Does anyone here have PV solar installed?

[seemunkee]

If so please tell me something about why and how you did it.
Is it grid-tie or off-grid?
Did you do it all at once?
Did you DIY or hire an installer?
How much wattage do you generate?

I'm looking to do a small install in my home and wondering what other people have done.

[skids]

1. I rent, so no.

But you may find this link handy:

http://findsolar.com

[seemunkee]

2. Been there, done that

According to them I would need a $100K system to meet all my needs. I'm looking to try and take my family room/mother-in-law suite off-grid in an economical way.

I'm looking more to do something like this:
Piecing together a spanking-new $600 solar-electric system.
http://www.countrysidemag.com/issues/4_2005.htm#article1

I bought this last weekend but haven't worked out how I'm going to set it up.
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=90599

[Solo_in_MD]

3. I've done a grid tie and love it. You get less than predicited and it requires work

best place for good data is here: http://www.homepower.com/

[seemunkee]

4. Less due to not as much sunlight or to lose in the system?

How much wattage was installed and how much are you actually getting?

[oldhippie]

15. I'll second the rec for Homepower.com.......

I've been reading it religiously since it first came out as a free newsletter 20 years ago. Richard Perez has remained true to his principles even as the mag has grown into a full blown commercial success. He still sees his mission as "getting the word out" and not making money.

I have a small 120 watt PV system that powers my ham radio gear. It's been up and working without a hitch since 1992 or so.

[Mr. Earl]

5. I live

in a passive solar, self built home.

[seemunkee]

8. Nice

Got any pictures?

[BeFree]

6. 80 watts

Installed myself 15 + years ago on a small isolated cabin. Forget cost, maybe @ $500 total.

Use two deep cycle batteries with a 250 watt inverter that cost $270, now sells for $40. Compact fluorescent bulbs.

Runs lights, radio and charges batteries. Gas for cooking. Generator for extras.

Would have cost a million to get grid tie-in.

At home my electric bill runs just $30 a month, so solar at this time would be cost foolish. Get my grid power from nukes, hydro and coal. Plus I live in a dense forest.

The nice thing about the solar operation is that it teaches me to be as efficient as one can be, and not waste energy. Hence my $30 at home bill.

[seemunkee]

7. I can understand that

Just thinking and planning it is showing me where the waste is and how I can change things to cut down.

[hunter]

9. I dare say lead acid batteries are worse than nuclear power.

Toxic lead, you know, has a half life of like FOREVER! And recycling lead acid batteries is a very, very nasty business.

I used to tease mercilessly my environmentalist professors and bosses who had "isolated cabins." How much environmental damage did they do flying and driving to those things? How much damage was done building and maintaining the damned roads that allowed them to get there? It always seemed a bit self-indulgent to me.

Attitudes like this are probably why I loathe the Sierra Club too. Any inner city kid living in utter poverty does less damage to the earth's environment than these affluent and pompous clowns.

What an arrogant son of a bitch I am. There's no talking to me.

:P

[BeFree]

10. No argument from me

In the old days batteries weren't even recycled, just dumped. Then a bunch of Sierra Clubbers clubbed the gov. to put an end to the dumping.

Lo and behold, a new industry was formed: lead battery recycling. Yes, messy at first but now well refined and well regulated. Technology to the rescue!

I do feel a little guilty about my cabin but the study of the ecology there has educated me more than any book ever could, and has lead to my taking up a defense of the environment.

At that I may be rather poor, but I have had an effect. As would anyone.

[hunter]

11. That turns an acute illness into a chronic one.

To cure the disease that is destroying the environment we have to look at issues of consumerism and social justice.

The Sierra Club and groups like it only serve to prolong the disease indefinitely as if things like solar power and alternative fuels will allow the economy to continue on pretty much as it is now. (That's my biggest beef with Lovins, btw.)

But the problem with the consumerist economy we have now is that the "haves" have so much more than the "have-nots" and there is no possible way to bring any current sort of affluent consumerism to everyone who lives in poverty without destroying what is left of the earth's natural environment.

