Solar Baby

Yes, you read that correct! We are now mowing our lawn with our solar power. Sure beats gas! As I have told you before our solar system is pretty small.  Yet it is large enough to mow our lawn. Now our lawn is not one of those small squares of grass that some homes have. We have a very large lawn and my husband also mows the strip along our horses’ paddock where the grass can touch our solar fence line. So he mows quite a bit. What is so great about the Neuton Electric Lawn Mower though is that we are charging it with our electrical system which as you know, is a off the grid solar system! We are charging it from the solar panels and the sun! Can’t beat that can you?

My husband really thought ahead when he ordered the lawn mower and purchased four extra batteries so he could be charging a battery while he was out mowing with a fresh one. The Neuton is so easy to use that changing the batteries takes him just the time it takes to walk in the house and take a fresh one out and put the used one on the charger. Maybe a minute…..he’s a fast walker!

Many of the other electric mowers have to be plugged in and if that is the case then you can’t be using it while it gets charged! Not a good idea. Another hinderance with those are that the cord can get in your way and maybe even get mowed over….connected to the electric plug. 

Since the price of gas has gone up again it has become very important to save every penny you can and using our solar array to mow our lawn has become very handy for us. Plus the fact that my poor husband was inhaling all those gasoline fumes all the time he was mowing. We have never used a rototiller in our garden for that very reason. So why should he be using it on the lawn? 

Our horses get so excited when he gets the Neuton out because he gives them the grass that accummulates in the bag catcher. Now he has always given them the grass clippings before…….but he raked it up for them instead of having the bag catcher. So that is pretty handy. But the big change is that the clippings now are not polluted with the gasoline fumes and must be much better for them. They seem to agree.

Looks like something from the future, doesn’t it? Well the truth is that the future has arrived! And we are trying to do our part with using less and simple living. Our lawn mower does a really good job and our lawn looks beautiful. It looks like a park. I highly recommend this lawn mower and even if you have to hook up to your utility grid, I suppose it would still be cheaper than using gasoline. Nothing beats living with your own solar system though…..unless you are using hydro power and wind power also! Now that would be a blessing to be getting power from all three power sources! 

Since I have been living for ten years now in an off the grid home I have learned so much on how to conserve my power. In the fall and winter the time we call “dark days” of October, November and December it is essential to be very careful. Since we do not have what is called a “normal” house as of yet, many things that others take for granted I do not even own. So it is probably not that hard for me as it would be for someone else. Looking for energy efficient appliances should be the first thing you do when you are thinking about changing to your own system.   

I am used to cooking on a wood cookstove, though I do have Premier Propane cooking range. What is so unique about mine is that it does not have any electrical parts. No timers, no lights, not even a oven light, no clock and most especially no “glow-bar”. Now what is a “glow-bar”? It is the reason so many people cannot use the oven in their gas cooking ranges when there is a power outage! It uses electricity, so even if your power is out, you can’t use the oven. This is an electric red-hot glow-bar pilot in the oven that consumes 400 watts all the time the oven is used! Instead, look for one of two types of pilot light ovens. An oven with regular gas flame pilot light is the simplest. Better is an oven pilot that lights by electric spark when the oven is started and goes off when the oven is finished. Propane or natural gas stoves with gas pilot lights need no power connection at all.

Ordinary AC refrigerators and freezers run on over 200 watts AC, and run many hours a day. Most have less than 2 inch insulation. Fortunately, special refrigerators and freezers are available which use less than 30% as much energy. Sunfrost refrigerator products have 4- to 6-inch insulation, and a quality compressor on top where it can’t put heat back into the box. The RF-12 model runs 50 watts for 12 hours a day, totaling 600 watt hours a day. Compare that to the standard models which use around 3000 watt hours each day. Just think how that would cut that electric bill down!

It goes without saying that another big saving for any household is to hang your laundry outside. I do that, and even in the snowy cold winter of New York state. It is no big deal to me, and I admit to liking the way my home looks with my laundry hanging on the line. You could use a gas dryer and that would give you some savings, but of course there is the price of the fuel, and it still does use some electricity, as well.

The Staber washing machine is also built with the off the grid family in mind. But what a savings for the family on the grid as well! It is a simply designed machine with under 200 watts running power, with only a larger surge at the start of the spin cycle. Which means that 165 watts per load is way less than any other regular washing machine uses. It’s a double plus, as it uses less than half as much water per load as other machines as well. Spins faster than others, saving more energy in faster drying on the clothes line or in your dryer. So if you do alot of wash each week, this is a good way to save on the electric bill every month. I have purchased a brand new energy star model made by Whirlpool under the name of Cabrio and it uses so little power that we don’t have to run the generator to operate it. It goes without saying that these energy efficient appliances are a little pricey. But worth every penny!

There are some appliances that consume your power twenty-four hours a day, even when you think they are turned off. Televisions, stereos, office equipment, garage door openers and many, many others. These appliances, really need to turned off when you are not using them. By turned off, I mean the plug pulled out, or on a outlet strip that is turned off. Remember little things count when you are trying to cut your usage back. Even if you never go off the grid but just dream about it, changing your appliances is a change that could really impact your usage and bills.

