Updated:07/08/2010 ENTIRE
SITE IS COPYRIGHT 2010, MC PHOTOGRAPHY
BEST WHEN VIEWED ON A 16:9 SCREEN
Learn about
alternative energy, hybrid systems and watch pointless videos!
If you have any
questions, contact us.
I'm always happy to provide a convoluted answer to a simple question.
At this site, you can learn from my real world experiences
in solar energy production and how I produce power at our cabin in Northern
Michigan. The cabin is located right on the 45th parallel near Gaylord,
Michigan. Check out our photography
site which has some photos around the cabin in the nature and winter
sections.
This is the legacy site. The new
site has much more content and features and can link to your Facebook
page.
Remote long term unattended lap top based game camera system
Hypermileage continuing testing
You are viewing the old site. All new
updates, articles, diary entries, videos, show episodes, confusion, beer
consumption and other semi-legal activities now take place at the new site.
Become a member there and contribute your input, thoughts and hangover
information. - Bill Xam
Disaster
planning should be part of every single household across America, strike that,
the world. When disaster strikes, people die or lives are c80%hanged. In times of
plenty, forego the Playstations and buy extra food. You can explain a lack of
toys better than a lack of food to your children.
In
1980 our military switched its entire food ration program over to the full
moisture MRE pouch system. These are the meals we tested on "This Old
Shack". Check
them out here.
I can sit around smoking a cigar because I'm
an energy mogul!
Drawbacks:
Maintenance.
Installation.
Bunch of black glass panels sitting around.
It's a hybrid thing, you see
If you're wondering about our system, it's a long story but what the heck,
let's have a whack at it. It's a hybrid system using solar power, a catalytic
converter equipped generator and several off beat devices.
In 2005 using some convoluted reasoning, I decided to have a whirl at using
batteries to power items at the shack in order to save on having an electrical
service installed.
Charging and whatnot
For charging the the battery banks we use a Xantrex C12
solar charger, a Schumacher smart charger and a Schumacher manual charger
as well as the 10 amp 12 volt output from the generator.
As of June 2010, we are building a brand new battery
bank in addition to the older group 31 batteries (we've retired the group
27 bank). The new batteries are made by East-Penn battery company and are
part of our 6 month testing cycle to see how well they work.
If they work out well we will purchase several more for
a total of 1000 amp hours of capacity.
We first used a "Xantrex 400 powerpack". This is a thing with a little
inverter, deep cycle battery, a light and an air compressor. After discovering
that you could use the battery jumping abilities to hook it up to a battery bank
so we got some trolling batteries and used them to power lights and a laptop
computer. To charge it we used the alternator on a car. Worked out pretty good.
Since the car had a V6, it worked out pretty will as far a fuel consumption
went. However....
As time went by, I started to explore using solar panels and bought a 45 watt
solar panel kit (it came with the mounting brackets, 12 volt CFL bulbs, a little
power distribution box and the wiring). Well, this worked pretty good and by now
it was summer of 2005. That's when I had a few adult beverages and decided to
host a show about this whole thing. After a few more adult beverages, we came up
with "This Old Shack" since, well the thing is old and it is a shack.
In the spring of 2006, I purchased a second solar panel kit and went on up to
90 watts. By this time we also had a bank of 4 group 27 batteries (79 amp hours
each) and 3 group 31 batteries (110 amp hours each).
Of course, 90 watts of solar energy isn't going to charge that size of bank
so we got a small 1000 watt generator. That dumb little thing lasted about 3
months before it blew up. It really blew up with parts everywhere and a small
fire. After that, I went out and bought a 2.4 kw generator and man does that
thing run good! The engine in it is a rip off of a Honda engine (the parts are
exactly the same down to the air filter) and runs for 14 hours on 4 gallons of
gasoline. This takes up the slack that the 90 watts of solar energy doesn't
supply.
We also use some real odd solutions for lighting. We have a home brew LED
lighting system that runs off of 12 volts as well as 3 solar LED lighting
spotlights that illuminate the shack.
Plugs
and ads
Solar-Frontier.com
provides the most economical, ecological solar energy solutions such as Solar
Panels on earth--on the world's largest scale.
There are several people on various newsgroups and discussion areas that waylay in uninformed or those just starting out in the off grid world of self power generation. This involves an almost religious belief in a phantom 6v golf cart true deep cycle battery that is superior in every way to any other battery in existence.
A simple examination of the specification sheet for a line of 6v and 12v off grid batteries will tell you quite clearly that there is no one single best solution for all circumstances. It is not accurate to say one is best.
Our system has been using the much maligned Harbor Freight 45 watt solar panel kits for 4 years. Over these years, we've moved them back and forth from the main home in Saline, Michigan to the shack in Gaylord. They've been dropped, exposed to heavy rain, snow, sleet, hail. One even has even had the glass on it shattered from a tree limb dropping on it.
Look, using testing equipment is all well and
good but those spec sheets don't mean squat if you can't run YOUR stuff
for as long as you want to. So what I do (so you don't have to) is get the
equipment (batteries, inverters, solar panels) and put what I run on it.
Usually about 30-50 watts at 12 volts - few amps of draw. You know, turning
lights on and off, running a computer (a laptop) and whatnot.
Throughout the test, a digital meter is run on
the bank and a hydrometer is used once an hour to determine whether the meter is
reading the correct voltage. During the sunlight hours on the panels, there is
another digital meter installed at the primary junction box (where the panels
feed into the 10 gauge cables that feed to the charge controller) that measures
panel voltage and amps.
One of the things that I like the best about
alternative energy is that you can make it as complicated or simple as you like.
Some people, even though they use alternative energy simply don't have a good
grasp on the entire substance that goes into the makeup of an engineered system
that has been built from scratch.
Don't ask me why, but I've recently become interested in
studying earthquake/volcano activity around the world; ash plumes and such. I've
added a page with RSS feeds and links to satellite imagery.
