Rainy Days Are Common In NY state!

What do you do when you use solar for your energy source and it rains? Not a one day rain. Here in New York state we get a lot of rain.  More than our fair share, I am afraid. I am not complaining though as many people I know online are complaining about how hot their states are. Or how dry they are. I love to garden and I love green trees, lawns and plants. I love having my hand-dug well refilled constantly by much rain and snow all year round. Yet if you are using solar for your source of electricity it can be hard to generate without the sun. If it sticks it’s head out a bit from time to time, you will get some. But the way our day looks today so far, we will not be seeing any sunshine on our solar panels.

No Sunshine!

So what we do is run our generator. It is a noise you cannot get away from. I have heard many that are much louder. One year for Christmas my husband’s family gave us a Coleman generator for a present. It was much louder than this one. It was made for camping and power outages. Not for an off-the-grid home charging it’s batteries. It did not last very long. Too much work for that little generator. We, after all…………are NOT camping!

The Generator Charges The Batteries

The generator we use is built for an off-the-grid home. It is really a kit that is sold at Backwoods Solar. According to Backwoods Solar, where we purchased our generator, “The rule of your alternative energy system is to buy a really GOOD engine driven generator and then use it as little as possible!”

It is possible to run a low-cost engine driven car alternator to charge batteries when you don’t need an expensive AC generator. Charge amps adjust manually and will hold your settings and not taper off. The AC alternator delivers over 55 amps or will run 40-50 amps at an easy low engine speed. Runs very quietly if adapted to an exhaust hose and automobile muffler. Will run several hours on one tank of gasoline. Most of the time we run it for a short period of time until the sun finally takes over.

Backwoods Solar sells one of these that comes in a kit. This is what we use and it has made a world of difference. We used to charge our batteries with a vehicle driven up to the house, and connected it that way. The exhaust was horrible! And it ran for hours, and used so much gas. This way is so much easier and quicker.

The complete kit at Backwoods Solar consists of a new 6.5 horsepower electric start Briggs “INTEK” overhead valve engine mounting base plate with belt tension adjuster, alternator, rheostat field control box with amp meter. Includes 5′ pulley and 26” belt on the 12 volt model. It can be bought without the engine, if you have one of your own. Sells now for $935.00 plus shipping. It is item number GK-KIT/12 volt.

So it runs on a day like today when all we are getting is rain. It will charge our batteries so we can be on our computers, use lights or whatever we want to do. If I chose to do laundry in my brand new energy star washing machine or to bake bread in a bread machine, this would be the ideal time to do those types of chores. When the generator is running. As we add more and more solar panels over time, we will not have to run it as often. Right now we only have five panels and living in our state means you need a lot more than that. But we can get by for the time being. If you are in a southern or western state, chances are you will not need as many as we do because you get more sun. That makes all the difference with a solar energy system. Now if we add a wind turbine, that could help us in the winter as we get a lot of wind then.

Copyright © 2010  Kathleen G. Lupole

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When we first started out here at Peaceful Forest Homestead using solar, as I have told many times before here, and on my other blog, Homesteading On The Internet, we had one 55 watt panel, a very tiny charge controller (so tiny in fact, it has no name on it anywhere) and used an automotive inverter from Walmart and two fork-lift truck batteries. If we needed to charge our batteries we had to bring our car up to the window and hook it up and let it run. Yuck! You can imagine the smell and the noise! I always remember my pet hen, Lil’ Red for some unknown reason, would hang out around the stinky car while it was running. We went through a lot of gas that way. The one panel we had was on a wooden frame and we would move it around the yard to try to keep it in the sun! Of course, we were new to this solar power stuff.

So here it is eleven years later and everything has changed. We still have a small system. Though it has, and is still growing. Our panels have grown to five, they are now on our barn roof. Every morning they are getting good sun. We have had them bringing in as much as 21 amps which is the most we have ever had. Right now as I am writing this, they are bringing in 15 amps. What a difference!  And for longer periods of time too.