The most likely scenario with a Lovins style consumerist cornucopia is a massive die-off of people living in poverty. All it does is prolong the same sorts of misery caused by what the world is doing now by our increase in coal consumption. In a consumerist society you always reach some point where there is a limiting resource, which leaves the politically powerful infringing upon the rights and survival of others.

In many environmentalist "utopias" that limiting resource will be labor and energy. You simply can't build enough "labor saving" devices like tractors with low density energy resources. At some point it's easier to use an ox. An ox can reproduce itself, and it consumes locally produced unrefined biomass. The problem is that an ox based agricultural system can't possibly support a society such as we have now. We revert to pre-industrial populations and lifestyles, and along the way billions of people die.

[Kolesar]

19. A Ghandi-esqe "spin our own yarn" boycott would be the real test of commitment

How's it going?

[NNadir]

13. I would suggest you try books.

One thing that you could learn in books as opposed to swatting flies in some Tortilla Canyon pseudo-paradise is whether laws against point source pollution are effective.

As it happens, living in isolation is often claimed to be, mostly by the isolates, education. Not really. Education involves the exchange of ideas.

Or maybe one could look into the question of places like Leadville, CO, where lead mining has destroyed the water supply and the land for eternity, not that our little off grid libertarians give a shit.

http://faculty.washington.edu/clh/leadville.html

Every single time, every time, you get under the skin of an antinuclear activist, you see something like this, arm chair trust fund "environmentalism." Every time.

Mostly what I note these days from the Sierra Club is its racism. I'll bet you a zillion dollars if someone tried to demolish the Hetch Hetchy dam, the majority of the membership would be whining about San Francisco's water supply.

[BeFree]

14. Books?

Nah, we in-varmint-alist cain't read.

We do see the problems with water quality and quantity, the disappearance of wildlife, the grayer skies, and all that. We know we wouldn't want to live any where near nukeplants, coal plants, or republican plants, but near a hydro lake can be pretty cool. Solar we can live with, and we have been asking the big corporations to use solar, and they're just now starting too - especially since they lost mucho bucks on nukes.

Once upon a time, ya know, we had a president who was gonna help solar get going. Heck, they were using it in space and it worked! So, there was a thriving solar industry at one time. Before reagan. But you know what he did.

Anyway, if they ever make a book that shows me how a butterfly flies, or how a hawk soars, or an eagle swoops down and lifts a fish from the water, or how manatees play, or how a bear scrapes up dinner, and that book gives me the same wonder, pleasure, and earthly knowledge as when I see it in the wild - life in my face - then I might just stay home and read more.

But for now I've got to get back to my little cabin for a few days. See ya later, Nadir. After a while, crocodile.

PS: You are a formidable opponent, but seems to me you've been reading too much, and not getting out in the woods enough?

[NNadir]

16. Well I do believe you when you say you can't read.

As for wild life, I feel my responsibility is to protect it, first by leaving it alone, and secondly by preserving the climate on which it depends.

I'm not playing. I'm working.

[BeFree]

17. Never left, not yet

So I log on and what do I see... and read? That I can't read?

Why, its another personal attack from someone who obviously has very little clue about that which he writes.

But here it is, on a solar thread in which I pondered not posting because I could foresee such an attack coming, but I thought - what the hell, maybe it won't turn into a pissing match.

I am surprised no one alerted on you for this attack from right field, since it had nothing to do with the subject. It seems you like to follow folks around and continue crap from other threads?

Well, the climate here has become rather polluted, wouldn't you say?

[BeFree]

20. And

Since your post still stands I began to think about what you are doing and what your agenda seems to be.

So, here is the conclusion so far:


What a divisive and defeative agenda it appears to be. Instead of finding common ground with the people here who are seeking solutions to these global problems, you attack the environmentalists.

Just like bushco and all the dunderheads we've run across all these years while practicing our environmentalism, you have blamed the environmentalists first.

[Kolesar]

18. There is an advocacy group for removing Hetch Hetchy dam who has an answer to the SF water question

I am sure you can find them on the internet. I think the answer is that the water is actually used by someone else.

[seemunkee]

12. Earth Day kick