The Solar Project

It’s hard to imagine our homes without electricity. There would be no TV, computer or video games. The work day would be from sun rise to sun set and we would be reading books by oil lamp. It's hard to grasp how important electricity is to us, Still can't grasp it, go to your breaker panel and turn off the main breaker for 3 hours just as an experement and try to go about your daily housework. You will quickly find out how important electricity is.

As a connoisseur of power we have always been interested in having power with us to run throes devices that we use every day. For example when I was in grade school I built a bicycle that sported a car radio with a 50watt amp and 6 x 9 speakers, lights, horn, power inverter .ECT it was an engineering marvel in my day and now I have the Big Orange Van packed with high power goodies like 8 batteries, 3KW power inverter and 6.5KW generator able to generate enough electricity to power the house! With generous funding from my dad and his snappy resources we have been able to secure spare batteries and 12v fluorescent lighting, and a permit to burn the house down, with that I decided to light the basement, in the event of an emergency or power outage we could still be up having good times whale everyone else on the block is wondering how and the hell do they have the lights still on? That system has been great but as I have been growing more concerned about out rising power bill and the gross demand for something our world revolves around. Electricity! Living in this day and age our demand for energy is going through roof, 5 years ago out power bill was a mere $75 and now its pushing over $150 a month, with the addition of servers and a supporting network in the house(security cameras, media server) and numerous other everyday electrical necessities that we now have and the fact that we are typical energy wasting americans "don't care if we leave the lights on" doesn't help matters. We have recently been drawn to solar technology due to falling costs of cells and panels, the fact that I have read more books and videos how to DIY making panels out of cells for much less than purchasing them outright, and that I have some infrastructure to use this dc power, and or convert it to AC.

In April 2007 dad decided that we he was going to spend his tax return to improve the house. Start a garage? Build a deck? Get centeral air? Well earlier in the year me and dad had been doing out research on alternative energy primarily wind and solar. We spent hours watching insprational videos on the ol YouTube, estmating startup costs and all that jazz. Once we decided on renewable energy we were set. I clicked on over to affordable-solar.com and set up some base prices for a really basic system that was easily upgradable. We got the pannles, controller, dc breakerbox, inverter, and wind generators shipped out to us. I went and to Home Depot and got wire, transfer switch and sub pannel and some other goodies.

June 28, 2007- We now have 2 Air-x 400watt wind turbines, 2 evergreen 180watt panels, morning star 60A charge controller, Xantrex dr2412 12v inverter, generator transfer switch and sub panel, dc breaker box, more deep cycle batteries.

July 15, 2007- Today we got all the work on the roof that consisted of heavier wire coming down to the basement and putting this all in flexable pvc coated conduit and also pvc junction boxes at the panels, driving a grounding rod and bonding. Previously we constructed 1 wind turbine tower 33 ft and got the wiring completed into the house. I took time out to get the dc breaker box all hooked up for the pv array and inverter. Currently powering 30% of house lights.

Augest 18, 2007 - All Installing done Everything is charging and running beautifully!

November 15, 2007 - Powering 80% of the household lighting and working on adding more!

The Long Road To Living off the grid might be free, but it's not easy.