[NCLUG] Re: "Green" power

Wed Sep 17 15:27:59 MDT 2008

If it's not too imposing, would you have anything to say about Xcel 
Energy's Windsource program? I recently bought into it and now all this 
talk is making me wonder.

John L. Bass wrote:
> 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.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Yuri Csapo
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