Get off the Grid FOREVER! Real, Practical Ways You Can Generate ALL Your Own Power, FOREVER

Transcription

1 Get off the Grid FOREVER! Real, Practical Ways You Can Generate ALL Your Own Power, FOREVER

2 Table of Contents Introduction Why Energy Production Matters... 5 Module One Energy Security The Rise of Distributed Society Net Metering Laws And Their Importance Necessary First Steps The Energy Audit Module Two Wind Power Areas of Suitability How To Use This Map Components Of A Commercial Wind-Power System (Things You will Need) Building Your Own Wind Turbine Module Three Solar The China Effect Misplaced Fears Are Permits Needed? IMPORTANT Ask About Rebates! Start With Your Water Heater Building Your Own Panels for Solar Hot Water Sourcing Solar Panels for Producing Electricity Panels with Blemishes or Imperfections Surplus Solar Panels Used Solar Panels Building Your Own Solar Panels A Little Bit of Electronics Stringing the Solar Cells Together Attaching the Strings Together Building the Solar Panels Alternate Solar Panel Construction Installation of Your Solar Panels Tricks of the Trade High Heat Solar Passive Solar Heating... 55

3 The Solar Chimney What Comes Next? The Battery Backup Array Building a Battery Backup Array Module Four Biogas Are Permits Needed? How It Works Scaling Up Your Gas Production Module Five Micro-Hydro Components of your Micro Hydro System Module Six - Sterling Engines/Energy Appliances Building Your Own Sterling Engine for Electrical Power A Final Note About These Kinds Of Devices Combining These Kinds of Devices with Wood Burning Stoves Wood Stove Limitations Module Seven Biodiesel The Biodiesel Reactor Finding a Source of Oil Setting up A Homemade Photo Bioreactor What you will need: Sourcing the Chemicals You will Need for Biodiesel The Other Equipment You will Need Beakers Measuring Pipettes Titration Test (Mostly For Waste Oil) Actually MAKING Biodiesel What You Will Need For Your Test Batch Perform a Wash Test Byproducts Some Notes About Biodiesel Module Eight Generators Systemic Synergy

4 Module Nine Other Components Moser Lamps Recharging Your Devices Solar Powered Window Socket Multi-Tool A Hand Cranked Charger Solar Powered Stereo An Alternative to Solar Panels A Green Golf Cart/Runabout Solar Powered Refrigeration Solar Powered Cookers and Stoves Building Your Own Solar Cooker Simple Solar Oven Parabolic Solar Cooker Fresnel Lens Solar Cooker Exotics A Word of Warning Putting It All Together Module Ten Checklists Initial Steps Wind Power Solar Biogas Micro-Hydro Sterling Engines Biodiesel Generators Batteries Other Components

5 Introduction Why Energy Production Matters The trend towards getting off the grid started back in the 1970 s, during the energy crisis. People began experimenting with the notion taking control over their own energy supply and getting off the grid one and for all. Unfortunately, with the technology available at the time, it wasn t really viable. Oh sure, if you were willing to spend on the high side of a hundred thousand dollars, you could generate about half of the electricity your family used, but it just wasn t practical; and the cost put it out of reach for most people. Things have changed though, since the 1970 s. Not only have people s perceptions about the importance of taking control of their own power supply changed, but the technology has improved; making it easier and more affordable than ever before. Today, you can do more than just produce some of your own electricity. You can produce 100% of the electricity you use or even more, selling the excess back to the power company, albeit at wholesale rates. Becoming energy independent used to be considered a fringe movement; but now, it has gone mainstream. Increasingly, people are seeing the wisdom of taking control of their lives BACK from the government and their lackeys that run the nation s power grid.

