Look on the bright side! Dr. Frankenstein needed a lightning storm to generate his power
In August and September our hydropower takes a pretty steep dip. The run off from the rain has dried up so the stream we use to run the generator dwindles to the point where we have to cut the water to the generator by 1/4 to 1/5th of what we have available at any other point in the year.
You know what happened next… Doug needs lots of reliable power to do his job so he 'got 'er done'.
Now we have 20 solar panels on the shop roof!
You might wonder why we don’t rely on solar power for more of the year?
I’ll tell you anyway.
There are a couple reasons. I may have mentioned that we live in a deciduous rain forest? We can usually rely on having a lot more sun than rain in August and September.
The other reason is that we live on the edge of the Rocky Mountains. At that time of year the sun has a good angle to come over the mountains and from a direction where it hits the solar panels as directly.
Solar power is pretty simple. It has no moving parts it just needs sunlight directed on the panels. DC current is made by the panels and goes straight to the inverter that changes the power to AC current that we can plug into.
Doug’s advice:
When you bury conduit be sure that it is large enough to pull your cables through. That advice may have something to do with our having to pull the cable bundle through our conduit with a tractor, a winch, and lots of Gorilla Snot (the slimy lube we smeared on the cables in order to fish it through.)
To read the posts prior to this:
Living in Luxury Off the Grid - For We Who Hunger for Power! (part 1)
Living in Luxury Off the Grid - For We Who Hunger for Power! (part 2)
Great post ! I need to go back and catch up on your earlier stuff. also wanted you to check out Clausewitz post about telomeres. (Age Reversal) :-)
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Thanks much! I just found it and am headed there now. I love when guys talk all technical!
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Thanks also for the resteem! I really appreciate how you make this a community that everyone enjoys and feels good about!
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I wish it would be easier for people to switch to Solar. Orlando has added some Solar but we are quite not there yet. Can't wait til the day that the city is powered by solar.
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It is getting easier, more efficient, and less expensive all the time. Some states give you a tax break if you are on the grid and you have a system installed and you can also get a credit on your electricity bill if you set your system up so that solar energy that you don't use is routed to the grid (in effect you are selling your energy to the electric company). It takes an initial investment but you might want to check into it if you own your house.
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Yes Orlando has some options to get off the grid and sell electric back to the electric company. Your pictures look like you're in the middle of the woods and surrounded by mountains.. we definitely don't have that here. It looks lovely!
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My husband and I would love to have solar panels but like you we have mountains to deal with. In the summer the sun goes behind the mountains by 5 pm even though in non-mountainous parts of the city there is still plenty of light until much later in the day. In winter and fall the sun is still hidden by mountains at times where elsewhere there is plenty of sunlight. It's neat you have them though. We have a well so no water bill which is awesome. Shame solar panels would never work for us.
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Do you have wind energy possibilities? We looked into it briefly at the same time that we were considering solar but have too many trees.
It sounded like you were considering a garden. Is it going to be difficult to find plants that can take only getting the limited direct sunlight? That's one of our problems with the mountains too.
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solar power would be no good here then in England lol we hardly ever see the sun!
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Like I said, we only get enough to make any difference in the 3 months right in the middle of the summer! But it sounds a bit like you in England are having more than a lack of sun to worry about this past month. How are you set for the storms?
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thank you for asking :) the winds were pretty bad recently, in fact one of the pictures on my wollaton hall post shows the tree damage from the storms. but right now, we have snow and ice so its not so bad in the north of england. Down south though is bad with the floods
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I've so not being keeping up on my correspondence lately! I'm so glad you stopped by. I just checked out your blog. You always have such interesting and fun posts.
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haha thank you! :) Glad you enjoy them
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This wonderful post has received a @re-engineer 16.59% upvote from @mrswhale. Discord Channel: https://discord.gg/WVJW7AC Please vote with the link below if you support our project. https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=odl&approve=1
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