 33 percent of their electricity from renewables by 2020] under the Renewable Portfolio Standards. We have over 800 megawatts of projects out there, which is a huge number for solar. But our view is that because the DOE Loan Guarantee Program is going away and the California utilities are coming close to putting themselves in a position to satisfy the requirement, there will be fewer of those projects in the future.

We expect to continue to pursue that business and to do well, but that’s not going to be the explosive-growth part of the industry. The explosive-growth part will be between distributed solar power, which is like 1 to 10 megawatt size, and then residential, which is measured in kilowatts. We have so many parking lots and warehouse rooftops and residential locations where people want to reduce their monthly electric bills and that is just an enormous area of growth.
Democratization of customer choice in our sector begins with two things. One is the electric car and the other is the solar panel on the roof. I think it actually starts with the electric car. You put the electric car in your garage and you really have a mini power plant because these batteries that drive electric cars are quite substantial pieces of equipment. The average car in the United States is sitting still about 22 hours a day. Those are hours where the car can either be accepting power from the grid or selling power through the grid in a phenomenon we refer to as V2G, vehicle-to-grid. That leads to the third leg of the trilogy, which is the smart meter, because between a smart meter in your house, combined with time and use pricing, you essentially want that electric car to be charging between midnight and four in the morning. And you want to have it available to basically drain itself a little between 2 and 6 o’clock in the afternoon.

This is something that most people don’t like to really talk about. But it’s just a fact of life that when you start talking about electric vehicles and solar on your roof, you’re talking about something that’s going to penetrate into the population top-down through the socio-economic strata. That’s just a fact of life. We’re very bullish on the electric car, but we don’t expect for another 20 years that a person who can only afford to have one car will have an electric car. But in America there are 60 million families that own more than one car, and that’s a big market. Ultimately, the answer to your question is this: If you assume that the average solar installation on the roof of a house is going to cost somewhere between $20,000 and $50,000, we think about one percent of the population is willing to write that check. So what the industry is already fast creating is lease arrangements, and power purchase arrangements if you’re a small business. Basically, a lease arrangement where someone like us actually owns the solar on your roof, and all the customer sees is an electric bill that’s no bigger than the electric bill they were seeing before.

I think people like us will try to offer you a discount.Also, if you put solar on your roof you’re deflecting the sun from beating down and that will put less strain on your air conditioning system. Number three, most people who understand energy realize that right now is a very good time to lock in your price of energy for as long as you can. The average age of a power plant in the United States is 40 years old. When American utilities start replacing the current generation of power plants, everyone’s bill is going to go up. The lease arrangements we’re talking about are fixed-price arrangements for 20 years. We will give you price stability for a long time — no inflation.

We believe that in the next 3 to 5 years you’ll be able to get power cheaper from the roof of your house than from the grid. Solar is going to go from this thing that right now is like .1 percent of the market to 20 to 30 percent of the overall electricity mix. That’s huge.
If you go back about four years to where the price of solar modulars were, the prices have been cut in half in the last four years. I predict that the price of solar modules will be cut in half again in the next two years. And the basic reason is that solar technology is a nanotechnology. And most forms of power generation that we deal with are based on thermal energy or, in the case of windmills, kinetic energy. With those things, in order to reduce your unit cost you just have to keep making things bigger. And so our problem with the wind industry is in order to get the per-kilowatt cost down, they have created these engineering marvels, these monstrously large wind turbines.

But to place them in a crowded country you have to put them farther and farther away from where people live. Right now, most of the action in the wind industry in the United States is in Minnesota, Iowa, and the Dakotas and they don’t use a lot of power out there. And we fundamentally don’t believe that people are going to support building a whole big network of high voltage transmission lines.

Utilities can't handle universal solar

Further evidence in favor of Micro-grids and against the so-called Smart Grid.

The runaway take-up of rooftop solar panels in Australia has undermined the electricity supply system, feeding so much power back into the network that it is causing voltage rises that could damage household devices such as computers and televisions. This means we should either rewire every home and every street, to suit the convenience of the big Utility companies, or rethink the way the nation’s energy delivery is organised. What applies to Australia is true elsewhere in the world.Power distribution lines and home wiring were designed for electricity to flow from power stations to appliances, but households with solar panels do the reverse of this.

Power quality problems are worse in rural areas as the network is sometimes weaker and there is generally more space, meaning that bigger solar PV systems with capacities of 5 kilowatts or more are being installed, compared with the 1kW-3kW systems more common in urban areas.

One of Australia’s biggest electricity network providers, Ausgrid, warned that there was a “significant likelihood” that costs would have to rise because of the impact of the solar photovoltaic cells.

In a letter to the NSW pricing regulator, obtained by The Australian newspaper, Ausgrid warns that in areas with a high concentration of solar cells, voltage levels can rise and this can have “consequences for appliances and equipment in customers’ homes”. It can also cause solar systems to switch off.

In Queensland, some new applications for rooftop solar systems have been rejected and Energex now urges customers to check that a solar PV system can be installed without threatening the operation of the network.

In Western Australia, Horizon Power has set limits on how much renewable energy can be installed in a system without affecting the power supply. Horizon is rejecting applications for new renewables installations in Exmouth and Carnarvon, and accepting them only from households, schools and not-for-profit organisations in Broome and Leonora.

Energex spokesman Mike Swanston said it was becoming difficult for electricity distribution authorities to set up the power system to ensure correct voltages when some houses in a street had solar and others did not.