Setting up your solar system is not as easy as putting your solar panels in the sun and plugging them in. Too bad as many more people would want to do it then. You have to study your house and property to see where exactly you need to put the panels. When we first moved here we only had one panel. So we could go outside and move it around to follow the sun. That’s okay when you are starting out. Not if you have more than one or two though. It can get tiring after doing it every day in all kinds of weather. You wouldn’t want the panels to get blown over due to the wind or a storm. We were lucky when we got hit by an in line tornado in 2000. We had about six trees down on our house, but no damage. Most important was that there was no damage to our lone solar panel which was on the side of the house the trees hit. Didn’ get touched though.

A tool that can help you decide where your panels should go is called the Solar Pathfinder
It will give you the sun potential for the whole year! Good to use for setting up a garden as well. It also has software that you can purchase to help you in accessing your solar energy needs called the Solar Pathfinder Assistant Software

You really need the sun as much as you can get it. Our sun here in upstate New York is not as dependable as other places in the country. We are hardly getting any right now (December). We plan on putting our solar panels on top of our barn roof hopefully next year. If we were just setting this up though and had this handy tool, we would have just seen from the start that the place to put them was up there. My husband has observed every hour, every day, every month, every year that the place to put them would be the barn roof. It gets sun consistently.

Here’s the information you need to check it out. It is essential to use the if you are building a new home and plan to set up a complete alternative energy system. Tell me what you think about it.

The only problem with solar energy in New York state is that we don’t get as much sunshine as the other states. You have to add up the wattage of every appliance you need or want to use and then double that for our state. That tells you how many watts worth of solar panels you need to buy. That can and does add up the bucks right there! There are many people who have built their own. In our case we just buy them little by little. But for the people who just have to have it all right away, and there are many people like that. It’s nothing to be embarrassed by, but some people can sacrifice for the big payoff at the end and some just can’t. Here is where the idea of building the panels yourself come in. Solar, Wind, Batteries, Bio-Diesel And Home-Making Components! 

If you are handy I think that would be a good idea. I am thinking of having my husband give it a go. As then we could get the two panels more we need to buy the SunDanzer solar refrigeration and freezer. As we all know the most expensive part of off the grid living is building your system so if you are going to be able to build at least some of your components then it becomes much more doable for the common person like us.

We all see the rich and famous adding solar to their mansions. Yeah, they can do it with no problems. Just pay someone big bucks to come in and switch them over. Then the regular every day people like us say, ” Hey you have to be rich to have solar. I can’t afford what Darryl Hannah can.” But you can if you work it right. Start small and build it. That is what I have done. You should have seen the tiny little charge controller we started with! And an automotive inverter from Walmart. Not even forty bucks at the time. But we had tv! That was all we had. And we were happy with that……..then. 

This is my attempt to teach the average people about alternative energy systems. To the average person the thought of solar or wind power is way beyond their world. Yet they think nothing of throwing their hard earned money to the grid powered systems daily. Most people think you have to be making a six figure income to put one in their modest homes. I am here to tell you that is not so. I know because I live with it….every day and have since July of 1999. Yes, it is a learning experience over time, but it is VERY affordable for the simple living folks like us.

Presently we live with 185 watts of power coming from three solar panels. In the dark days of winter, like now, we have to use our generator more often. In the summer though, it was a very different story. We only had to run our generator about once a week. In case you didn’t know, we have to run the generator to charge our batteries if the sun doesn’t shine enough to do it. I call our system a “add as you can system”. Meaning that we add a component as we can afford it. It’s best to buy good equipment so you have to spend some money on each one. That is better than buying cheaper equipment that doesn’t last. Here is a beginners Guide To Solar Panels - Solar Power Your Own Home! Click Here!

Right now we have 24 used locomotive batteries that we replaced our original fork-lift truck batteries with. A charge controller is essential to any alternative system as it controls how much of a charge is going into your batteries. Our controller is the Xantrex C-60 charge controller (60 amps, 12 volt) and back in 2004 it sold for $245. at Backwoods Solar. We have never had any problem with this at all. I would highly recommend it to anyone just building their system. A meter comes in handy for letting you know how much power you have going into the system and how much is going out or what you are using. The meter we have is the Tri-Metric meter made by Bogart Engineering.

The generator we use is made especially for off the grid systems and is sold at Backwoods Solar. It is a DC only generator and has made the biggest difference in our system. When we started out we used an old car for charging the batteries and not only did the exhaust stink, the car was noisy and the gas was expensive, which it did use alot of. The generator isn’t as loud as most generators, but you can definitely hear it. Works great and uses way less gas. Some day when our system is built bigger, we will use our generator less and less.

The thing is that anybody can do this. How many people complain about the cost of their electric bill every month? Just start small. Hook up one 50 watt solar panel with a small charge controller and pick up a couple of the golf cart batteries. Then hook up an automotive inverter that can be bought at Walmart or any truck stop store to your system. Now you can run your lights and tvs without adding to your electric bill. And you know what the best part is! You will not be without them during a power outage! Everyone else will be in the dark, and your house will be all lit up. I know many people are very handy and could build the equipment themselves if they knew how. Here is some information on how you could build your panels for about $200. Not bad! Click Here!

I will be adding more information for you every day or close to that. So please check back and if you have questions that need an answer post a comment and I will try to find out the answer.

katlupe