6 This idea of independence, of taking control of your own life, is the single biggest reason that the idea is gaining so much attention. People are slowly coming to understand that if you do not control your own power production, you can t say that you are really free. You will always be beholden to the people who control your access TO that power, and who wants that? Taking control of your own electrical power generation, so that you can be independent is just the tip of the iceberg though. The truth is that a highly centralized power grid, like we have here in the United States, and like ALL nations currently have, is extremely fragile and highly susceptible to disruption. In practical terms, this disruption can take one of two forms, and we ve seen both of them happen in recent years. Winter storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and even high winds can easily knock the power grid offline, leaving tens of thousands, and sometimes millions without power. Repairs can take days or even weeks, leaving people helpless. In the spring, that might not be so bad; it might be little more than an inconvenience, but in the sweltering summer sun, or in the depths of winter, it can quickly move from the category of being an inconvenience to being life threatening. Worse, if you are totally reliant on the existing grid and have no backup plan in place, then there s literally NOTHING you can do about it but wait until Big Brother turns the lights back on or move to some place where there is still power. Of course, that's assuming you are able to leave the area. Immediately after a disaster, this might be utterly impossible). The other and much more serious potential cause of disruptions are terrorist attacks or even attacks by other nation-states. I know what you are thinking... that's paranoia. It could never happen, right? I just have one question for you. Is not that what they said about airplanes being used as missiles and slamming into skyscrapers? That it could never happen?

7 Until of course, it did. The sad truth is that most of our power plants are completely unprotected. Worse, the thousands of substations are unprotected as well. Those that ARE protected are generally protected by minimum wage security guards. Given how important the grid is for most of our 300+ million citizens; that should scare the hell out of us. Considering that it only takes one attack to shut vast swaths of the grid down for weeks at a time (or longer). Did you know that it's possible to shut down the nation's entire electrical grid by just taking out nine key substations? According to experts in the energy industry, that's all it would take. Of course, the identity of those nine key substations is being kept as a very closely guarded secret; especially since it would take more than a year to get them back online. That means a year without any electrical power... no heating or cooling, no refrigeration, no communications, no gas to run our cars, no working factories, nothing in the stores and no way out. That's a pretty scary picture; but it's one that could happen all too easily. In April of 2013 a power substation outside of San Jose, California was attacked by an unknown number of gunmen. Over the course of about 30 minutes, they fired into the transformers, draining their coolant and destroying them; shutting the substation down for months. Nobody knows for sure, but that could have been a dress rehearsal for something bigger. Some terrorist group could have run that attack as a test, to see how effective they would be and how long it would take for the power company to make repairs. If so, it was a very successful attack. Then there's the risk of an EMP. If anything, an EMP would be even worse for the country than an attack directed at our power grid. Not only would the EMP take out the grid, but just about every operating piece of electronic equipment in the country. So, not only would power need to be restored, but then all that other equipment would need to be replaced.

8 In reality, we would probably never recover from an EMP attack. Official government estimates say that about 90% of our population would die off in the first year after an EMP. By then, the manpower might not exist to get the grid up and running again; and even if they did, would there be enough electronics that survived to keep us going? You see, the problem is that we are dependent on electrical power for everything we do. Everything from pumping gas to growing food requires electricity. Modern society has become totally dependent upon it. So, if a terrorist attack or an EMP hit the grid, we'd be thrown back about 150 years. The only thing is, we don't know how to live like they did 150 years ago. Even if we did, we no longer have the equipment they used back then to get things done. That's why so many people would die. The first wave to die off would be people who needed medical attention and couldn't get it. About 20% of our population depends on regular medical support or medicines to keep their bodies functioning normal. Some, like diabetics would die off slowly, while others would end up killing themselves when the drugs they take for mental disorders stopped working. The second wave to die off would be from disease. Without electrical power, there would be no city water. People would not be able to bathe as often. They wouldn't be able to keep their

9 homes as clean. No water means no sewer service either, so humans waste would be spreading disease. A plague, or more than one plague would sweep the country. The third and greatest wave of people to die would be by starvation. Without electricity, farmers wouldn't be able to pump water for their crops. Automatic feeding systems wouldn't feed the chickens. Trucks wouldn't have fuel to haul the farmers' produce to the processing plants and the processing plants wouldn't be running either. Millions of tons of food would go to waste, while a few hundred miles away, there would be people dying for lack of that food. This is the risk we face today. If you are thinking that maybe it would be wise not to expose yourself to that kind of risk, you are not alone, and this book was made just for you. In the pages that follow, we will take you through the process of gaining a level of freedom and independence you never even dreamed you could attain. In doing so, we will not only set you free, but save you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars every year.

