solar-panels Archives - Living Off the Grid: Free Yourself

Shelter

Is this tiny home the future of housing?

USA

In the town of Brunwsick, Georgia, builder Stuart Muir Wilson constructed a tiny home with all the trimmings. Complete with solar panels and a composting toilet – and made from recycled wood. Wilson thinks this could be the future and hopes to build a business off the back of it.

The house, which is 2.3m by 5.8m, is built on wheels and can be towed anywhere. The solar panels fitted for power and water tanks are able to insulate the home from the cold, and Wilson’s clever arrangement of windows means that the temperature inside never rises above 25C – even in the hottest summer months.

After the success of this house, which he sold to be placed on a bush block, Wilson aims to build another four in the next year. He said “there’s a lot of people who live in the bush off the (energy) grid, you don’t have to be doing it tough to live off the grid.” Wilson added:

“We’re teaching people how to use the natural elements to cool or heat the place and in their own ecological footprint.”

The project was created in conjunction with Jesuit Social Services and built with support from Hammertime, an initiative creating pathways into construction for women. Jesuit is receiving expressions of interest from people wanting to buy the homes.

The tiny house movement is on the rise in the USA as the demand for living small is getting bigger. According to a recent survey done by the National Association of Home Builders, more than 50 percent of Americans would now consider living in a home less than 600 square feet, and that number is even higher for millennials – 63 percent of whom would consider living in a tiny house.

Want to know more about this way of life? Have a read of The Tiny House Family blog. You can also read about some of the best companies responsible for constructing tiny houses here

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June 20, 2019 1 Comment

Shelter

3D printed House in 24 hours

A house which was 3D printed in just 24 hours went up last month, in the town of Stupino, Western Russia.

With 3D printers producing more and more novel items – in some cases even a rudimentary human organs – it was only a matter of time before a house would be printed successfully. Previously, parts of houses have been 3D printed and assembled but the Stupino house was printed entirely on-site.

A huge printer and a mortar mix

3D printing company Apis Cor used a 3D printer the size of a crane and had a mortar mix specially developed. They covered the whole operation with a heated tent.

The house, which is 38 Metres squared, is circular – whilst the roof is totally flat. Three right-angled protrusions allow for additional space and division of the inside area.

And what of its protection against the harsh Russian winters? The roof is made of polymer membranes and insulated with solid plates; its designed to withstand heavy snowfall and keep its inhabitants warm and cosy.

Apis Cor said that the total building cost came to $10,134, or approximately $275 per square meter – about $25 per square foot. A recent estimate put the average cost of building a 2,000 square feet home in the US at about $150 per square foot.

So are these the homes of the future?

They’re affordable and fast to build: is it only a matter of time before we’re all living in 3D printed concrete circles? Probably not—or, at least not until whole apartment buildings can be 3D printed.

The challenges the Stupino house would face being plopped in the middle if a city would be numerous. Whilst cities like Dubai are looking to build more 3D houses, most cities would accommodate 3D homes in the form of environmentally-friendly, data-integrated ‘smart buildings’.

Apis Cor claims that this residential building can last up to 175 years. And that in the future, both construction and insulation can be completed in tandem using dual extrusion.

You can read more about the world of 3D printing here

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June 19, 2019 1 Comment

Solar

Spain’s Sun Tax to be axed

In October 2015, Spain’s Council of Ministers approved a controversial tax on those using electricity produced by their own solar installations. However, a new government says solar panel owners could soon see the back of the so called sun tax.

What is the sun tax?

This legislation causes those with self-consumptive photovoltaic systems to pay the same grid fees as those without solar panels. This covers the power contracted from an electricity company. But they also have to pay a second “sun tax” which means solar panel owners pay for the electricity they generate and use from their PV systems, even though it doesn’t come into contact with the grid.

There are other facets of the legislation which also caused more outrage. Photovoltaic systems up to 100 kW are not able to sell any excess electricity they produce. Instead, they must “donate” the extra to the grid free of charge. Systems over 100 kW must register if they wish to sell the extra electricity. Community ownership of PV systems, of all sizes, under this legislation is prohibited. Not only this, but the legislation is retroactive; meaning installations prior to the introduction of the tax must comply. If the conditions are not met, then the PV system owners are subject to a penalty fee of up to €60 million ($64 million). To put this in perspective, this is twice the penalty of a radioactive leak from a nuclear plant. Unsurprisingly, this caused outrage.

