Power Generation

We are not now and never have been grid tied.
No incentives of any kind have been requested or received. We knew, based on previous dealings with the energy supplier, that this was the right way to go. It has been personally rewarding to know that not only do we not have to put up with frequent power outages, but that we are not part of the nuclear, coal, and gas power generating function and its ugly distribution wires. We are also free of the ever increasing rates that spawn capitalist ripoffs like the Enron California debacle. All to the good. On the other side of the ledger, we have to pay attention. We have to water the batteries every month. If there are malfunctions or disasters, we have to fix them. So far, the balance has been to our advantage. Time will tell.

Our power system components include 8 Astropower photovoltaic panels mounted on a metal mast 30' out the east entrance. A Bergey wind generator produces up to 1 kw of clean energy from atop its 105 ft tower 85' from the north wall. Trenched wires connect them to our utility room and 12 6V batteries of 350 amp hours each. Depending on usage, we can go for a week of windless, sunless days. Fortunately, there have been no such stretches for the year our hybrid system has been in. Previously, with solar alone, we occasionally ran our gas generator to get over the sunless periods. That happened two or three times each year.

A Bergey charge controller, lighting arrestors, and a Xantrex 2424 modified sine wave inverter complete the control devices. Since much of the house runs on DC, we were able to use the smaller size inverter. A Trimetric meter from Bogart systems serves as our battery status monitor and is a necessary part of the system. Soon we will install a Pentametric meter from Bogart to allow us simultaneouus monitoring of wind and solar on the computer.