10 You will find a number of methods for power generation in this book. Note that this specifically IS NOT a do-it-yourself guidebook. Yes, we ve included some DIY projects in this book for those who are interested in taking that approach, but mostly what this is about is revealing to you real, working technological solutions that are available TODAY, and assembling them in a specific way to create a robust power system that will supply all the energy needs for you and your family. It is amazing just how many robust technologies there are just lying on the ground, waiting for you to find them and put them together in the right way. You certainly can use all of the methods you will find here, but you won t need to. You can generate as much, or as little power as you want or need to, even going so far as to become a net power producer, selling your excess back to the power company. How amazing would that be? Instead of writing them a check every month, they ll be paying you! All you have to do to get started is turn the page

11 Module One Energy Security In the introduction, we talked about the two big reasons that becoming the master of your own energy supply was important, but that was speaking about the issue at the macro level. Here, we are going to make it personal, bringing it down to the individual level. On average, Americans spend a little over $110 every month on electricity. 1 Of course, this does not include initial hookup and deposit fees, which you seldom get back when you move. In any case, even not counting those, that amounts to a little over a thousand dollars per year. Odds are good that you spend more than that, and possibly significantly more. The bigger your family, the more you pay, and if you live in Southeast, you automatically pay more, which is a kind of two-edged sword, because average incomes in that part of the country are the lowest in the nation, so they get you coming and going. Could you use an extra $1320 a year? I am betting you could think of literally HUNDREDS of better things to do with that money than send it off to the power company each month. That is a mortgage payment on a nice house, savings for retirement, college tuition, or a new car. No matter how you slice it, YOU can think of more and better things to do with your money than the guys at the power company. They have got you over a barrel and they know it. They can charge pretty much what they want, and you will pay it, because what choice do you have? 1

12 More and more today, we are becoming a culture were you DO have choices; even better, by taking control of your own energy production, you not only increase your personal liberty, but by getting out from under Big Brother, but you also make America safer. Yes, you read that correctly. A highly centralized power grid is fragile and easily broken. By starting to generate your own power, you help to decentralize the grid. By decentralizing the grid, you make it harder and harder for terrorists or natural disasters to impact the grid in any major way. The bottom line is, if more Americans though the way you did, we would be safer, as a nation. A distributed power grid is the way forward. It's one of the best ways to make your family safer and to make your country safer. All that to say, give yourself a pat on the back for two reasons for taking this journey. You are about to set yourself free, and you are about to help make your country safer and more resilient. That is win-win! The Rise of Distributed Society You ve probably heard of cord cutting. This is the phenomenon where people are increasingly ditching their cable TV service and getting more and more of their programming online via streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon prime.

13 These things represent a larger trend in our society, one of changing old ways for new. One in which the internet is taking over from more traditional means of communications. Well, there's another cord cutting to be done, that of electrical power generation. Technology is enabling more and more people to provide things for themselves, or get goods and services from decentralized sources. We no longer need the cable companies. We no longer need the utilities companies. We don t technically even need grocery stores any more, as it is becoming increasingly possible to grow all your own food in very tiny spaces (although this last is a huge topic and worthy of a much longer treatment in a separate book). Nonetheless, one thing remains clear. Our society, and in fact, our whole WORLD is becoming increasingly decentralized, while at the same time becoming more connected. The internet has made it possible for us to almost completely decentralize our society. What that means in practical terms is that those who put their minds to it, make smart use of existing technology and apply a bit of ingenuity have no limits. They can accomplish whatever they want. Many people who have started out on a quest for energy independence have found the journey so much to their liking that they strive to continually expand what it means and what they can accomplish. It most often starts with energy, of course; but once they begin to really see what can be accomplished many people opt to simply start over. They sell their homes to begin anew, often returning to the old days of homesteading. This is true, modern homesteading from the foundation up. Custom-designing their homes around the shape of their original energy production network to take advantage of all that they have learned on their journey so far, and make further improvements to make things even more efficient.

