The great thing about wind power is that is available day and night.  In fact, it’s pretty common for more energy to be produced by home wind turbines at night than during the day.  That is considered a disadvantage by big power companies because  electricity is less valuable during off peak hours.  Home owners with their own alternative energy system could care less about that.

There have been two main stumbling blocks in the past that have kept home wind turbines from becoming as popular as solar panels.

1.The tower or pole on which a home wind turbine generator are typically mounted can be quite expensive and require permits which are not cheap or easy to obtain.

2.The noise generated by the rotor can upset homeowners and neighbors.  I have heard of compromises whereby the generator would be stopped for 8 or more hours at night.

Mounting a small turbine on the roof of your home or garage would solve the first problem but the noise issue would be even worse for the homeowner.

An Ohio based inventor who markets his innovations through a company called WindEnergy7 LLC realized that the advantages of roof mounted home wind turbines were great enough that the main drawbacks of noise and vibration had to be overcome. After scores of prototypes were tried, he eventually patented an award winning design. The patent is specifically for the roof mounting hardware. Complete kits that include wind and solar power are modular. Homeowners that opt for a single turbine and a couple solar panels can double or triple their capacity later on.

The only permit usually required for installation is for the electrical work. These systems can be installed in a day by well trained dealers. If you are interested in becoming a customer or a dealer contact WindEnergy7 LLC. The following video shows excerpts of the many hours of video tutorials produced by this company.

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The appliances and lighting in some modern RVs are powered by AC power coming from deep cycle batteries via an inverter.  Other RVs do not have an inverter and instead use DC power for lighting and appliances.  There is a large well supplied market for DC appliances and they can be very efficient.

Building and installing your own solar panels on an RV is not out of the question but there are some obvious challenges.  They panels and the hardware used to attach it to the vehicle have to be robust enough to withstand the forces involved when the vehicle is moving around at highway speed.  A panel installation should not add significantly to the overall height of the vehicle, since overpasses and garage doorways are already a challenge for these homes on wheels.

One easier option is to simply build or purchase a portable solar panel and deploy it when the vehicle is safely parked.  One advantage of this is that you can park in the shade and still charge your batteries.  One disadvantage is that you have to give up precious storage or living space so you can take the panel on the road.

Having a solar panel can be a good safety measure for adventurers that travel to remote areas.  Even a relatively small or inefficient panel can charge a battery enough to start an engine or operate a CB radio.

Photo Credits: 1, 2

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The most dramatic and immediate result of the scheme is that retailers are falling all over themselves and each other in an effort to grab a market share of the inevitable surge in solar panel sales.  TESCO is the biggest supermarket chain in the UK and their foray into solar will be worth watching.  I worry that the rush to supply homeowners with affordable solar power may result in products of inferior quality hitting the marketplace.  Thin film technology may improve in the future, but the many of materials that were made recently are not expected to have a lifespan of 25 years.

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I feel sorry for the land owners that are being victimized in this way. Protecting your own investment in residential solar panels can be as simple as putting up a beware of dog sign. You can go to greater lengths such as anti-theft hardware, but you should make your efforts apparent to passersby. Your property has to be less appealing to thieves than other targets.

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What does this mean to people who want to build their own solar panels?   I guess it means that you need to watch the solar panel prices regularly.  The professional solar panel installers are probably not lowering their prices much, but retailers of ready made panels may have some deals.

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Photo credit: Nebraskasc

The title of this post is a rhetorical question. Most of us know that nature is capable of destroying just about anything humans can build. Most of us also sleep well knowing that most of the time it doesn’t.

Hurricane season is just getting underway as I write this. One tropical storm is already hitting the sunny state of Florida. Storm damage is a part of life in places like Florida. The same goes for the hail ravaged states of Middle America.

The tempered glass that is typically used in commercial solar panels can withstand heavy loads of snow. It can withstand a pummeling from 3/4 inch (~2cm) hailstones.

If you are planning to build your own solar panels, you should choose glass or plastic covers that will hold up during the kind of weather you can expect to have in your area. Consider checking your home insurance to see if it will cover storm damage to your solar panels. If you are not covered, it may be worthwhile shopping around for another policy. It will, or course depend on how much money you are investing in your solar power system.