“It is similar to the water network — the pipes get smaller and the pressure is designed to be lower as you get closer to the house,” Mr Swanston said. “Start pumping water backwards into the smaller household pipes, and all sorts of strange things happen.”

Energy Networks Association acting chief executive John Deveraux said the problem would only get worse as more rooftop solar panels were installed and the systems got bigger.

In southeast Queensland alone, more than 22,300 rooftop solar systems were installed in the first three months of this financial year — more than the 19,000 installed in the 2009-10 financial year, according to Energex.

Federal Labor’s target of producing 20 per cent of electricity from renewable sources such as solar power by 2020 has pushed up demand for the rooftop PV systems. So, too, have state-based schemes that pay generous feed-in tariffs to households for injecting power back into the grid.

Meanwhile, a flood of cheap solar panels being made in Asia and imported into Australia has offset moves by the government and some states to wind back their subsidies.

Essential Energy, which operates powerlines in country NSW and parts of southern Queensland, wants NSW to follow Queensland’s lead on introducing a cap on solar PV systems of 5kW to avoid power quality problems.

Endeavour Energy, which runs the network in Sydney’s greater west, warns that some solar panel installers have not done voltage checks and other measurements to ensure the solar PV system operates adequately.

“The biggest problem we’ve got with the accelerated rollout is making sure every installation is fully compliant,” Endeavour’s general manager of network development, Ty Christopher, said.

Adelaide solar panel installer Chris Hart said the problems were worse in the summer months, when airconditioner use added to the stress on the system.

Mr Hart, who owns EcoSouth Solar Electricity, said areas with a lot of solar panels pushed the voltage up to the maximum allowable level, triggering shutdowns in the individual systems and taking the load off the grid.

He said solar systems “drop out for a few minutes” when voltages get too high, a phenomenon known as “tripping out”.

“Then they try to come online again and it pushes the voltage up again and it’s very wearing,” he said. “That’s the problem with having too much solar in an area where the local authority hasn’t got enough wires or copper in the street to hold the voltage down.”

Mr Hart said the size of conductors and cables in the streets would have to be upgraded “so it can handle lots of solar, versus times when there’s lots of load and no solar”.

“If you get a very, very hot night and there’s obviously no solar, the mains voltage is going to drop a lot,” he said. “If your wires aren’t up to it, you’ve got a problem.”

The network companies say measures such as retrofits and battery storage can stop the “tripping” but can be costly.

Homesteading, it’s a buzzword that means different things to different people, back in the day, it meant getting land for free as long as you lived on it and improved it for x number of years. It was a way to get people to move west (in the USA), back when travel was slow and painful, even dangerous.

Today it usually refers to someone who is living more like our ancestors did, in a more self sufficient manner, on a plot of land, often raising livestock, growing their own food, living more independently. Most of us are more than one generation removed from those who lived on a farm or homestead, so we don’t benefit from the knowledge of our family members who lived in a more self sufficient manner. I know in my family, it was my great grand parents who had lived on a farm, my grandparents and parents lived in suburban neighborhoods with small yards and animals no bigger than a dog.

Because of this, those of us who want to live closer to the land have to resort to alternative methods of obtaining  knowledge. I continually scour the internet for books about living off grid, gardening and such, I found this book The Ultimate Guide to Homesteading: An Encyclopedia of Independent Living (The Ultimate Guides), actually I didn’t find it, I was offered an opportunity to review it and I jumped at the chance, it was a book I had been looking at previously and was more than happy to review it.

I keep getting distracted from writing because I keep finding more and more interesting things in this book to read, I just read about growing cotton, then picking it, cleaning it, and spinning it. Since I crochet, this is especially appealing to me, and something I think I can do with little trouble. For now, I’m not set up to raise wool bearing animals, but I can grow cotton and process it.

This book has a lot to offer, it doesn’t go into extreme detail on any one subject, but gives you enough information so that you can decide if that particular thing is something you really want to try.  Nicole Faires (don’t you just love her name?) the author, has certainly lived the life, she is not just spouting theory, she grew up on a hobby farm raising chickens and growing her own food among other things.

While not an exhaustive list of homesteading subjects, I believe it covers the majority of them quite nicely, such as:

• land-buying, communities…
• water-getting it, purifying it and such
• food-finding it, growing it, preserving it…
• animals-livestock, domestic…
• shelter-various home styles, barns, fences…
• financial-making money from your skills…
• health-medicines, herbal medicines,
• and lots more

There is a great  dictionary in the back so you will at least sound like you know what you are talking about when chatting with the old timers at the feed store, LOL, seriously, I have had a good time reading the terminology and their meanings. Such as “butt-up”, before reading this book, I would have said that is how one lands when tripping over a rock and doing a face plant, now I know that is a type of roof ridge made in thatching which forces the straw together from both sides of the roof to form a peak. “Flying change”, I would think it’s what happens when you lose control of your change purse, but it really has to do with horses.

Near the back of the book, just before the index, the author’s bio and several blank pages (perfect for adding your own notes), there is a great bibliography with tons of resources, mostly in the form of internet links. These will send you to more detailed resources for the subjects found in this book. This alone is worth the price of the book.

The book is easy to read, well made, with lots of color photographs and diagrams, nice thick glossy pages ensure this book will last for a long time, that’s a good thing because once you have this book, you will be referring to it over and over again throughout the years.

