[NCLUG] Re: "Green" power

[John L. Bass]

Paul Hummer wrote:
>> And the new Li batteries are great, but expensive....just for
>> fun, I priced them to run my house (I'm off grid). Including all the
>> special charging equipment, it was just under $100k for 20 kwh capacity,
>> for which my current lead-acid batteries cost $2k
>>     
>
> I would be VERY interested in knowing the process you took to get off
> the grid.  That's a life-goal of mine.  While I don't think that my
> entire house will be off the grid anytime soon, if I could offload
> devices that need to be "always on" onto something that I'm not paying
> the monthly for (servers, etc.), then it'd be a good start.
>
> Last item I looked, solar power was getting cheaper, and I thought
> (theoretically) that I might just be able to run off solar power during
> the day (when I obviously don't need lights, etc), and then switch to
> the grid at night.  That way, I'm technically only paying far
> electricity that ~10 hours out of the day.  There were some issues with
> that, but I don't remember the big ones
The processes that folks use to get off grid are highly varied, and vary 
from highly "Green" to "Anything but "Green", depending on their 
personal motivation for living off grid.

For example, my friends in the Anti-Nuke Diablo Canyon ( 
http://www.ecn.cz/temelin/DIABLO.HTM) protest movements in the 1970's (I 
went to college in San Luis Obispo where this debate was a local issue 
that brought in folks from all over the country), frequently had a 
strong anti-establishment and anti-war motivation, that prompted a 
"hippie" lifestyle based on voluntary simplicity practices that were 
less than Green. They went off-grid to protest PG&E using wood heat, 
oil/propane for generation and refridgeration, and several other low 
tech technologies like candles and oil lamps that have a high carbon 
foot print and high degrees of pollution. They also created the 
litigation strategy to block nuke, hydro, coal, and other generation 
plants that has been effective for 35 years.

When I worked in Santa Cruz and lived in Ben Lomond, many of my friends 
there had the same lifestyle. The pollution from all the wood heat grew 
so strong that the "environmenalist" component of the rural lifestyle 
forced regulations against wood burning to clear the air. It also 
created regulations and building restrictions to prevent ground water 
contamination caused by out-houses and poor septic designs.

Those that simply want a rural home, to get away from pollution (noise, 
light, air, water, etc) generally take a different strategy that is much 
more high tech and cleaner, but very energy dependent ... a mix of 
solar, propane, and wind. Most of these folks would (and do) tie to the 
grid when possible. There are rural developments in both Calif that 
appear remote, but have electricity, water, sewer, and phone services 
which avoid the problems my more "hippie" friends have created.

Unless you adopt a very strict "voluntary simplicity lifestyle" 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_living)  that is also specifically 
very Green oriented, there are probably some natural conflicts in your 
goals and value systems when it comes to both global and local energy 
and conservation issues. This is particularly true of my friends/family 
in Colorado/Idaho/Montana that live off grid, and much less so with my 
friends that live off grid in NM and AZ in completely solar earth berm 
homes that have very low energy requirements for heating and cooling. My 
Aunt that lives off-grid just outside Billings, MT burns a huge amount 
of wood each year in both a 1930's kitchen oven/range and a modified 
coal pot-belly. The smoke from her home blankets the entire valley on 
still cold winter days. She mostly lives with oil lamps for lighting, as 
the diesel genset has been dead for years.

So, if you are protesting big energy companies here in Colorado you 
probably want to build a highly thermally efficient home from scratch, 
that can be heated with either wood (assuming you are not so Green) or 
solar hot water with solar electric pumps (assuming you are very Green). 
These homes typically have 18" to 24" insulated walls and roof (foam or 
straw bale). A typical efficient Colorado home leaks too much heat to 
stay off grid, and remain Green with a low carbon footprint, unless you 
go to this extreme.

Solar electric is very expensive, and not so green if you have to use 
lead acid batteries off grid. Grid-tied solar is a lot more Green, and 
avoids the expense of lead acid batteries, especially when co-generation 
is based on net-metering for storage. The payback can be very long, even 
with funded using tax incentives. My best friend in Calif did this last 
year, installing nearly 600 sq ft of PV solar that was grid tied with 
net metering. Break-even is a little over 10 years on that project, but 
he is doing his part, and it's attractive to his customers, many of 
which have a hippie lifestyle.

If you are in the mountains, and have a lot of property, wind can also 
be very attractive when paired with solar. That is the approach used by 
Dan Fink and those around him, that are miles from the grid. There are 
many of these folks around the area in the foothills as well. Their 
props are a bit noisy at times, and echo up and down in the canyons. 
They are also just as unsightly as the radio tower farms from some folks 
perspective, where anything that is not a tree or a rock breaks from the 
natural beauty of the area. So, depending how green you and those around 
you are, this can be a plus or minus.

For the urban folks, solar water heat on your roof, and PV solar that 
are grid tied with net metering are the only two real Green options. 
Slightly less green, is Time-of-Use adjustments to reduce your peak 
demand, maybe coupled with a ground source heat pump.