The important thing is that we are independent of the utility company. No matter what, we are on our own and not dependent on the electric dictator. Our power has never gone out unless it was from the fault of something in our power system. Which we did have that happen a few years back. But once it was fixed with the expert advice from Backwoods Solar, where we purchased a good share of our equipment, we were up and running. Haven’t had any issues since then. Never have to call the electric dictator to complain about the bill or make arrangements to pay it. Nothing like that! And no matter how cheap your bill is………..you still are giving someone else money to run your house. I don’t care if it is thirty or forty dollars a month or less, you could be putting that in your pocket instead. It is your choice though and I am not writing this blog to convince anyone to change to using solar or any other alternative power system. I am just telling you that it is possible to do even if you are on a strict budget. Our system went together little by little, dollar by dollar.

So not only am I happy every morning when we have sun for my garden but for my solar system as well. July should be a good sunny month for us here but you never know as the part of New York we live in gets lots of rain. I know on the horizon is solar panels that get charged even on cloudy days and I know my husband would be happy to have those panels. Because someday we plan on having an electric car that is charged with our own power system.

Copyright © 2010  Kathleen G. Lupole

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Living out beyond the power lines makes it easy to choose to set up your own energy system. It also means that your secluded homestead could be susceptible to unwanted intruders or burglars. Your solar system alone could make you a target for solar panel theft. Yes, I read on line about one lady who was sleeping in her house when all her panels were stolen off her roof! Don’t laugh at her………….the article also told of a police station using solar for their system and had theirs stolen as well. Now you can laugh! But don’t think it can’t happen to you! With the cost of things, including solar panels so high, people will do what they must to get them or to sell them. So you must protect yourself as well as your belongs. This is where a home security team comes in, keeping your home protected whether you are home or not. Even a dog could be shot or drugged. A security system offers you a monitoring system that reacts to emergencies twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.  Even in times of emergencies, such as storms, the monitoring system stays in place and active.

Leaving the doors unlocked or your keys in your vehicle are pretty normal for small towns or rural areas. A couple of years ago a man had escaped from prison and he was going to rural areas around us and stealing trucks. He liked it if the keys were left in it as it made it easier for him to steal. So people were locking up their trucks at night instead of letting them sit there begging to be stolen. Leaving your garage door open when you leave to go to town is not good either. That is almost as bad as the people on Face Book who announce to the world that they are going away for two weeks and locking up their house. Not a good idea! Especially since Google maps will lead anyone right to your door!

The first thing to do when considering setting up protection for your home is to take a good look at it. Can you see a bunch of things right off the bat that would make it inviting to intruders? Here is a small survey at Fort Worth, PD designed for looking at your home in a new light. It will help you see things that you can change to make your home less appealing to thieves and vandals. The survey covers the house itself, including the doors and windows, the landscaping and the garage. Best to know how a thief thinks when trying to make a protection plan! What would appeal to you may not appeal to them.

Now to protect your home here are some  police security tips. I figure they would know better than me how to do it. When I took the survey I realized our home is not as well protected as I would like. So now we are working on some of these points. Since our home is being remodeled and designed to accommodate our alternative energy system I think we can incorporate some of these tips into our design. Makes me wonder how smart it is putting in so many windows which would bring in passive heat when windows are what is the easiest to break into. I look at so many fancy homes and they have lots of windows and landscaping to give them privacy. That is not good either. The landscaping hides someone trying to break in your home.

So remember to try to follow some of these guidelines when setting up an off-the-grid home. The problem with these homesteads is that they are  usually many miles away from other homes. No neighbors and no traffic are two things that could make your home easy for a break-in or a vandal. And don’t forget that your solar panels are not something to be taken for granted. They are outside in plain view probably and they are of value to others. So be careful or they may end up missing if you don’t set up some sort of protection from theft and vandalism. Setting up a security system could be the best investment you could make!  Good luck!