PB (my hubby) has been trying to steal this book from me ever since I received it, his comment on it was that it is a good all over resource, not detailed on each thing, but a good book and he’s glad we have it, he has also been going on and on about how well this book is physically put together, the binding, the paper quality and the pictures. Now that I’m finished with this review, I can safely give the book to him, I’ll not see it again for a while. :)

See my other book reviews here:
http://www.off-grid.net/tag/book-review/

Honesty disclaimer:
I did receive this book free from the publisher for the expressed intent of giving a review, that in no way influenced my review, all of my reviews are honest and from the heart.

Hanging to dry...

It’s funny how your perspectives change as you grow. When I was a kid, I used to be embarrassed because my mom hung our laundry out on the line to dry. I hated the smell of line dried clothes, sheets and towels, to me that meant we were poor, we couldn’t afford a dryer. All of my classmates had soft, fabric softener fresh smelling clothes, our clothes, towels and sheets were stiffer and to me were just second rate.

Now, 30 something years later, I relish the smell of line dried clothes, to me it means freedom, self sufficiency and the satisfaction of a job well done. I just brought in a set of sheets from the line, I couldn’t keep my face out of the sheets, the scent is heavenly, and no, my line dried clothes are not scratchy and stiff, fortunately there are better cleaners to use that do not leave fabric feeling so stiff like they did in the “old days”.

I have experimented with several recipes of homemade laundry soap, I still use them when I do laundry in a washing machine, but when I hand wash (which I prefer) I have found that no matter how finely I grate the bar soap, it just doesn’t dissolve well enough, I have even tried turning it into a liquid, I just don’t like how it turns out, I can’t seem to get it rinsed out well enough and it leaves whitish places on my laundry.

I turned to Dr Bronner’s liquid soaps, being a liquid it dissolves readily in the water, it is low sudsing which is good, suds aren’t what cleans your clothes anyhow. Because of all of this, rinsing is so much quicker and easier. One of the reasons that line dried clothes tend to be stiffer and scratchier is because typical laundry detergent isn’t completely rinsed out of your clothes, even if you wash in a washing machine. Just look at the rinse water after a few minutes of agitation, you will see soapy bubbles, at best you can do a second rinse to try to get the residual detergent out, but even then it’s just about impossible, these detergents are designed to leave behind residues that contain optical brighteners, fragrances and such.

Now to the rinsing, I have tried all of the methods I’ve read about on line to help get all the soap residue rinsed out and help make the fabric softer, I have tried adding vinegar to the rinse water, I’ve tried adding baking soda, I still had stiffy scratchy laundry at the end when I line dried them. So I fell back on good old fabric softener, I use an unscented one by Downy, I don’t want chemical scents saturating the things that closest to my body and where I sleep. The fabric softener is extra concentrated so I don’t have to use much, and it has made all the difference in the world. Now even my terry towels are a pleasure to feel.

I have family coming out for a visit this weekend, so today I’m hand washing the sheets, along with a load of t-shirts. The first set of sheets were dry by the time I got the second set of sheets and the t-shirts washed, after hanging the wet laundry, as I brought in the dry sheets, I couldn’t keep my face out of the sheets, they smell so fresh, so good and they are soft, not stiff at all.

Another trick I use, this is a real shortcut, my shirts, especially my t-shirts (which I live in) I hang them on a plastic hanger to dry, to keep the shoulders from getting that weird hump from the ends of the hangers, I pull the neck of the shirt up toward the hook part of the hanger, just until the shoulder transitions to the sleeve is even with the end of the hanger, I use a couple of clothes pins to keep the shirt in place on the hanger.

Click to see full size image

I also use clothes pins between the hung shirts on the line to keep them from being blown together, this means the dry quicker. Since they are already hung up, when it’s time to collect the shirts from the line, all I have to do is remove the clothes pins from the shoulders, take them in the house and put them on the clothes rack. Some of my shirts I take off of the hanger, fold and put up, mainly the ratty ones, the good ones I keep on the hanger.

I am going to be ordering some Sal Suds (also by Dr Bronner) for general cleaning and doing laundry, it’s cheaper and I have read good things about it, it’s really an all purpose cleaner, from floor to ceiling, from dishes to laundry, and it’s biodegradable. I really love Dr Bronner’s cleaners and have used them for years. If you can get this in a local store, great, unfortunately it’s not available to me locally, if you are in the same boat, you can get them online here: Dr. Bronner Sal-Suds Biodegradable Cleaner, 32 fl oz liquid or the Dr Bronner’s Sal Suds Liquid Cleanser 128 Ounces. As of the time of writing this, both had free shipping.

It doesn’t take all that much time either, I do a little at a time, mostly doing it in my sink, I separate out my clothes, doing the whites and lighter colors first, brights then darks and blacks last. Often I’ll do one or two sets a day, so the whites and lights I’ll tackle one day, the others I’ll do another day. I fill my vessel with water, add some soap, then add the clothes, I swish the clothes in the soapy water, concentrating on any stains or especially dirty spots. When I’m tired of doing that, I’ll go do something else, then come back, swish some more, then wring out the clothes, if the water isn’t too dirty, I’ll wash more clothes. When I have everything washed that I want washed, I drain the water then fill the vessel back up with water and rinse the clothes, I almost always do 2 rinses. The second rinse I add fabric softener and if I’m doing whites or lights, I’ll add some Mrs Smith Bluing. That helps make the whites whiter and even helps with the light colored clothes. Again, I stop between swishing the clothes to do other things, it really doesn’t matter how long the clothes sit there.

