I decided to put my full search into this diary, from the beginning to present day, I imagine this won't be very interesting reading for the lot of you, but I want to keep some kind of record of my progress. In the faq it says I can put anything in here, so I will :-).
My search for alternative power began when my sister bought a little house in France which had no electricity. Since I am not a complete moron when it comes to technical stuff, she asked me if I could look into alternative energy. I didn't know a whole lot about alternative energy, except that the only way to do it is with solar energy.
Needless to say, I had a lot to learn...
I noticed it is always best to first try to define what it is you are searching for, to see what you know about the subject, and to draft some first ideas (who will probably be wrong, but help you anyway).
What am I searching for?I am searching for a way to get electricity into the cottage, enough electricity to run a few lights, a portable and a refrigerator. It would be interesting as well to find a way to heat water with or without electricity.
This should be done in the cheapest and best way possible, in that order, meaning I am willing to trade in efficiency for cost.
What do I know about the subject?A couple of things, although take the term "knowing" loosely, it is just a way to get me started.
- I have a sufficient grasp of electricity
- I know roughly how electricity is made by the power companies
- solar panels can't be made by me, I need to buy them
- I need batteries to store the electricity
- I need to convert the electricity from the batteries from DC to AC
- It is better to use less power than it is to try and generate more
- Alternative energy has a high initial cost
- Getting a power company to lay power cables in mountains to get to the cottage will be very expensive
- I know I will find tons of information on the internet about this subject
That's about all I can think of for the moment. I can imagine some of these things are plain wrong, as I'll discover in the following days/weeks.
A couple of ideas to get the job doneI could ask the power company to get a cable up to the house, but this will be very expensive, and then there still has to be payed each month for the electricity used. Only 1 other idea comes to mind for the moment: solar panels, but I know they are very expensive as well.
Come to think of it, I know absolutely nothing about the subject. and if I look again to this page in a couple of days/weeks, I will be ashamed of what I wrote down here.
But you can't learn if you know it all, so the less I know, the more potential for learning.
Starting the searchJumping to
Google to search for information, I discovered I could also use wind, water,
even methane produced by...well ourselves, I got really excited. There was a small spring on the premises,
there appeared to be enough wind (It felt like more wind than back home), sun was in abundance and methane,... well I won't go into that any further.
I knew these possibilities existed, I just didn't know they were practical for private use.
I wasn't thinking of building anything myself, I was thinking of buying a complete pre-made system that someone would come to install, until I stumbled upon a particular site.
I guess the search-terms I gave in into
Google weren't that great a pick,
because suddenly I found myself on a webpage of some American Religious Cult which was absolutely sure the armageddon was just a few years away.
The thing about that cult was, they were collecting information about starting civilization again after for instance a nuclear war.
And one of there sections was generating electricity, the way they proposed it was with a home made windmill.
The design they had was really a design taken from
Otherpower.com, it was the
Wood 103.
This design blew my socks off, I never imagined it could be so easy.
The possibilities, the theoriesHaving a starting point(
Otherpower.com), I could really begin to investigate the possibilities and theories.
I like to investigate everything first, to separate the actual information from the bull$#|+, so I read a lot, from lots of different sources.
The sources I read the most from are:
I calculated a lot of stuff myself to see if I fully understood everything.
Hugh Piggott seems to be an authority on the subject of home made windmills, so be sure to check out his site.
I also read a lot about different ways to produce electricity like Tesla wireless power, charging batteries using static electricity,...
I may look into that at a later time, but for the moment I lay it to rest since it doesn't seem all that practical.
I took my electronic books, read about power supplies, rectifiers, battery chargers,...
I took my physic books, read about magnetic fields, flux, coils, AC and DC,...
I searched for ready made windmills, solar panels, battery banks, battery chargers, rectifiers, inverters,... to compare prices just to know what's out there.
DecidingAt this point I can help my sister in deciding what to buy. I know what she needs now, and how to get it.
If she decides to buy a ready made complete power system, I understand and I can help her decide what, how, when and why.
However...
Since the original plan to investigate Alternative energy is completed, I want to experiment, and make a power system myself.
If she wants to use it, great, if not I had fun making it (and learned a lot).
In the spirit of diversity, I decided it would be best to have a windmill, some solar panels and a small hydroplant.
I also think I'm going to try and make a power generating bicycle for when there needs to be extra power quickly.
People can provide a lot of watts, and they can almost always use the exercise.
