Solar Baby

posted by katlupe on Aug 23

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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posted by katlupe on Aug 22

The Present Solar System At Peaceful Forest

I have had many people ask me lately how they can change from using the grid electric to setting up their own alternative energy system. I know it sounds easy from the things I write. The difference for us is we were not hooked up to any other system and didn’t have to deal with the electric company. So I am trying to think of things you can do to get started. It is not that easy to go buy a solar system for your house if you don’t have much money. They cost money. But you can start with one 50 watt panel, a charge controller, an automotive inverter and a couple of golf cart batteries. You can just plug your lamp (with an LED bulb) into the inverter……..and there it is — not running on your utility grid anymore!  As time goes by, you can add another panel.

For the time being here are some things you can do to get started if you cannot afford the equipment. These may look trivial. It is NOT! You must learn to conserve your electric use if you truly want to live off-the-grid or partly off-the-grid.

• 1. Replace all your light bulbs first of all with LEDs.
• 2. If you need to replace an appliance, always choose the most energy efficient appliance you can afford.
• 3. If you are presently using an electric stove, replace it with a gas stove. I know, you thought you could use your stove for free………….well, you can’t. Appliances that use heat are always big drains on your system. In the long run, propane is cheaper. I use both propane and wood and it doesn’t cost too much. All winter I can cook with wood as we have two stoves going. Depends on what you are doing for heat too.
• 4. If you are using a desk top computer, replace it with an energy star laptop. My husband and I both use Lenovo ThinkPads and they have many energy efficient options. We use them plugged into the system and have found them to be very easy to use and are not energy hogs. I love mine!
• 5. Stop using your clothes dryer! They use a lot of power and it is better for your laundry anyway to hang it. In the winter I hang mine upstairs, but if you have a basement with a furnace, then that would be the perfect place to hang it.
• 6. Replace your electric coffee maker with a coffee percolator that perks on your stove. Better coffee too!
• 7. Take a look at your electric gadgets to see what you really need, and what you can get rid of. Like electric can openers, electric tea pots — really! Give me a break, how hard is it to heat water on the stove? I use an electric mixer, and that has been something I could use right from the start of living on our system.

I will be adding more posts like this one to try to help my followers/readers who are just getting started or want to get started. If you are an experienced solar user and have ideas to add to this basic idea, please let me know and I will add it to my next post on this subject. All ideas to help our readers get more independent are welcome!

Copyright © 2010  Kathleen G. Lupole

posted by katlupe on Jul 14

It has lately came to my attention that there is what is thought of as a movement.  A movement to live off-the-grid, like the back-to-the-land movement or the hippie movement or whatever particular movement you can think of. Funny, I didn’t think of living off-the-grid as having any political stance. I can only speak for my husband and myself, but we had only one reason in mind on moving into a house that was off-the-grid. That was because we wanted to be in a secluded location………..but close enough to some small towns to be able to drive a horse and buggy. The other house we were looking at had 25 acres of land with it and was hooked up to the grid but the whole electrical system had to be over hauled and we figured we would just not hook it up. We were leaning toward that property but what was keeping us from it was that it was on a main road and at the time our dog, Nikita was an active puppy and we were afraid of her getting hit by a car. So when the realtor gave us this listing and we finally went to see it we liked it immediately………..because it was surrounded completely by the state forest.

I like the independence. I like the freedom. I love the fact that we do not have to pay an electric bill. I also think we both love it that there are no ugly wires strung to our house. Even our wires to our telephone are underground…………even under the road. Our wires to our solar panels that are now on top of our barn roof are underground to the barn and then go upstairs and out the roof. You don’t see them. I feel our home is a mix of old fashioned living with high technology. We use some old fashioned methods but not because they are old fashioned, but because those methods might be best suited for us. We do not like to use gasoline powered items unless we have to. Like gas lawn mowers, rototillers, trimmers, etc.

We like relying on ourselves as much as we can. Yes, we have to interact with some outside forces. Such as internet connection, telephone company, propane company, tax man and a variety of business expenses but for the most part, we are left alone. This year, I expect to get a lot of food stored up and hopefully get more work done on our house. We see progress every year but it is never enough for us. Slow…..but sure is our motto. This year we have done quite a bit here at Peaceful Forest Homestead. Such as:

1. Battery room is almost all walled in with cinder blocks.

2. Pipe going into our well to be hooked up when we can get our pump and pressurized tank.

3. Electric wire going to the barn from the house.

4. Solar panels on top of the barn roof.

5. Midnight Solar box installed in barn.

6. Pantry gutted.

7. Root cellar all cleaned out.

8. Stone bench built in root cellar.

9. Cherry tree trimmed in back yard.

10. Fence line on front of paddock moved back.

11. New door on the upstairs entry into barn.

It doesn’t sound like a lot but combine those jobs with the job of horse care, household chores all done manually, wood work, gardening and preserving food and running a home-based business consisting of two websites and four blogs and selling items on Bonanzle, Amazon and Homesteading Today’s Barter board, three cats and one big dog…………….whew!

Copyright © 2010  Kathleen G. Lupole

posted by katlupe on Jun 30

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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posted by katlupe on May 5

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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posted by katlupe on Mar 23

Since we are having a wonderful spring so far in upstate New York we are getting antsy to have our new solar panels added to our system and on the barn roof.  Putting them up there takes some work for my husband so he is doing it little by little. Once he gets the roof racks up there and fastened down, he will have to carry each solar panel up the ladder and put it in place. This is with no help. Unfortunately, I cannot climb the ladder at all. My knees have limited what work I can do anymore. So he has to do it all. He has been a good sport with no complaining. But that means that he has to do all the hard work alone and I get disgusted with myself over this. He does not complain though……and especially about our solar system. Seems like he has been very excited about it growing these last couple of weeks.

This is the electric wire encased in the conduit underground.

The electrical wire has been run through conduit to protect it from the elements underground, coming  from the batteries in the new battery room to the barn. There the wire will be connected from the batteries to the Midnight Solar Combiner Box. There will be smaller wire from the combiner box to the solar panels on the barn roof.  This 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.

Midnight Solar Combiner Box installed on barn wall

Midnight Solar Combiner Box

CLICKSYS™ is a the rack system we are using to hold our solar panels on the barn roof.  I told about them in my January 9, 2010 post. They are not cheap but they are easier to work with and eliminate 40% of the labor. So we were sold on them. They are manufactured by Unirac. You can see in the photo two of the racks at the end of the barn. The solar panels will snap right into place on them and hopefully will be safe.

One of the roof racks in place on the roof.

Copyright © 2010  Kathleen G. Lupole

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posted by katlupe on Mar 18

This week our weather has been beautiful here in upstate New York. Our sun has been out and bringing in power to our small solar system. It was so beautiful in fact, that my husband connected the two brand new solar panels to the rest of our solar array temporarily to use that power. He was waiting to get them up on the barn roof but has more work that needs to be done before that move is possible. So for the time, they are out front with the other panels.

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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posted by katlupe on Mar 14

As I posted in the fall we are planning on adding two more solar panels to our system and placing all five of them on our barn roof. This is not an easy job due to the weather and the high roof of our barn that my husband has to work on. He managed to get out there during the nice days we had this month to put the roof racks on the roof.  I am not sure in my own head as to how he is getting the panels up there as they are pretty big. So when he is doing it I will try to get some pictures of  him in action.

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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posted by katlupe on Jan 9

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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posted by katlupe on Nov 30

This is my attempt to teach the average people about solar energy.  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.

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 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.

Copyright © 2008 Kathleen G. Lupole

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