Oh I almost forgot, my newest laundry aide, if you remember reading my previous DIY laundry article (this one has the most comments on this site to date!), I was using a plunger with holes in it to wash clothes, it worked pretty well, but I wanted something better. I remembered when I was a teenager, I worked in a Mexican fast food restaurant, we used an industrial sized potato masher while cooking the meat, I thought that might work for laundry, and does it ever! It’s not the round kind, it’s a thick wire that runs back and forth, it’s mounted on a long handle. Since it’s stainless steel, no worries about rust. It works great. This is what it looks like:

Be sure to get the one with the longer handle, you’ll appreciate it much better, so will your back. The handle on this one is 24 inches long, and the head is a little better than 5 inches wide, it gets those clothes really clean and doesn’t make a lot of splashes or suds.

Once they are fully rinsed and wrung out, I put them in a laundry basket and head outside to hang them. Where I live, the laundry dries really fast, we have very low humidity. If I really want them to dry faster, I pull out my wringer, that thing is worth its weight in gold! I don’t use it every time because I don’t have a proper washing area yet, it will be used every time once I get set up with a proper wash station outside, it’s one of those “works in progress”. I just had a gust of wind blow through, I ran outside to see if any of the laundry hit the ground, and yes, one shirt did bite the dust, fortunately it was already dry and I was able to brush the shirt off. If you have winds where you live, and you want to hand your shirts on hangers to dry, you might want to use clothes pins to secure the hangers so your clothes do not come off in the event of a gust of wind.

Life is good when you have the fresh scent of line dried laundry that is soft and so wonderful!

Not saying that everyone needs to live like this, BUT it’s nice to have the skills to be able to do these things.

The Off-Grid 2.2k Power kit

Let us Power you Up!

Off-Grid.Net has launched the Off-Grid Energy Design Service. We specialise in large-scale projects, but launch with a perfect low-cost starter kit: The Off-Grid 2.2k (pictured).

Whether you are an installer, a real estate developer, or an off-grid community, we can design your entire renewable energy system, delivered for under $5 per watt. Wherever you are in the world, our Off-Grid Energy Design Service can deliver a complete package at a competitive price.

Our design and production team have in-depth experience of every kind of energy set-up . The Off-Grid energy system designers consist of skilled, senior European design Directors with degrees in Physics and Engineering, plus veteran Chinese engineers, brought up in a society where there was no grid — ready and waiting to create the perfect, tailored system for your needs. Click here to fill in your personal specification form. We are focused on catering to larger scale off-grid projects of ten to 150+ homes, and can set up power in remote bases for industrial or agricultural use.

Our company has a specialized Rural Electrification Division that in particular focuses on providing customized off-grid solutions for enterprises and institutions planning to electrify energy-starved areas.

Guaranteeing the long-term and reliable functioning of every aspect of the system is both essential for our customers and the basic pillar of our work, so we only sell complete solutions rather than single components. We are offering much more than a single product, because we know that every off-grid situation is different and every customer requires a unique solution.

We have already partnered with governments, NGOs and EPCs in India and South-East Asia. Now we are extending the service into the Middle East, Europe, Africa and the Americas.

You can find local language versions of our offer here in the following languages: Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Persian, Mandar, Hindi and Tamil. The Off-Grid 2.2K gives an indication of the systems that we design and the pricing. It will run 4 bulbs, 2 fans, 1 computer, tv and washing machine for 5 hours every day, and the fridge all day long. 99% of our systems are fully customized. They are specified to guarantee rugged, reliable power in almost any situation, taking account of local climate conditions and the appliances that are being run. Our institution is particularly interested in talking to resellers and developers who need a reliable, high-quality source for customized off-grid solutions. We will support you with system design support, marketing material and even on-site engineering support for large projects.

Please get in touch with us by phone or email to discuss your specific off-grid requirements. You can start by filling up the form here. Call Nick Rosen on +44 7768 507693, 877-706 7423 in the US or email nick@off-grid.net.

CHART OF THE KINDS OF APPLICATIONS SUPPORTED BY OFF-GRID 2.2K

*Assuming 5 hours of sunlight 5 days a week for solar version.

Hop to store before its too late

On July 1 this year, government subsidies for solar panels will be reduced by around $1000 ozzie dollars, so savvy energy-savers are racing to get the best price on a system.

“We are seeing a real surge in home-owners buying solar panels before July 1 and my advice is, if you are thinking of having solar panels installed, you’re best off doing it sooner rather than later,” says Australian Solar Energy Society chief executive John Grimes.

“You can install an average solar panel system with a 1.5kW capacity for under $3000 after rebates. And with electricity bills set to double by 2015, the investment could be worth every cent. Homeowners can reduce or completely eliminate their electricity bills, depending on the size of the solar panel they install.”

A solar panel attaches to your roof and converts the energy in sunlight into electricity to power household appliances.

Anything that runs on electricity – from your lighting to your kettle to your TV – can be powered by your solar panels.

The size of the panel you install depends on three things: your budget, your roof size and your household electricity useage.

Consumer watchdog Choice advises homeowners to consider these points before investing in a solar panel system:

1 CONSIDER DIRECTIONS

Check to see whether your roof faces the right direction (ideally north) to gain full-capacity power.

2 CHECK WITH COUNCIL

Find out if you need approval prior to installation in your local government area.