Exceptions to the tax

There are some circumstances where the tax does not apply. Fear not off-gridders, this tax is only for those connected to the grid. If you run an off-grid system then no grid tax needs to be paid at all. Installations smaller than 10 kW are also exempt from paying the second sun tax. The Canary Islands and the cities of Ceuta and Melilla (Spanish territories in Africa) are also exempt from the second tax. Mallorca and Menorca pay the second sun tax at a reduced rate.

The Spanish government defended the legislation by saying the fees contribute to overall grid system costs. However, the Spanish Photovoltaic Union (UNEF) pointed out how uneconomic the new law was. Their spokesperson stated, “Each kWh imported from the grid by a self-consumer will pay double the tolls compared to a kWh imported from the gird by another consumer.”

Change on the horizon

The current legislation is an unnecessary burden placed upon solar consumers who want to be more economical and environmentally friendly. This has been recognized by opposing political parties and other unions and consumers. The political party which initially brought in the sun tax is now a minority. Therefore, there is now the opportunity for all opposing parties to remove this expensive and impractical legislation.

In January 2017 a law proposal was registered in congress, beginning the process of the sun tax removal. The urgent changes …

March 29, 2017 4 Comments

Solar, Farmers, Off-grid, solar panels, bills, charges

Community

Rising Electricity Prices cause Farmers to go Off-Grid

https://www.off-grid

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March 8, 2017 No Comments

Community

Changing regulations could cause off-grid “avalanche”

Solar panel suppliers in South Africa are predicting an “avalanche” going semi-off-grid or off-grid in response to new regulations that increase the costs of operating solar panels while attached to the grid.

According to the new regulations, 78-year-old Andrew Louwrens has an illegal solar electricity installation in his garden – despite having used solar panels since 2012.

Andrew, a retired SA Rugby administrator, received a letter from the City of Cape Town late last year ordering him to replace his illegal small-sale generation system – at his own expense – because it did not comply with regulations introduced after it was installed. Things got worse when, on Christmas eve, the council threatened to cut off his electricity if he didn’t comply.

“I installed the system in good faith in 2012. I was doing my bit for society,” Andrew said. “I also didn’t want big electricity bills when I retired, [and I have been] happily exporting excess electricity into the grid.”

Michel Malengret, an associate professor at the University of Cape Town, which owns the company that installed Andrew’s system, said the inverter he installed for Andrew had been approved globally, and at the time of installation there had been no local regulations.

“Using solar energy was very expensive then and government’s impression was that it would never happen,” Michel said.

Power utility Eskom said it viewed “the embedded generation connections, made without the required approval and permission, as illegal” and would not consider “retrospective applications”.

Cape Town’s mayoral committee member for energy, Xanthea Limberg, said residents had to ensure installations complied with standards and to replace non-compliant inverters with acceptable ones. But Michel argued that customers’ hands were tied by the expense of such replacements.

“Council only adopted regulations two years ago, so now those like Andrew who installed solar beforehand must fork out another R7000 for a new inverter. They must then pay a fixed charge of R13 a day for the ‘privilege’ of exporting excess energy into the grid,” he said.

Andrew and Michel suggest people in the same situation go partially on and off the grid, and stock up on batteries to store electricity.

Michel said that although Eskom had made it “virtually impossible” for “solar guys to work with the grid” he predicted there would be “an avalanche” of people going off the grid as the price of batteries came down.

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February 16, 2017 No Comments

Community

(eco)Village within a Village

The Welsh Government is embracing low-impact housing with the unveiling of its first village within a village – the Pentre Solar “eco hamlet” within the traditional, stone-walled village of Glanrhyd in Pembrokeshire. The six timber homes have solar panels capable of producing 6000 kilowatt hour per year, low energy use and a A++ energy rating.

Following the successful construction of a prototype house built by start-up Western Solar in 2013, the Welsh Government gave the company £141,000 to help create its nearby production base for the homes, which will house tenants from Pembrokeshire council’s social housing waiting list. With low energy use and access to a shared electric car, Western Solar said residents could avoid up to £2,000 a year on energy costs and consumption.

The eco hamlet was built with insulation material made from recycled paper and local Douglas and Fir wood sourced from the Gwaun Valley. Local people were hired and trained to build the homes, which cost about £100,000 each to build – comparable to a conventional build, according to Western Solar.

About 40% of the fabric of the houses is made in the factory, significantly reducing the build time; it takes only a week to make each house, and less than that to erect it. The company plans to build 1,000 homes over the next 10 years, with the help of partnerships including housing providers and investors.

