Solar, Wind, and Hydrogen Power

We are blessed with an over abundance of sun almost anywhere on the planet if we carefully harvest, store, and utilize this resource. The use of solar power ranges from parabolic reflectors and heat for cooking and bathing or steam to run turbines, to full directional arrays of solar cells coupled with batteries and other energy storage mediums.

Cooking practically all of your meals in a solar oven is possible with a little extra effort. Baked goods, stews and soups, even meat can all be cooked using very low technology.

A basic parabolic reflector and a pryrex tube with water flowing through it can reach temperatures of 600 degrees and power steam turbines to create electricity or run equipment.

In rough numbers $1000.00 sets you up with lights and a few niceties. $5000.00 sets you up with a whole house system.

Barbara who teaches permaculture on her 5 acre property in SW Tuscon collects enough surplus power that she sells it to the power company. Giving the system the redundancy of being on the grid at little cost if any, while effectively using the grid as a storage system.

Allegra has four panels at watts size and $ and #Watthrs lbs dim batteries giving her enough power to run the lights computer and even a swamp cooler that uses under 100 watts of dc power and 20 gallons of water a day. Her system keeps the whole 700 Sq’ Earth Bag house quite cool. This and a well thought out plan to maximize solar gain keeps the house pretty comfortable year round across the valley from the Dragoons, in Texas Canyon. Allegra has lived on this property for ten years as have the next two women.

Shirley has a couple of panels that really don’t get enough early morning sun. I overran her system with my laptop. It seemed enough for light though. There is no need for cooling as her double walled bagged earth dome maintains a comfortable temperature pretty much year round. She cooks most of her meals in a store bought solar oven, although she has a propane stove which she uses.

Liz’s system Is bigger than Allegras, she has a tv and vcr lots of lights. She has a wood stove that she uses. The breezes of her exposed position of her more or less conventional style house keep the place relatively cool in the summer. I have to assume that it gets a little nippy in the winter. She has a glassed in porch with plants and a lot of thermal mass in the SW corner so that should help.

The basic systems consist of a way to collect the energy and a way to store it check out the following links for what’s available now. The web is full of good info on solar

http://www.plastecs.com is a great source of info and materials

I like the idea of getting individual cells and forming our own arrays so that they can more naturally fit in with the environment while working as water collectors and shade providers adjacent to the structure. It’s a lot cheaper this way too.

Check out http://www.home.earthlink.net~fradella/green.htm is an excellent tutorial on designing systems using solar and wind.

Solar can be used to move water around the land or the retreat site, check out http://solutionsforpower.com

http://www.science.howstuffworks.com/solar-cell10.htm has a detailed description of solar systems.

http://www.ases.org is packed with data.

http://www.sunwindsolar.com has a lot of educational links

Check out http://www.homepower.com including a calculating spread sheet at http://www.homepower.com/files/energymaster.xls

0ne of the ways to store and utilize solar energy is to crack water into hydrogen using an Electrolyzer. The hydrogen can then be used to run appliances or for heat. It’s use as a battery or storage medium greatly reduces the reliance on batteries.

Check out http://www.nrel.gov/clean_energy/ for stuff on alternative energy sources

http://www.fuelcells.org has a lot more information on Hydrogen uses.

http://www.hydrogenappliances.com has educational resources and retail

http://www.hydrogennow.org contact info on many currently available products

This list of links should get you started on figuring out what you need and what is going to cost you.