3 MAKE CALCULATIONS

Assess the amount of electricity your family currently uses.

4 LOOK AT OTHER OPTIONS

Consider whether you could reduce your energy consumption by installing energy-efficient products such as shower heads, or by making simple changes such as turning off appliances after use or using the dishwasher only when full.

5 DO YOUR HOMEWORK

Choose a reputable product and an accredited installer.

Mick Harris, technical specialist with the Alternative Technology Association, warns that the booming solar energy industry has attracted many “bad players” who are preying on consumers.

“People need to do their research before they buy,” he says.

“Consumers also need to remember that the cheapest product is not always the best.”

For detailed consumer information, visit the Clean Energy Council website at www.cleanenergycouncil.org.au and download their Consumer Guide

MAKING SURE YOU GET THINGS RIGHT

THERE are a few ways to check whether you are choosing a reputable manufacturer and installer:

* Do your research. Enter “solar complaints” into an online search engine. Refine your search by also entering the company name you are considering.

* Don’t choose the cheapest product simply because it’s cheap.

* Avoid anyone who is reluctant to come to your house for an on-site quote.

* Avoid a company with high-pressure sales tactics.

* Visit a reliable solar-energy website forum, such as the Alternative Technology Association’s website (www.ata.org.au), to gauge consumer experiences

MORE INFORMATION

ABSA 1300 889 438, absa.net.au

BASIX basix.nsw.gov.au

Clarendon 136 393, clarendon.com.au

Landcom 9841 8600, landcom.com.au

EASY WAYS TO SAVE ENERGY

Being more energy efficient at home is good for the environment and also saves money. Our purchasing decisions can have a big effect on the amount of energy we use. How can you save energy? Here are some easy steps:

* Buying a refrigerator with a 3.5 star rating means you could use as much as 55 per cent less energy compared to one with a minimum star rating.

* Switching off a computer screen when you are away from your desk means it uses 80 per cent less energy.

* Appliances left on standby while not being used can account for up to 10 per cent of your power bills. Over the course of a year, a microwave may use more energy to power its digital clocks than heating meals. Switching these appliances off gives you an instant saving.

* You can also find out how energy- and water- efficient your house is compared to others and explore simple ways to reduce your energy and water bills with the NABERS rating system.

Visit nabers.com.au

Information provided by WWF-Australia, wwf.org.au

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APPLIANCE LABELS

The Energy Rating Scheme is a mandatory national labelling scheme for refrigerators, freezers, clothes washers, clothes dryers, dishwashers and airconditioners

The energy rating label has two main features:

* The star rating gives a quick comparative assessment of the model’s energy efficiency.

* The comparative energy consumption provides an estimate of the annual energy consumption of the appliance based on the tested energy consumption and information about the typical use of the appliance in the home. Airconditioners show the power consumption of the appliance (kW or kWh/hour).

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Energy Rating Scheme

energyrating.gov.au

The Rodriguez and their off-grid chicken coop

Ideology , security, solitude: there are many reasons why people move off-grid. Hitherto “cosmic rays” has not been one of them.

Yet fear of what has been called by NASA ‘a solar Katrina’ is precisely what prompted Larry Rodriguez, 54, and his wife Sandie to flee Florida for a former chicken coop in Pennsboro, West Virginia.

“The bad weather we are having in the world is because of the solar storms now happening because the sun is ramping up,” says Rodriguez. “We are the kind of people that want to be ready for anything and I’m hoping that it isn’t true but all of the signs are in place.”

Grid vulnerable to solar storms

It would be easy to dismiss his concerns as apocalyptic, But the ‘signs’ he refers to are detailed in a series of increasingly urgent statements by NASA, which reveal a very real possibility over the next three years of a solar storm that could knock out the entire power grid, crippling modern society for weeks or even months.

“We are not afraid of the solar storm, we are afraid of what people are going to do once they find out that they are going to be without power for months or years,” says Rodriguez.

According to NASA we are approaching a “solar maximum” – a period when storms on the surface of the sun are more likely to eject enormous amounts of electromagnetic energy and plasma. “When a coronal mass ejection (a billion-ton solar storm cloud) hits Earth’s magnetic field, the impact causes the field to shake and quiver. These magnetic vibrations induce currents almost everywhere, from Earth’s upper atmosphere to the ground beneath our feet. Powerful GICs can overload circuits, trip breakers, and in extreme cases melt the windings of heavy-duty transformers, “ says NASA on its web site.

Smart power grids, dumb power grids, GPS navigation, air travel, financial services and emergency radio communications and pretty much anything electrical can all be knocked out by intense solar activity. “A century-class solar storm, could cause twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina” warned the National Academy of Sciences in 2008.

Grid transmits solar storms

It turns out that the grid isn’t merely a passive victim of these solar storms, it can actually amplify their effects. “Since the beginning of the Space Age the total length of high-voltage power lines crisscrossing North America has increased nearly 10 fold. This has turned power grids into giant antennas for geomagnetically induced currents,” it says.

Such events arent just theoretical possibilities, they happen regularly. In Quebec for instance on March 13, 1989, a geomagnetic storm knocked out power across the entire province for more than nine hours. The storm damaged transformers in New Jersey, and Great Britain, and caused more than 200 power anomalies across the. A similar series of storms in October 2003 triggered a regional blackout in southern Sweden and may have damaged transformers in South Africa.

