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Politics : Politics of Energy
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To: The Vet who wrote (15547)12/19/2009 8:25:01 PM
From: Eric  Read Replies (1) of 86356
 
Vet, one home is completely disconnected so it is totally off grid. In fact no grid is available on the island it is on. All of it's hot water is solar thermal and as you know that works really well even here in the cloudy western Washington if you size the system correctly.

On my house down here in Seattle I have a Thermomax system on the roof making hot water. It does it even on a very cloudy day. In fact it makes too much hot water! So I dump the excess into a heat exchanger in the hot tub. I'm hoping to install a 6 to 10 Kw PV array down the hill next year since we have beautiful southern exposure here and feed that into the grid. Eventually will go battery down here too. My goal is to remodel this house (built in 1979) and lower it's heat loss and heat the floor like the island one, hydronically.

Just as an aside, do you have the confidence to completely and permanently disconnect your system from the local utility suppliers, or do you still have it connected "just in case"?

That's the goal down here but this old house needs some serious work. Passive solar redesign shall we say..

I've found out from the island home (2 Kw array and wind generator) that I have more than enough electrons to run every toy. All of the array electronics were installed my myself when I upgraded it the last few years.

Outback Power for solar MPPT controller, inverter ect.

outbackpower.com

Where was your business? Hopefully lower in latitude and sunnier than here.

Edit:

Storage for electrons is coming fast and I don't mean batteries! Hint: No moving parts.
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