It's nice being green off the grid

[gulfcoastliberal]

GLOVERSVILLE -- Laurie Freeman doesn't pay an electric bill. Or a heating bill. She and her husband, Jim Strickland, power and heat their home using a mixture of solar panels, a wood stove and a greenhouse attached to the house.

The 1,200-square-foot home, which they built themselves, is insulated with straw bales. "We're not hooked up to the grid," Freeman said. "We have never had a NiMo connection."

The couple are part of a small group of people in the region who are generating electricity -- and sometimes heat and hot water -- using solar energy. It comes at a time when prices for heating oil and natural gas are expected to rise as much as 35 percent this winter.

Freeman's house on McGregor Road is being showcased Saturday as part of a "green buildings" open house involving 17 homes across the region. The event, which is taking place across the Northeast, is being sponsored by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association.

More... very interesting and thought provoking article.

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=404165&category=BUSINESS&BCCode=HOME&newsdate=9/30/2005

Self-suffiency will be the theme (and means of survival for some if not many) as castrophes from non-renewable resource depletion wreak havoc among civilization.

[elsiesummers]

1. Thanks for this article.

The NY incentives are great for solar. There was an MSN article recently (Slate I think) that showed the combined tax incentives of NY State and Federal. Anyway - we are thinking about installing solar since it amounts to a 48% savings on a 10K system - so $5200 and a 48% tax credit. It really only pays off if you know you are going to be in your home for many, many years. I think it could take us as many as 10 years to break even on a 10K system - but since I think we'll have the house for 18 or more years, that's ok.

Also - when you look at the solar map NY is a bit of a dissappointing area - not as sunny as Arizona - not even as sunny as Maine!

The solar maps really make you wonder why the whole South West hasn't gone totally solar already.

We were also thinking about a wood stove. Could not find a calculator with a direct relationship between the number of trees of X height and width and a cord of wood - which is too bad. Would not want to cut down too many trees. Finding it difficult to estimate # of trees necessary without actually cutting some down without having a stove yet - so a bit silly. Regardless, as a suppliment to the propane, a woodstove's an interesting idea. Was also looking into pellet stoves, but still have to purchase fuel, and there seem to be shortages on pellets right now and price increases due to popularity, I suppose. Also, have heard they can be noisy and that mechanical problems can be an issue. Went to a local energy/heating place where the owner showed us a nice one and tried not to sell us the pellet stove. Was sort of funny - but did get me doing a bit more research on the noise level. So souring a bit on pellets and thinking in terms of woodstove as a heating suppliment, instead. There are these masonry heater wood stoves also, which look great but take a lot of space and aren't cheap. Anyway - heading more toward the woodstove concept and away from pellets. Wood appreciate any info from owners/users on noise level of pellet stoves.

[gulfcoastliberal]

3. San Diego Electric is doing some solar stuff involving Stirling Engines

September 7, 2005

San Diego, CA, USA: SDG&E Signs Solar Thermal Electric and Other Renewable Energy Pacts

San Diego Gas & Electric has contracted to buy 300 megawatts of solar thermal electric power, with the potential to grow to 900 MW within 10 years. The project would be one of the largest solar thermal electric facilities in the world when fully constructed. The utility also announced the purchase of approximately 4 MW of energy and capacity from a local biogas landfill project.

"At SDG&E, we have pledged to tap resources like solar and biogas power to meet 20 percent of our customers' energy needs by 2010," said Edwin A. Guiles, chairman and CEO of SDG&E. "With these purchases, we continue to demonstrate our commitment to creating a balanced mix of renewable and fossil energy resources for the region."

SDG&E will purchase the solar energy from Arizona-based Stirling Energy Systems. SDG&E and Stirling have agreed to a 20-year contract to first purchase 300 MW from Stirling's SES Solar 2 facility, home to a series of Stirling solar dishes on approximately 3 square miles in Imperial Valley.