Thats why on May 1 last year Larry and his wife moved into an 80 year old cabin measuring just 13’ by 23’ set on a slice of west Virginian mountainside. “It should have been torn down but for the sake of time we decided to work our butts off and rebuild it with an attached greenhouse and half earthen subterranean kitchen with wood fired oven and a root cellar,” he says.

Even off grid power affected

The shack is not connected to the grid, but the mere fact that it has electricity (from solar panels) means that it too will be subject to the effects of solar storms. So Rodriguez says he uses batteries and inverters with everything grounded back to battery ground. “I have been a boater most of my life and that is how it is done on boats. The only earth ground that we are using is for lightening to guard the wind turbine.

He has even considered the effects on water supply. “I don’t think that the solar storms will have any effect on the water in holding tanks but as far as piping we are using all poly pipe and PVC as copper has to be grounded to prevent corrosion from electrolysis.”

And if things get really rough the Rodriguez family always has the option of retreating to a 450 foot long disused railway tunnel on their land that will protect them against everything except a direct hit by an asteroid.

NASA’s solar shield

The good news for Larry Rodriguez is that if the solar Katrina does occur, at least he’ll have between one and four days notice. NASA has put in place a defence called ‘solar shield’ consisting of satellites that can spot solar storms destined for earth. Although it identifies them days in advance, the crucial moment comes about 30 minutes before impact when the storm sweeps past ACE, a spacecraft stationed roughly a million miles from earth.

The craft measures the storm’s speed, density, and magnetic field and transmits the data to Earth where scientists say they can work out where exactly damage will be greatest, allowing them to warn public utilities.

So do think more of us should be joing Larry Rodriguez? “It is true that we are sitting in the Sun’s atmosphere, the heliosphere, so it can create strong currents on earth, “ says Doctor Lucie Green of the UK’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory. “There will be more storms but it’s very hard to put even rough odds on the probability of them being serious.” However she concedes that “the worst case scenario is pretty bad.”

Yes, it seems that ‘fear of cosmic rays, comic though it may sound, has become another legitimate reason to go off grid. ENDS

Prepare for the worst

With the number of households owning solar panels doubling every few years, companies are springing up to offer solar insurance. Naturally buying insurance is a risk in itself – the premiums are usually too high, and the insurer may not pay out even if you do suffer a problem not of your making. They also offer insurance against another big risk facing owners of solar panels – that the installer is not around to honor its guarantee in five years time or so, if the panel develops a fault.

The Travelers Cos. has broadened its insurance coverage for small-scale use of solar panels on homes and a growing number of commercial solar farms.

Travelers has provided insurance for solar- and wind-energy technology for about 10 years, and aspects of previous policies are included in the new policy with additional coverage.

The SolarPak was designed to bridge what had been segmented coverage for solar energy – just the manufacture of panels, just the transportation or just the installation. The new policy is designed to cover the entire timeline of a solar project: from the day a site is designated to the transportation of panels to the site, and installation and, finally, the stage when a solar panel is functioning and converting sunshine into electricity.

The process of finding an appropriate site for a solar installation takes time and research. Weather-data equipment, for example, is usually hauled to the site to gauge sunlight. The SolarPak policy could cover that weather equipment along with a builder’s risk when panels are installed or theft once the panels are up and running.

Schools are among the most vulnerable to theft, says Tim Holmes, ceo of GridLock Solar Security. “If you try to get into a school nowadays, there are barbed gates. They’re like Fort Knox,” Holmes says. “But the $1 million in solar panels on the roof, fastened with just four bolts each? They’re just sitting out there unsupervised.”

As a safeguard against solar theft–particularly common in GridLock’s home state of California–the Santa Rosa-based company sells trigger cables that stitch panels together. If a thief attempts to cut a cable, up to eight people–typically security guards and maintenance staff–are contacted by phone or text within seconds.

Part of the reason for rewriting policies for solar energy, and to provide coverage where gaps existed, is rapid growth in the industry. The US American Recovery and Reinvestment Act made $80 billion available last year for “clean energy investments.” In the UK the new Feed-in tarriff has spurred growth.

April 2010, the US Solar Energy Industries Association released its annual report showing that overall solar capacity grew by 37 percent, and doubling the residential market. Revenues for the solar industry were $4 billion last year. Connecticut ranked ninth among states for new solar capacity added last year, behind Massachusetts, according to the solar association.

“I think we all expect it to just keep growing,” said Lauren Berry, chief business development officer at Travelers Inland Marine, a subsidiary that handles all the solar policies. “You see traditional energy companies diversifying into renewable, or creating divisions for renewable. … You see, let’s say, an erecting operation is now getting into wind turbines. … You see roofers getting into solar panels.”

A leading cause for claims in California, which led all other states in solar expansion last year, was theft. The materials used in photovoltaic panels – the ones that convert sunshine into electricity – are a hot commodity, Berry said.

For homeowners, insurance for solar panels would be a separate add-on to cover the panels, which range in value from $10,000 to $15,000.

Berry said, “With the increased interest in power generation technologies that are considered ‘clean,’ the availability of renewable energy financial incentives and continuous innovation in the multiple applications of solar technology, the SolarPak coverage may help to open up new business opportunities for our network of independent agents and brokers.”

Different types of PV insurance

Even though solar insurance products and standardized yet, demand for pv insurance is increasing. In general large PV systems require liability and property insurance, and many developers may opt to add policies such as environmental risk insurance.