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The disadvantages as I see them are as follows:

• This material is less efficient than other technologies, it limits the amount of energy that can be harvested from the entire area of your roof.
• You cannot install the material at an optimal angle.
• What do you do when your little power generator fails to keep the rain from leaking into your house?
• The same extreme weather that peals off regular roofing could carry away your investment in solar.

Here are the advantages:

• These BIPVs replace building materials, thereby offsetting the cost when they are used in new construction.
• They do not affect the appearance of the house as much as typical solar panels.
• In the future, they could prove to be more economical.

Should these solar shingles every become widely available and cheap, they might be a great option for the DIY crowd.  Doing you own roofing and helping friends and family with their roofs is a rural tradition.

If I were constructing a new house, I would want to orient the roof to get optimal sun exposure.  Who know when, if ever, these solar shingles might become the best solution for residential power.

Photo:westbywest

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I have been wanting to try solar cooking for quite a while. This is a very quick and easy project. I got the plans from SolarCooking.org.

I still have some tweaking to do. I have to decide on the best place to locate my cooker. The back yard was a convenient place to build a solar cooker, but the high walls limit my cooking time. The roof is a better place as far as sunlight goes, but it’s out of sight. I plan to gather a small armload of old tiles and bricks to make a base that the cooker can sort of nest in. That will prevent it from tipping over or blowing away in unexpected gusts of wind.

SolarCooking.org provides links to a variety of different solar cooker plans. I chose this particular model because of its simplicity and because the materials cost almost nothing. It is cardboard, aluminum foil and glue. Many popular plans rely on plastic roasting bags to insulate a black cooking pot. I don’t like to use plastic (I have a whole blog explaining why). I plan to get a Pyrex pot that is big enough to contain a black pot. The picture shows a simple canning jar with black tape around it.

The aluminum foil that I had on hand was not as wrinkle free as it should have been for this project. I am going to make a second cooker with better foil. I got the cardboard from a fast food joint that had just received a new large appliance. I am saving the best side for my second attempt. I will wait to see if the wheat glue that I used holds up before assembling a second cooker.

The bright sun cooked rice in 3 1/2 hours.

If solar cooking proves to fit into my lifestyle, I will most likely build something more substantial. A well designed and well built insulated oven with a glass cover can cook full meals even in cold climates. Many of the plans on the internet are designed for developing countries that are near the equator. Solar cooking can provide a great deal of benefit to people who traditionally cook with wood or other materials that they spend hours a day scrounging. In addition to saving labor, solar ovens are also better for the health of these people because they don’t have to tend their food over a smoky fire. Solar ovens can also be used to sterilize drinking water.

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Look at where we are now with computers. My wife has a spare computer the size of a trade paperback that is probably more than 1000 times more powerful than the PCs that lined the back of my 10th grade physics class.

I was overjoyed to read on GreenLAGirl about an elementary school in Los Angeles that is going grid neutral. There’s an awesome photo on her blog with kids taking a close look at a solar panel. I don’t know if the idea of generating power from the sun will grab kids the same way that 20 goto 10 grabbed me and my friends, but anything is possible.

One of my kids once used the power of the sun and a magnifying glass to start a fire in her grandma’s house.  I wasn’t there, but I heard it was quite educational.

Building a solar panel is a great science fair project for older kids.  I would like to see projects that can be used to charge up iPods or AA batteries long after the fair is over.

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The advantage that will really appeal to the DIY installer is that converting your solar power to AC right at the panel allows you to use more widely available and less expensive off-the-shelf components.  The price for specialized DC components like this disconnect can cause a bit of sticker shock.

Scalability is also more practical and economical.  The conventional power inverter is the second most expensive part of a system after the panels themselves (if you build your own solar panels, it could be your biggest expense).  A single large inverter can only handle a set amount of current, so a big expansion of your solar array could mean upgrading to a bigger and more expensive inverter.  The innovation of mico inverters simplifies scalability.

This advance also promises increased efficiency.  People are still connecting solar panels together the way they did back in the 60s.  The biggest drawback to the conventional system is that an inefficiency in one panel has a big effect on the overall efficiency of the system as a whole.  These mini inverters maximize the efficiency of each panel.  The increase in efficiency is estimated at a range of 5-25%.

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