Welsh Environment Secretary Lesley Griffiths said she was “delighted” to officially open the innovative housing development.
“[It is] not only providing much-needed housing for local people, it is also addressing many other issues such as energy efficiency, fuel poverty, skills development and the use of Welsh timber,” Lesley said.

Low-impact development is recognised by the Welsh Planning system as playing a key role in the transition towards a low-carbon society. Since the ‘One Development Policy’ legislation was introduced in Wales in 2010, it has been possible to build new homes in the open countryside as long as there is a clear commitment for to sustainable living, natural building techniques, and land-based livelihood.

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January 19, 2017 No Comments

Dusty solar panels 30% less efficient

We always knew dirty panels don’t work as well as clean ones – now we can put a number on it.

Newly published research by Engineering researchers from Kathmandu found that a dusty panel gathers 29.8% less energy if they are not cleaned for 5 months in dry weather – we are surprised it is not more.

The findings in Elsevier-published Solar Power magazine studied “soiling and its effect on performance of solar modules in regions with a high deposition of dust and low frequency and less intensity of rain.” But some areas with abundant rainfall may also suffer from high dust deposits in the dry season. Kathmandu, with its peculiar environment conditions, suffers high air pollution and minimum rainfall during the dry winter. The study measured the effect of dust on PV modules taking into account meteorological variables for Kathmandu .

During the study period of 5 months, the efficiency of a dusty solar module left to untouched decreased by 29.76% compared to a similar module which was cleaned on daily basis.

Dust deposit density on the uncleaned PV module accounted to 9.6711 g/m2 over the study period. The research also showed that dust accumulation is concentrated on the lower half of the PV modules with a consequent risk of hot spots which could eventually lead to permanent module damage.

The research was carried out by Basant Raj Paudyaland Shree Raj Shakya of the Institute of Engineering at Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu

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September 9, 2016 No Comments

Community

Experience a Tiny House – No Strings Attached

Perhaps you’ve thought about ditching the concept of the traditional house and living a full off-grid experience, in a tiny home? But you haven’t got the nerve to try it out.

Maybe you’re pretty sure that an off-the-grid lifestyle is for you, but you don’t want to fully commit to living in compact quarters. A new Boston-based start-up wants to let you try your hand in the world of off-grid living with no strings attached.

Sacrificing the open space of a traditional home for compact living has many benefits. Cost efficiency, sustainability, and focusing on the simplicity of life hold obvious allure, and for some, this allure is reason enough to convert from a typical home or apartment to dwellings no larger than a single shipping container.

Boston-based company Getaway will let you rent a mobile tiny home in the Boston area for as little as 99$ a night.

Some homeowners might find the idea of permanently leaving their space for something radically different is just too big of a transition. The answer may be this clever new take on an off-the-grid vacation,

Using the same principles of tiny house living (including the need to escape, the need to foster nomadic living, and the desire for sustainability), the newly-created company set out to build their very own tiny homes to fit families comfortably. The home is designed by Harvard graduate students and includes solar–powered flaps and a composting toilet. There are plenty of designs to optimize space, like fold-out beds and shelves to fit books and board games. Should the house be transported, setup will take less than an hour.

The overall design is meant to be simple, but also harness the best economy for the space. The average cost of rent in the U.S. is $962, while to rent a night in the tiny home which sleeps four, complete with bicycles and firewood, costs only $99 a night. There’s an additional fee of $15 for a pet, or a $10 fee for a third and fourth guest. The houses will be built on land leased from local landowners. Getaway sees this as a benefit for landowners: having a tiny house for rent on their properties would provide people with an additional source of income, and put open land to good use.

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December 7, 2015 No Comments

Kylie is a local hero for sticking two fingers to the water company

Urban

“I paid Sydney Water $800 a year — now I get it for free”

Living in a city it can seem hard to kick free from the grid, but in Sydney Australia, Newtown resident Kylie Ahern will soon become the latest environmentalist to live completely off the grid.
“I am currently getting all my water from a series of tanks – one is buried in the backyard and the others are above ground,” Ms Ahern said.“I used to pay $800 a year to Sydney Water, now I get it all for free from my roof.
“I also have a stormwater absorption pit so all the water coming off the roof goes straight into the tanks and then into the pit.

“I am putting solar panels up and installing batteries and my aim is to disconnect from the electricity grid.

“I am in the process of looking for the most energy efficient appliances and I am cutting off my gas as I will be using an electric induction cooktop.