Copyright © 2010  Kathleen G. Lupole

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Yesterday, I told some of the process of moving our solar panels from their spot in front of our house to our barn roof. Our barn is pretty tall and the roof is sort of steep. I worried about this constantly, as I feared my husband climbing up there. I could not picture how he could do it carrying a solar panel up the ladder, and onto the roof.  Then connecting it to the wires and setting it in place. I was really scared about this whole process from the start. I am not one of those types of women who can climb a ladder, even if my knees weren’t so bad. Never been mistaken for a “tomboy” that’s for sure! But I sure wished I could have helped him.

He built a little wooden frame and tied to a tree in back of the barn. Then he took it up there on the roof and was able to put his feet against it while he worked up there. He had to put the roof racks up there first. Then because our panels were not all bought at the same time from the same distributor, they were a variety of sizes. So our first three panels had to be accommodated according to their sizes. The newest two panels that we purchased last fall are the same size. We hope to buy two more of  those in the near future. Now we can see the value of purchasing all the panels in the same sizes so they have that uniformed look.

He managed to get them all up there. The hardest one was the last one to go up and the smallest. It was the first panel we had for our system. This one is a Sieman’s 50 watt panel. This panel we had originally set up on a board and would move it from place to place in the yard to catch the rays. That was back when we used an old car to charge our batteries. It worked, but wasn’t the best or most efficient set up. Now we need more power! Three computers online almost all day. Not to mention our new satellite set up which uses a lot more power than we though.

Once they were all up there, they looked so tiny! They now look like the panels used for charging a solar phone. They are giving us 350 watts of power though. For us that is good. I will be adding more so we can get our solar refrigeration, the SunDanzer refrigerator and the SunDanzer freezer. They are much needed here!  Then when the water is in place in the house we will be using a water pump and our washing machine. I will add a dishwasher in the future but no dryer. As far as I can tell right now I do not really have any desire for one of them. We’ll see what happens and how well our power system accommodates our needs. We can grow it for whatever we want to add in the future.

Love the sunshine we get on our homestead! Now I know when I see that sun it means I have some power. And we have more power coming in for longer periods of the day. In the winter the sun hits that barn roof pretty much from sun up to sun down. Less time with that noisy generator running!

Copyright © 2010 Kathleen G. Lupole
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Since the weather warmed up my husband has been busy working on moving our solar panels to the barn roof. It entailed running the wires through the conduit that was buried underground in the fall. He had to then run the wire from there, through the barn and up the wall downstairs. Then through the ceiling up to the second floor of the barn. From there it had to go through the metal roof to where the panels would be placed on top of the barn roof. Whew! What a job that was! It was not easy as on any project like this, you do a little come to a problem and have to figure it out. Then go back to the store to get more parts or tools, and work on it some more. He said the wire was very hard to work with. It takes strong arms to get it through the conduit. He did it though with bad arms and shoulders. He also had to put in a grounding rod to protect it. All electrical systems have to be grounded.

From there the wiring had to be connected into the Midnight Solar Combiner Box. Smaller gauge wire is used from the combiner box to the solar panels on the barn roof. A combiner box is used to bring together the outputs of multiple series strings of panels and provide over current protection for each series string in the solar array. Inside the box positive and negative bus bars are used to parallel the output of each of these series strings. The box also allows you to transition between the solar panels and the batteries and/or inverter to minimize transmission voltage drop.

The National Electrical Code requires a breaker or fuse in the positive lead of each series of panels for over current protection. Series fusing prevents the possiblility of individual series strings of modules backfeeding another paralledled series string that develops an electric short circuit. Using a combiner box will give you a code-compliant, as well, as an organized wired network. To make it easier to understand, a combiner box hooks several panels into 1 DC output to connect to the charge controller. This is completely opposite of the typical home in which an AC circuit breaker panel takes 1 AC input and distributes it to several AC circuits.