1. General Liability Insurance

General liability Insurance covers policyholders for death or injury to persons or damage to property owned by third parties. General liability coverage is especially important for solar system installers, as risk is greatest during installation.

2. Property Risk Insurance

The solar system owner usually purchases property insurance to protect against risks not covered by the warranty or to extend the coverage period. The property risk insurance often includes theft and catastrophic risks.

3. Environmental Risk Insurance

Environmental damage coverage indemnifies solar system owners of the risk of either environmental damage done by their development or preexisting damage on the development site.

4. Business Interruption Insurance

Business interruption insurance is often required to protect the cash flow of the solar project.

Do you really need PV insurance?

Rely on manufacturer warranty?

Realistic or not, often there are concerns about the warranties offered by solar panel manufacturers. What if there’s a defect in the pv system in 10 years, will the solar panel manufacturer still be around to help?

Chinese solar panel manufacturers in general offer guarantees, which are backed up by the manufacturer itself or by one or more Chinese insurance companies.

Regular solar panel guarantees are:

5+ years product warranty

10 years – 90% performance output

25 years – 80% performance output

How solid are guarantees offered by Chinese solar panel manufacturers?

Quite solid, however it depends on your choice of solar panel manufacturer. Let’s divide the pv manufacturers in two groups:

The first group of solar panel manufacturers offers guarantees that are backed-up by a consortium of Chinese insurance companies.
The second group of solar panel manufacturers takes responsibility for the insurance themselves, by including the risk on their balance sheet. Regardless which guarantees are offered, the validity depends on the manufacturer’s own (future) ability to solve defects. In case the manufacturer would go bankrupt, there might be a problem.
In case a solar system is under-performing or certain pv panels are defect, under the guarantee conditions, the manufacturer will support in the form of solar panel replacements or additional pv power.

Still high performing in 15 years?

Property insurance typically covers solar system components beyond the terms of the manufacturer’s warranty. For example, if a PV module fails for reasons covered by and during the manufacturer’s warranty, the manufacturer is responsible for replacing it, not the insurer. However, if the module fails for a reason not accounted for in the warranty, or if the failure is beyond the warranty period, the insurer must provide compensation for the replacement of the pv module.

Universities and research institutes are making fast progress in research to enhance solar cell efficiency. For example, Stanford University is working on Photon Enhanced Thermion Emission (PETE) that can double solar cell efficiency. Some other projects are near commercial launch with efficiency rates in the 30-40% range.

High solar PV project costs, high cell/module production costs and increasing land acquisition costs are key factors driving solar cell manufacturer’s research on solar cell/module efficiency enhancement. The R&D activities to improve solar cell/ module efficiencies have been yielding better results year on year. The first generation technologies (crystalline solar cells) are leading the solar PV industry followed by second generation technologies (thin film solar cells) in terms of cell conversion efficiency. It is now anticipated that research in second and third generation technologies (thin film and nano technology solar cells respectively) will enable the production of more efficient solar modules at a price cheaper than that of crystalline modules.

Development in the technology and process will double the present solar cell efficiency in the near future. A sunlight-to-electricity conversion rate of 41.6% has already been achieved in lab conditons.

The new solar cell record was established by Spectrolab, a solely-owned subsidiary of The Boeing Company, which has been independently verified by the US Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado (US). The new record surpasses the previous record of 41.1% held by the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany.

High-efficiency solar cells in concentrator systems require fewer cells to produce the same electrical output as conventional solar cells. They enable energy producers to generate more electrical power from typical industrial solar panels and pass on lower costs to homeowners, businesses and other end users.

“This latest record asserts Spectrolab’s leadership position in high efficiency multi-junction solar cells and brings the industry one step closer to achieving affordable solar electricity,” said David Lillington, president of Spectrolab.

Solar peaks can swamp the system

According to the Berliner Zeitung, the head of Germany’s energy agency DENA is warning that there is a real danger that solar power, could crash Gemany’s ageing electricity grid.

The problem is the amount of electricity produced by solar panels varies according to location, time of year, time of day and cloud cover. They are most productive when the sun emerges, which you will not be amazed to learn, is during daylight hours. But that is when demand for electricity is lowest.

As a consequence there can be huge power surges as tens or hundreds of thousands of small solar installations export their surpluses back to the grid.

Stephan Kohler: solar surges could trigger blackouts

While small power surges can be dealt with by switching off local power stations, the amount of solar capacity in Germany will soon be so large thanks to generous subsidies, that under certain conditions, electricity supply could exceed demand, even with all Germany’s power stations switched off.

The result says Stephan Köhler, head of Germany’s energy agency, DENA, is that solar capacity will soon be so large that solar surges could trigger blackouts.

The possibilty of solar-created power outages is a tribute to the success of German energy policy. Subsidies have been so successful in encouraging German citizens and businesses to install solar panels and sell surplus electricity to the grid at a premium, that solar now accounts for 15 per cent of generating capacity in Germany.

According to figures provided by from the energycollective there are currently about 700,000 grid-connected PV solar systems with a total capacity of 14,680 MW installed by German households and businesses. DENA says that at the current rate solar capacity could reach 30 gigawatts by the end of next year -equal to the country’s weekend power consumption,. “We need to cap installation of new panels,” concluded a Dena spokesperson .

The German Solar Industry Federation rejected DENA’s argument, claiming that extra solar energy takes the pressure off high-voltage power lines because it tends to be generated close to where it is used. The federation adds that the grid only needs to be strengthened in some rural areas where solar supply can exceed demand.