SDG&E has options on two future phases that could add an additional 600 MW of renewable energy and capacity to SDG&E's resource mix. While solar energy is not always available because of environmental factors, it is generally abundant during the hottest parts of the day, making it available to meet peak demand from customers.

http://www.solarbuzz.com/news/NewsNAPR543.htm

I've looked at the pics of the stirling engine generators and they look impressive. Don't know if Arizona or New Mexico is doing anything like this?

Also, another electric grid reserve measure are huge batteries that act as capacitors to meet peak demand. They're called flow cells; one is being installed at, of all places, an Air Force base in Missisippi that gets a lot of weather-related outages.

Recharging the Power Grid

Fighter jets scream over Columbus Air Force Base, a sprawling military facility in eastern Mississippi that is especially busy these days training aviators for the war on terror. But for all the high tech aeronautics on display overhead, the bustling Air Force base often relies on an old-fashioned diesel generator to keep radar and communications humming and the jets from colliding. That's because the region's antiquated, overloaded power grid dishes out 25 blackouts a year, as well as another hundred or so voltage fluctuations that crash sophisticated flight simulators.

The solution-the world's largest battery-is under construction nearby. Two cavernous steel tanks, each one 10 meters tall and 20 meters in diameter, will soon hold nearly four million liters of concentrated salt solutions, electrolytes that will be charged and discharged by 24,000 fuel cells in an adjacent building. At night this installation, known as a flow cell battery, will suck electricity from the grid and store the energy, which it will discharge during the day when power lines are strained. When blackouts strike-common in this tornado-prone region-the huge battery will keep the base humming for up to 24 hours.

This massive battery represents more than a backup power supply for an isolated military facility. It's a bold experiment in large-scale electricity storage on the power grid-the aging maze of interconnected power plants and transmission lines that cover the country. Today's grid operates with minimal storage, so at all times, electricity flows must exactly balance the power that's being consumed. Partial solutions are available in a new class of digital switches that more efficiently deliver electricity during crunch periods (see "A Smarter Power Grid ," TR, July/August 2001). But devices such as the Columbus flow cell, which is being built by the federally operated Tennessee Valley Authority and Swindon, England-based Regenesys Technologies, go one step further. By storing hours of electricity, flow cells offer, for the first time, the possibility of freeing the grid from the need to continuously balance production and consumption.

The implications of a newly flexible grid are immense. Sufficient storage capacity would relieve pressure to build new power plants and transmission lines, prevent regional blackouts, even speed the adoption of wind farms and solar panels by transforming intermittently produced power into steady reserves. Also, by dampening glitches and power spikes, the more flexible grid would provide the high-quality power needed for today's sensitive electronic equipment. Problems ranging from blackouts to the voltage fluctuations that cause chaos in high tech manufacturing sap an estimated $119 billion from the U.S. economy every year, says Kurt Yeager, CEO of the Electric Power Research Institute, a utility-funded R&D consortium in Palo Alto, CA. This hemorrhage is just one indicator that power grid fundamentals need rethinking, he adds. "The world as we know it can't continue. Prudent people would not wait for the lights to go out to do something about it. We've got to change the architecture of the grid," he says.

http://cache.technologyreview.com/articles/03/03/fairley0303.asp?p=1

These plus digital switching are stop gap measures that may have to be implemented if deregulation spreads.

Edit: Good for you New Yorkers! At least the state is doing something to encourage renewables. Best of luck in your endeavors!

[skids]

4. It's good for short-term residency too.

You just need to find an appraiser that will factor in the power bill before you resell.

http://realtytimes.com/rtcpages/20020315_energyhomes.htm

[Digit]

2. Thank you for your post

Your post encouraged me to once again check into solar for heating my home.
My old system is defunct and parts are hard to come by. No, it is not a normal system by any means, so I would be starting over.

I had been thinking of the older systems which were more daunting, but learned from the article that people are doing this themselves.
So, I have googled a few sites and it is not quite as overwhelming as I had once thought.

I already knew my home had plenty of roof facing mostly south, and I was not in a home owners association where they would frown on it. Not to mention I am in the south anyway.

I will check it out more thoroughly and see what happens.

[FreeMason]

5. She uses a wood stove!

Talk about bad for the environment!