As I told you in an earlier post on this blog, “This (Midnight Solar) combiner box will accommodate the 150 volt direct current charge controllers and 600 volt direct current grid-tie inverters. It is a water proof aluminum enclosure with an insulated dead front, that will take up to six 150 volt direct current breakers or four 600 volt direct current fuse holders. It runs about $109. more or less not including shipping.”

Then from there will be the job of carrying the solar panels up the ladder and putting in place on the racks on the top of the barn roof. It is not easy for someone working alone. But I am sure my husband will do the job as it needs to be done. After all, he did build our barn and put the roofing up himself. He wants it done so he can add more panels in the future and not have it be such a complicated job. I will be adding a post in a few days with the results of placing the panels up there.

Copyright © 2010 Kathleen G. Lupole
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Sun hitting the panels yesterday!

The most amps our system has ever brought in with the three older panels was 11 amps. These connected to the others was bringing in 19 amps yesterday and the day before! Some difference. Our system is small and so are our needs at this time. We are running three laptops almost all day. And a printer which is turned off until someone uses it, then it is used and turned back off. Since we have added a satellite connection for our internet, that has increased our power usage. The module that sits on the desk has little blinking lights on all the time it is on and it is connected to a router which is how are three laptops are connected to a wireless network.  They are energy hogs! Plus my husband’s new Lenovo laptop (W700) , uses much more power.  Like mine, it is a energy star model but it uses much electric since it is more powerful. It even has a 17″ screen. We have some electric lights in the kitchen that we use at night and that is about it. Our little night lights in the living room are like Christmas lights but tinier and are hooked right into the batteries and we never turn them off. That is about it for what we use around here for electric.

Our new satellite dish for faster internet!

If you need all the electrical gadgets and things then it would be really difficult for you or your family to live this way. I always knew that eventually things would change and improve here. But some people have no patience and cannot sacrifice for their future. They want it NOW and they don’t care if they have to pay for it to have it. So to them I say for them to just stay on the grid and forget about self-sufficiency. To some people being self-sufficient means gardening and raising livestock. Now to me, it means not having someone else directing my life. I try to grow as much of my own vegetables and fruits as I can. But will never raise livestock for killing. Hens for eggs is another story.

You can really see that sunlight hitting the panels there!

There is a tool called the Solar Pathfinder that will help you find the exact location to place your solar panels in to catch the sun. My husband has studied our property for over ten years day by day, hour by hour, season by season to come up with the perfect spot. That is how he came to know it will be on our barn roof. They are safer up there too. So we will see how it goes once they are in place. But for right now, he is happy with them at least bringing in some power out there with the others for now.

Copyright © 2010  Kathleen G. Lupole

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This is the battery room that my husband has added onto our cellar. Our main part of the cellar is a root cellar and he did not want to add anything that would change the root cellar environment as it was built to preserve produce from the garden. He dug this all by hand even with two bad shoulders and a crushed elbow. It was a slow going process but he did it little by little as he could.

This is the battery room as it progressed. You can see the cinder block walls here. It is a narrow room but will hold our batteries, our water pump and our pressurized water tank. It will also have a platform that will lift up and to the outside with our generator on it. That way the it can run outside yet be inside and safe when not in use.  Hopefully, we will not be using it as much as we do now with the panels moved to the barn roof.

Notice the pipe built into the wall at the top. That is where the electrical wire will run through into the house. The door there leads to the root cellar.

During the fall he dug a ditch to put the electric wire in encased in conduit. The ditch comes from the room in the cellar which we call the battery room. Our 24 locomotive batteries will be in there as soon as it is finished. The conduit will keep it safe from the elements in the ground. The wire was the most expensive part so far.

This is the part of the ditch that goes around our pitcher pump and into the battery room. That is where the cinder blocks are that you see in this photo.

You can see where the panels will go. One problem with our panels though is that buying them one at a time over the years they are not all the same dimensions. That is not good if your putting them on roof racks that you have bought. Not uniform. But I know my husband will find a way to make them fit.

