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Total Home Wind Vse Hydro (Backhome Magazine)

Total Solar Electric Home

Is Their an Economic Advantage to Converting to Solar

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Total Home Wind Vse Hydro
© Copyright 2000 By Charlie Collins From "Ask Mr. Solar" Column Published 11/00 Backhome Magazine

DEAR MR. SOLAR:

I am a young native of Vermont, with dreams of building and powering my own home. My question: Is there a practical way to integrate a private independent hydro system and a small wind power system to fulfill basic electrical needs? I am more interested in a stand-alone system that's completely off the grid than one in which I could sell power back to the utility. Any information or examples of typical systems would be appreciated.

Ben T...... Fort Collins, CO 80524

Hi Ben -

Your Question is great ­ yes it is possible ­ I am assuming that you are interested in doing so in Colorado as this is where you wrote from, however you were originally from Vermont.

As far as wind power vse the hydro power I feel that if you have a choice of both then I would not consider the wind and only the hydro. You see normally when you have running water then it runs 24 hours a day and every day of the year. The use of wind is only available some hours of the day and NOT every day of the year. If you choose to use a hydro system you know that you will have power into your batteries every hour daily and therefore you do not need a large battery bank. But with wind you will need to have a large enough battery bank to store your needed power for hours or perhaps days when there is no wind power available. The battery bank is so you to have available upon demand, for example should you generate say 500 watts per hour or a total of 12,000 watts per day. If you want to start a 1 HP motor they you would not beable to do this direct from your hydro or wind system, but would need some storage for this large power draw down.

Both Colorado and Vermont have the potential of producing electricity from a stream and actually both have the same problem. This is that the water may freeze at the surface during the winter. We have installed several systems here in southern Utah in the mountain areas addressing this problem.

The way is to install both your pelton (power generating) wheel and water lines below the frost line. We did this at the headwater of the Virgin River which was over 9,000 feet which had a normal snow depth of over 18 feet in the winter. What we did was to build a reinforced concrete room 10¹ below the ground. This was no problem, however we did have to also have the out let pipe from our room below that level so that the 100 gallons per minute that we had would exit the room easy and not fill it up. Then we installed several Harris pelton wheels to change the power generated into electricity. We had our storage (batteries) about a mile from the hydro system so we upped the voltage to about 450 volts and then we could use a #14 wire without much line loss.

The above system was a complete stand alone one as there was no power lines for over 20 miles. You asked about doing this and selling the excess power to the grid. As you may know the US government has passed a law that your local power company must buy any electricity from you that you wish to sell. However you must provide this to them in a usable form which includes:

• 120 or 240 volts,
• 60 cycles,
• useable wave form, and
• automatically dis-connectable if there is no electricity in the line.

The reason for your having to provide this in this form is in the event that there is a line person working between your power source and the grid generating point they do not want him to get an unexpected shock. If you use a Trace SW series inverter then you will have these items built in, however for your own use I do not recommend this inverter as it may fry your sensitive electronic equipment such as lazar (sp?) printers and scanners.

The local utility company must buy the electricity from you, however the cost that they pay you does vary from utility to utility. In some cases they will pay you a full retail value, in other words let your meter run backwards. However in some cases they only will pay you about 25% of the retail price. Also in some cases they charge you for using their lines to send your electricity over to them from your house to the utility company generating plant. I strongly recommend that you contact your power company in advance of your instillation to find our what they are willing to pay you so that you will not be shocked with their policy.

Ben to answer your final question ­ yes it is possible to generate and store enough power for your home as we have done here in southern Utah using only solar as we have no running water or wind available for generation.

We have an on line alternative power course that may be of interest to you. This course goes into greater depth in solar, wind and hydro as well as usage and storage of electricity. We offer this course both through a college that has transferable credits with tests and exams. If you are not interested in transferable credits but just want the information then we have this available. Please write CharlieCollins@dthoughtscreate.com for more on this.

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Total Solar Electric Home
© Copyright 1992 By Charlie Collins From "Ask Mr. Solar" Column Published 8/18/92 Daily Spectrum

Question: Can I run my whole home on Solar electric power, and how much will it cost?

Mary Davis, Springdale Utah

Mr. Solar: Mary,Can I run my whole home on Solar electric power, and how much will it cost?

Mary, yes you can run your whole home on solar Electric power and therefore doing your part to help improve our environment.You are lucky to live in the south western part of our country where there is ample unfiltered sunlight to make plenty of electric from solar panels and compared to areas on the east coast where there is a lot of pollution you will find that they have to have up to twice or three times the number of solar panels to receive the same amount of electricity. Also if you lived in the northern part of our country then you would also need more panels due to the shorter hours of sunlight. Consequently it is much more economical too have electric solar in your area that it is in any other part of the country.

Mary, for a large solar electrical system in other parts of the country to run all the things that you have become accustomed to it would cost approximately $38,000.00 however living in the south west you can have a large system for about $22,000.00.

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Is their an Economic Advantage to converting to Solar
© Copyright 1992 By Charlie Collins From "Ask Mr. Solar" Column Published 4/19/92 Daily Spectrum

Question:Is Their an Economic Advantage to Converting to Solar

Russell and Linda D., Bloomington Ut

Mr. Solar: Russell, today when a person converts their home to solar electricity it is the reasonable thing to do. This is for economic, enviormental as well as becomming a self reliant person. We were discussing with a local banker the possability of a home inprovement loan for Solar Electricity. We find that you now can get a 10 year variable loan at 1% over prime . You can also get a 20 year variable rate loan at 2% over prime which would only cost you $233.00 per month for a $20,000.00 loan. They also offer a fixed rate loan at 9% for 15 to 30 years.

Your monthly power bill at this time may be costing you anywhere from $100.00 to $200.00 for your power usage. By usage I mean that every month you receive a new bill, just like you were renting your home. When you use public power for 10, 20, or 50 years as you own nothing which is similar to paying rent. We feel that it is a wise investment for you to consider installing your own power system. In 20 or so years you will own your own system and will not have any more power bills.

The above figures of course vary with the size system that you desire to install. They will also vary with the rate that you can get from your local lending institution. I am sure you are aware this is a excellent time to consider borrowing money because the economy is depressed and therefore interest rates are very low. We feel that until the economy starts to inprove that the prime rate will remain low. Also you should remember that your price per kilowatt hour has been increasing steadily over the past years. We feel that you will experience a large increase in the years to come. As we have stated in previous articles there is a tax credit available to Utah tax payers which will help offset the cost of your system. Therefore it is an excellent time to invest in Solar.

If I were living in the city depending completely on the grid for my electricity then I would want to become self reliant for part of my power. We have a large amount of food stored and I realize that I need some form of dependable power. I feel there is the possibility of being without power due to natural tribulation such as an earthquake or or possibility a man made disaster. Therefore I would want to have a back up system that would be dependable in any situation.

As you see there is both an economic as well as a self reliant reasons to convert to solar electric power at this time. There is also the advantage of your helping the enviorement by using less polluting fuel to run your home. Of course you may deside to run a part of your home on solar electricity and still continue hooked up to the power grid. We will discuss that alternative in future articles. We are planning on our first open house here at the Do It Homestead Saturday April 25th. We would be happy for you and your friends to attend so that you could learn first hand what it is like to live on and use solar electricity. If you would desire more detailed information, please send us your monthly requirements and we will be happy to give you a cost estimate for part or all of your electrical needs.