Solar Powered Home Brewery

[bcmaui]

Cool - I've always been fascinated by solar and glad I've finally gotten around to being able to make my own. Corgrats on working there as well.

I don't think of my local utility company as my enemy that I have to stick it to though. Since I am producing the majority of my power between 9am and 3pm, the utility company is my partner as they are using my excess daytime power and I exchange it for power I need the other 3/4's of the day when the sun does not make much power. Since I avoid the toxic nature, inefficiency and added cost of using lead acid batteries to store my surplus power, my utility company is doing me a favor and encourages people like me to invest in solar PV by lowering the cost of these systems.

The US Department of Energy and GE and others are using Maui as a test area for "smart grid" technology since we are not interconnected as you are an the mainland and they can test emerging technology on a small scale real world basis here.

My goal is to build up my system over the next two years to where I make all the electric power I consume and my utility bill is the minimum here of currently $18 per month. That $18 per month is much less than the cost and maintenance of lead acid batteries would cost me.

The ultimate goal is to increase the production of renewables and decrease the consumption of non-renewables. I don't believe in the man-made global warming hype (and believe we will be harmed as a nation by the creation of new carbon energy taxes as even more work will move offshore) but I do believe that development of renewables is important for regional economic security.

I would prefer to see more of the renewable technology manufacturing be made in the US (China has jumped in the lead making PV panels, when you buy a PV panel from China it is no different than spending that money on Chinese crap at Wal-Mart) and more inverters made in the US as well (Germany leads there, but the biggest German company is opening a plant in Colorado) and new carbon taxes would take away from folks being able to invest in renewables. Renewable tax incentives and a cooperating utility company are what motivated me to take the initative to invest in renewable energy. Tax credits are also are the most effective way to redirect money into renewables that make sense for a given location as all of the money is directly invested in the technology without the expense of some government agency administering it.

[bcmaui]

By the end of today the system will have made 1 gWh (1,000 kWh) since being connected in October - it's 998 right now. That's about $300 at my local power rates. After I complete my tax returns next month I should be able to see if this will pay for itself in 6-7 years as it is supposed to.

Utility company finalized all of my paperwork and installed the new meter a couple weeks ago. It measures power going in and out and the time of day rather than just spinning forward and backward like the old meter did.

They had the electrician add some labels so they do not get shocked from my system when they service the grid.

http://www.artisanmaui.com/PVathome/

Click on "Publically Available Plants" and if you want to see this system enter "96768" under zipcode at this website:

http://www.sunny-portal.com/

If you are interested in seeing if you can get local credits (in addition to the 30% federal credit available until 2016), use this website. Call your utility company as well - some states have rebate programs that they manage (California is one).

http://www.dsireusa.org/

[bcmaui]

The good news:

With the cooler winter weather (it's 70F at 4pm) these solar panels made record daily energy production a couple times this week (since October) under clear skies.

We are about 2 months after the winter solstice and the system went online about 2 months before - it will be interesting to see what peak summer production rates are on a clear day.

The bad news:

The state of Hawaii is withholding all income tax refunds (including solar system tax credits for me and everyone else) until July 2010 at the earliest so it can ignore tax refund liabilities until the next budget cycle. I was an idiot for overpaying my taxes, but I was not sure if we were going to add this system until the end of the year.

[foomench]

The state of Hawaii is withholding all income tax refunds (including solar system tax credits for me and everyone else) until July 2010 at the earliest so it can ignore tax refund liabilities until the next budget cycle.

Seems to me they should pay you interest on that then. They want interest if you don't pay them. They already had your extra money interest free for the good part of a year.

[bcmaui]

Current Tax law allows them to take 90 days to approve a refund and 45 more days to mail it out, so no interest is required.

Usually they mail the check back within 30 days of when the return is filed.

Looks like they are figuring on delaying payment of $275 million that will be pushed forward.

Guess it is better than getting an IOU like they did in California.

http://www.state.hi.us/tax/media/2010-0 ... refund.pdf

[Thure]

Damn! BC, you are my kinda man!

At the camp I worked at in MN we had a small wind generator put up that was hooked up to a couple of batteries and a converter. There was build a small shed below for the batteries which have built in charging stations for laptop batteries and power tool batteries.
http://www.concordialanguagevillages.or ... C_0163.JPG
The output wasn't much, but enough to supply camp laptops with clean energy. The main purpose of the small mill was educational and to show that it was possible even with a small mill to get energy from the wind that could be useful in everyday life.

If you want to go even greener you might get some ideas here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1fnzBVe1oY Its from the German language camp where they have build a "passive house" also known as a "zero/nil house". http://www.waldseebiohaus.typepad.com/
The apparatus you see 02:13min into the video is a heat exchanger. It's hooked up to some air pipes that is buried in the ground and goes out and up through the ground. The heat exchanger sucks in the air through the pipes which then makes a thermal exchange with the house's air. In the summer it's getting cooled down and in the winter its getting warmed up. In the summer it cools so much that there is no use for an AC in the house and the temp is a cool steady 20C, even with temps in the upper 30C outside.

[bcmaui]

Thure

I have converted about 60% of our home's energy usage over to renewables so far. We are only purchasing about 13 kWh per day from the utility company (which is 10% wind, 8% sugar cane waste and the rest oil powered here). About a third of the savings with the solar water heating and another third with the first phase of PV solar electricity. Phase 2 of PV should make the 100% of the house's energy and Phase 3 I hope to make extra electricity to charge an electric car - but that is mostly likely still 10 years down the road. I have always liked alternative energy and I am glad the technology is becoming more mainstream. I have no air conditioning or home heating, so that makes it a bit easier but burning wood is another renewable energy source than many can use and it was all we had in Norway - a small, efficient wood burning stove warmed our entire home when I lived there. Most of Norway is hydro electric as well.

[astrobrew]

LED's are still expensive. My neighbor just spent several thousand dollars on light bulbs when he renovated his kitchen. But the total energy he consumes is ridiculously low. I use CFL's where I just need general lighting (basement, outside), but halogens where color matters like the bedroom or living room. You know incandescent lights are over 100 years old now? It's time to embrace new technologies. They will ne illegal in the European Union by next year, I think I heard... and the US is following suit with similar legilsation but the deadline is several years away. Maybe 2016.

Congrats on the system BC! Panels are cheap here, but so is electricity. We pay 9 cents/ kw hr. But the damn inverter costs a fortune.

In the US 2012 the light bulb will be gone unless they changed it. Buy a KILL a WATT meter to find out how much power things in the house draws. My power usage is down 100 KHWs from 210 KWH last year. For a cost of $21.60 mo. and $9.00 of it is service charge. I have a gas hot water heater and gas furnace. With a blower motor that is electric. The point is you can save lots of power if you shut stuff off like that cable box that sucked $10 a month changed to the 22w laptop from the 175W desk top saving around $8 month.