Using Solar
The original residence contained two electric water heaters. To conserve energy these were removed and replaced with a solar hot water heating system located centrally in the house. We are in the process of going totally off the grid and have recently installed a 2.8 Kw solar array hooked up to a pair of Xantrex SW5548's and 16 L-16 batteries.
As of May 25th,2007 the array has been redone and upgraded. We now have over 5Kw online (30 x 175W panels) and on our first full day of operation (Saturday May 26th) we made 26 KWh of power from the sun, compared to the 13-14 being produced with the original system.
If you are interested in the environment but not ready to commit to solar yet I would suggest you read this article :
http://http://biz.yahoo.com/hmoney/070530/051807_100033973.html?.v=1&.pf=personal-finance
Ideas like not buying or using an SUV for daily commuting or using CFL's can go a long way (we put in CFL's in all inside light fixtures before putting in our solar system and saw a 10% decrease in our electric bill at that time)
| Solar Water Heating
Solar water heating is one of the most cost effective applications of solar energy. Our system consists of two AET-40 panels with a 119 galllon water tank and a GL-30 differential controller. The water heater does have a 5500 watt element for use when we encounter a few consecutive cloudy days but the circuit breaker is shut off normally and we have only turned on the circuit breaker a few times after it has been cloudy for several days or we have company taking a lot of showers :-) at the same time that it has been cloudy for more than a day. |
 | Pollution Free Solar Electric Power (PV)
The house is partially powered by a 2.8 Kwh array consisting of 16 Shell 175 watt panels connected to a Xantrex Power Panel (see picture). This will allow us to power all essential loads during a grid power outage. Our goal is to expand this to a 5 Kwh array which will enable us to power all loads except AC without using the grid. Once we have 5Kwh online we will probably convert to a net metered system and hope to be a net zero energy customer including AC needs. Currently we are due to put another 2Kw (approx) online at the end of May 2007, and have submitted an application for Net-Metering. |