Our five panels will all be going on the barn roof before long.  I am looking forward to that. Our sun shines all year on that roof. We are surrounded by state forest with old growth trees that are big trees but they don’t seem to block our house or barn roof  at all. More power means I will be able to use my washing machine at long last. Looking forward to it.

Copyright © 2010  Kathleen G. Lupole

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]]> http://solarbaby.org/?feed=rss2&p=60 0 http://solarbaby.org/?p=33 http://solarbaby.org/?p=33#comments Sat, 09 Jan 2010 16:41:36 +0000 katlupe http://solarbaby.org/?p=33 In November we purchased two more solar panels and the equipment needed to FINALLY move them onto the barn roof. The barn roof gets the most sun all year long. If you study it as we have done over time you will see the areas of your property that get the most sun. We purchased two Kyocera solar panels from the alternative energy store. They did not have anything to mount them on the roof with though. My husband contacted their customer service and asked some questions and because our panels have been purchased over a period of ten years they are not all uniform in size, so nothing they had would work for us. The customer service rep was very rude with my husband on the telephone and wanted us to replace the older panels we had with new ones so they would be the same?????? Now what kind of advice is that? Must be in sales! He lost their company a sale that turned out to be over $600.!!! Which is what we spent at Affordable Solar for the roof racks.

In November we purchased two more solar panels and the equipment needed to FINALLY move them onto the barn roof. The barn roof gets the most sun all year long. If you study it as we have done over time you will see the areas of your property that get the most sun. We purchased two Kyocera solar panels from the alternative energy store. They did not have anything to mount them on the roof with though. My husband contacted their customer service and asked some questions and because our panels have been purchased over a period of ten years they are not all uniform in size, so nothing they had would work for us. The customer service rep was very rude with my husband on the telephone and wanted us to replace the older panels we had with new ones so they would be the same?????? Now what kind of advice is that? Must be in sales! He lost their company a sale that turned out to be over $600.!!! Which is what we spent at Affordable Solar for the roof racks.

These panels will give us almost double the power we have presently. They are Kyocera KC85T 85W 12V so will give us 170 more watts for a total of 350 watts of power. Plus putting them up on the barn roof will mean our panels will be have longer periods of sunshine even in the dark days of winter here in upstate New York. Unfortunately, our roof racks did not get shipped very fast from Affordable Solar and then all the parts came except for the parts that needed to go on the roof first. So by the time those parts came……our weather turned bitter cold and now we have our usual amount of snow and ice. So that is on hold and our two brand new solar panels are in our barn waiting for the much wished for January thaw.

We Purchased the Clicksys roof mounting system manufactured by Unirac.  Here is a link to it and no, I am not an affiliate of their’s. Just a customer.

http://www.clicksys-beam.com We wanted our panels to be secure on the barn roof as it is a high roof. On Unirac’s web site they said that the connections are secured with just a click and it completely eliminates the bolts and nuts you would normally have to use. Cuts out at least forty percent of the labor that the other types of roof racks need done. My husband was all for that! Saved time as well and he wants to get them up there and quick as possible as he does not relish the thought of doing all that work on the barn roof. On their site they say, “The new innovative design of CLICKSYS™ offers the most cost effective flush mount solution in the residential marketplace. Pricing starts as low as 10 cents per watt. Save time and money with the most revolutionary PV mounting system in the world!” My husband is building a front porch on the barn which will have have a walkway above it to clean off the panels when leaves or snow accumulates on them.

The Google campus in California had  9,000 panels to rack and a variety of roof styles to deal with so they had Unirac perform a custom engineering analysis of the site to make sure that the product they chose would work best for each of the individual roofs.  So a non-penetrating racking system was used for the standing-seam roofs which Unirac was able to provide. I like the idea of it being non-penetrating on my barn.

Copyright © 2010 Kathleen G. Lupole
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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.

Copyright © 2008 Kathleen G. Lupole

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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.

Copyright © 2008 Kathleen G. Lupole

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