Germany’s problems highlight an hitherto unforeseen peril of moving to renewables without adequate preparation. “You lose flexibility on the supply side, so you need to gain some on the demand side,” said Tim Green of Imperial College London,”perhaps by encouraging people to charge their electric cars when the sun shines.”

UK based New Scientist magazine quoted Tim Nuthall of the European Climate Foundation in Belgium as arguing that Germany’s experience makes the case for a transcontinental grid. “The best long-term solution is to install region-wide grids, he said. “In Europe, you need a grid that balances the sun in the south with the wind in the north.”

Maybe. But we cant help thinking that a quicker, cheaper approach would be for micro-generators to be on some kind of trip switch which would be operated whenever it looked like supply was going to exceed demand. Batteries, hot water or other devices could be used to store the unused energy. ENDS

One of the biggest dangers to the grid is bothering the British Secretary of Defense Liam Fox. Today he warns that the electricity grid, financial networks and transport infrastructure could be paralyzed by a solar flare.

Fox is no fringe lunatic. He used to be a medical practioner.

There is a growing threat of electromagnetic disruption to the underpinnings of modern life, the Defense Secretary told a meeting of scientists and security advisers today.

Dr. Fox said he wants to address the “vulnerabilities” in the nation’s hi-tech infrastructure.

“As the nature of our technology becomes more complex, the threat becomes more widespread as well,” he says.

Of course any one living off the grid would be largely immune to such a scenario, and there is evidence that the entire story is just a hoax - Australia’s leading body responsible for monitoring space weather has dismissed claims that a massive solar storm could wipe out the Earth’s entire power grid.

One report quotes an Australian astronomer saying that “the storm is likely to come sooner rather than later”.

But Dr. Phil Wilkinson, the assistant director of the Bureau of Meteorology’s Ionospheric Prediction Service, says claims that this coming solar maximum will be the most violent in 100 years are not factual.

“All this talk about gloom and doom has selling power, but I’m certain it’s overstated,” he said.

“[It's] going far beyond what’s realistic and could be worrying or concerning for people who don’t really understand the underlying science behind it all.

“The real message should be that the coming solar maximum period could be equally as hazardous as any other solar maximum.”

The sun goes through an 11-year solar cycle moving from a period of low activity called solar minimum to a time of heightened activity called solar maximum.

During solar maximum there is an increase in sun spot activity, which are dark patches on the sun’s surface caused by magnetic field lines breaking through the sun’s surface.

Because the Sun is not a solid object like the Earth, different parts of it rotate at different speeds, which cause these magnetic field lines to twist and stretch, eventually snapping like elastic bands.

When they snap, they produce an eruption of electromagnetic energy called a solar flare and are sometimes accompanied by a coronal mass ejection (CME).

If directed at Earth, charged particles within the CME slam into the magnetosphere, resulting in the northern and southern auroral lights.

Previous CME events have damaged spacecraft, interfered with communications systems and overloaded ground-based power grids. But despite the potential threat, Dr. Wilkinson says authorities are aware of them and are taking precautions.

“We monitor solar activity and issue warnings if something is heading our way,” he said.

“That will be at least a few hours [in advance], enough time to prepare.”

He says while some satellites could be damaged by a future CME, others could be protected by being placed in “safe mode”.

Furthermore, Dr. Wilkinson adds that the impact on power grids would be minimal.

“At worst, it’s a regional thing, not a global thing as these reports imply,” he said.

He says high frequency communications may also be affected, but it would be temporary.

In addition, Dr. Wilkinson quipped that the sun has been through a long solar minimum and appears to be heading into a low solar maximum.

Previous observations have shown this could result in high spikes of CME activity.

“It means we could see auroral activity over all of Australia rather than just the higher latitudes,” Dr.Wilkinson said.

“It’s unusual, but not unprecedented. James Cook made mention of just such an event off Timor.”

“While we all benefit from the products of scientific advances so we also create vulnerabilities that can be exploited by our enemies.

“However advanced we become the chain of our security is only as strong as its weakest link.”

The Coalition’s defense review is considering potential weaknesses against hi-tech attack or disruption. While conventional military units will be cut back, cyberwarfare and other technology driven capabilities are likely to get more money when the review is concluded.

Much of the Ministry of Defense’s planning focuses on the risk of a hostile state exploding a nuclear weapon in space, creating a sudden, intense burst of electromagnetic energy called a high altitude electromagnetic pulse. It could shut down electrical equipment including computers vital to daily life and cripple satellites. One “nightmare scenario” being privately discussed by senior defense figures involves Iran detonating a device high over Europe. “They could reduce our civilization to the dark ages,” said one insider.

Some scientists believe that there is a similar danger from a once-in-a-century solar flare, a disturbance on the sun’s surface that could cause geomagnetic storms on earth.

One in the mid-19th century blocked the nascent telegraph system, and some scientists believe that another is overdue.

The Westminster meeting is being hosted by the Electric Infrastructure Security Council and the Henry Jackson Society, a think-tank, and it will be addressed by Avi Schnurr, a former US government adviser.

The electrical grids, computers, telephones, transportation, water supply and food production are all vulnerable to a major flare, said Mr. Schnurr, who also works for a lobby group called Israel Missile Defense Association.

“Our electrical infrastructures are so ubiquitous that an EMP or geomagnetic storm could shatter nations all over Earth, and we cannot wait for disaster to spur us to action,” he said.