“The coal seam gas situation in this country has been really upsetting, therefore I want to make sure I am not contributing to the problem.

“We are lulled into thinking we need to pay for these services like water and electricity that we can get for free. Sewerage and plumbing is my next task as I can’t get the tanks onto my property just yet but they are something I am definitely aiming for.

“I am expecting all the work to be completed by early next year.” The Newtown resident shared her disdain at the inaction of politicians charged with reducing global emissions and encouraged other like-minded conservationists to follow in her footsteps.

“I have watched politicians over the years do very little to protect our environment and fail to do anything meaningful around reducing our emissions, so I decided that I had to do more,” Ms Ahern said.

“I think most of us want to do more to protect the environment but it’s knowing where to start that’s the challenge.“You don’t have to do a full renovation of your home; you can do little things like buy energy-efficient appliances or use a diverter so excess rainwater goes into your garden.”

The process of creating a self-sustaining property may seem like a daunting or impossible task to some, Ms Ahern insists it is a relatively streamlined process, if you have the right help.

Ms Ahern, recruited the assistance of Chippendale’s Michael Mobbs, who famously took his home off the grid in March, hopes to achieve the same results with her two-bedroom worker’s cottage by early next year.

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November 12, 2015 2 Comments

Editorial: Don’t hit small solar with new fees in California

Those solar panels you’ve seen glinting on your neighbors’ rooftops throughout California? If the state’s investor-owned utilities get their way in negotiations with the Public Utilities Commission,, you’ll be seeing a lot less domestic black silicon in the future.

That’s because big utilities are petitioning to radically alter the rules about net metering, the system by which homeowners, schools and businesses that generate excess electrical capacity on a sunny day sell their unused power back to the grid, the same as the utility companies sell it to the rest of us.

Our big power suppliers have the same right to operate under a fair business model as the small homeowner who makes an investment in solar. Few of the latter, except isolated cabin owners and the like, are ever really “off the grid” entirely. They make use of electricity sold to them by Southern California Electric, PG&E and the state’s other large private firms as well, or buy it from the city-owned utilities in cities such as Los Angeles, Pasadena, Burbank and others that operate municipal, taxpayer-owned nonprofit power companies. It’s the big utilities that have to operate the grid — the complex system of power lines, from the big ones coming down from Tehachapi wind farms, Utah coal plants, dams with hydro plants and the like to the small wires that come into your own homes.

But even though those big firms still control 97 percent of the electrical power market in California, they are worried about the tiny but growing group of homeowners and businesses in the state that have chosen to generate some of their own power. So they have a proposal before the California Public Utilities Commission targeting net metering by making it more than twice as expensive for the little guy through fees and smaller payments.

Those electrons are sold back to the rest of us at the same rate as electricity made by the utilities. So even though it’s true all of us have an interest in maintaining the grid, the proposals are not only not fair — the solar-panel installation industry says it would deeply harm their own business model. And this is not just about staying in business. As U.S. negotiators prepare to head to the Paris talks on climate change next month, all of us have an interest in creating a country with fewer carbon emissions that lead to global warming.

When a similar measure to the one before the PUC was approved in Arizona recently, the solar industry said it saw an immediate 95 percent decline in its business. Homeowners said that it no longer penciled out for them to invest the $15,000 or so it costs to go solar and recoup their invest- ment through energy savings over 10 or so years. Hawaii just passed an anti-solar bill after intense lobbying by that state’s largest utility, and …

November 11, 2015 No Comments

Sizing your solar, batteries and inverter

Thanks to Dustin Real for this video just added to our YouTube Channel. His solar power video is a complete solar power primer and explains to people how to size each component of their system; batteries, PV array size, charge controller and inverter.

Its full of really practical tips on what kit to buy when setting up your Solar array, and how much to spend.

Dustin and his wife recently quit their careers, moved to the country, started new jobs and an off-grid life.

They are living in a pole barn, camper/military tent right now while they build their home.

Dustin built a water catchment system and off-grid solar power system so far.

Dustin says: “I am not a solar power guy by trade so much of what I learned was from multiple sources on youtube, rv forums, off-grid forums and trial and error by my brother and I. This video should help people build a small/medium off-grid solar system step by step.”

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July 6, 2015 No Comments

In New South Wales citizens are choosing a carbon free life

Energy

In Australia – villages are leaving the grid behind

People are “Taking Back Their Power” – choosing affordable energy storage that creates more energy independence

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June 23, 2015 No Comments

solar-panels

3D printed House in 24 hours