14 This is the stage at which people start to experiment with not just innovative, energy efficient home designs like Earthships, geodesic domes, homes made of shipping containers, or even less likely materials, but also launching impressive experiments with high yield, small footprint micro-farms, grow towers, greenhouses, and the like. Then, once they see how much of their own food they can actually grow, they start investigating other things like building their own FabLabs (Fabrication Laboratories), which can be used to make almost anything you can envision. THIS is the state of the technology today, and you are now officially a part of it. You are now officially a part of the greatest adventure ever undertaken by this, or any other generation. The rise of distributed society is here, and you have the unique opportunity to play a starring role! Net Metering Laws And Their Importance Technology has changed greatly from the days when people first started experimenting with putting solar panels on their rooftops. In the old days, solar panels were only about a third as efficient as they are today, and they cost almost five times as much. In addition to that, the power companies were very predatory and hostile toward people who wanted to gain their energy independence. It was standard practice for a power company to say that they would not sell you power unless they provided ALL of your power. Think about that for a minute. You would have to install enough solar panels to provide 100% of your own power. If you did not say, if you only had enough solar panels to provide for half your needs, the power company would simply cut you off. You d have no choice but to spend MORE money to get the other 50% installed, or rip them down and give up. Given how expensive solar used to be, most people just gave up. The power companies won, and they knew it. There are not very many things the government gets right, but net metering laws was one of them. What net metering laws say is this: You can provide your own power.even a small fraction of it, and the power company HAS TO sell power to you anyway. Further, if you make more power than you can consume, the power company HAS TO buy it from you. Now, they only pay you a fraction of what they charge, because they buy it from you at wholesale and sell it to you at

15 retail; but nevertheless this is big news. For the first time ever, it has become possible for the little guy to incrementally increase his ability to generate his own power, and not get squashed by the utility companies. You do not have to do it all at once. You can take your time and scale your efforts slowly, as your budget allows. That is HUGE. The other thing that net metering allows for is this: You can use the grid as a battery. Traditionally, the most expensive part of a solar power system was the battery backup. Batteries are enormously expensive, and you had to have enough batteries to run your home during the non-sunny days and at night. If you did not, you might generate enough power to run your household during the day, only to have your fridge and ice box die on you in the middle of the night. Not good. With net metering laws though, you can effectively live off the grid (not having a power bill) but still be grid tied, so that you can tap into grid power when and if you need it. With sufficient capacity installed, you still do not have a power bill, because you earn credits for producing more power than you need during the sunny days, and draw those credits back out during the cloudy ones, all with no battery system needed. It is an idea that has caught on. Currently there are 43 states in the US that have net metering laws on the books, so odds are pretty good that you live in one of them. If you do not, it might be a good reason to consider relocating. If you can t, or are not interested in moving, then you should contact your state representatives about getting net metering laws on the books in your state. Even if you do not want to do either of those things though, you will find enough tools and methodologies in this book that you can generate all of your own power without net metering laws. Just understand that it will be harder, for the reasons described above. If you do not put your system in place at 100% capacity from day one, and you do not live in a net metering state, then the power company COULD cut you off. That doesn t mean they will, but they could, and there would be nothing you could do about it. Just keep that in mind as you continue your reading. Here s a link to the list of the states that currently have net metering laws on the books:

16 Note that for the purposes of this book, we are going to assume that you live in an area that has net metering laws on the book, because it makes the whole process much easier. You can still follow the steps in this book if you live in one of the few states that do not have this law, but again, you will find it more difficult to achieve 100% independence. Now, you might be wondering why we are recommending that you live in a net metering state. After all, the whole POINT of this book is to get you off the grid, so why would it matter? Besides, if the worst happens, then there won t BE a grid to draw power from anyway, and you will be screwed, won t you? The answer is no. The reason is this. You want to live in a net metering state so that when times are good and the grid is fine, you can put your system together with minimal money. If the worst happens and the grid fails for weeks or months, then on the days where your system does not produce 100% of the power you need, you may have to ration a bit. Compare that to everyone else s situation where they have no power at all and you begin to see the advantages. Building a system robust enough to allow you to operate at 100% capacity when everyone within a few hundred miles of you has no power at all would cost you almost triple what the system designed the way we recommend costs. Save the money, get the system up and running, and once you begin realizing the month to month savings, you can use your savings to slowly build a battery backup system.

17 Necessary First Steps No matter what form your personal power system ultimately takes, there are two steps you must take. The very first thing you must do, if you are serious about providing all your own power, is to make a few cosmetic changes. These changes are pretty easy to make, and will begin to save you money right off the bat. Here, we are talking about things like swapping your old style light bulbs out for compact fluorescent or LED bulbs. They use significantly less energy, which translates into less power you need to generate each month. In fact, some clever researchers at MIT have recently unveiled an LED light that is 230% efficient. That is to say, it takes 40pW (pico watts) to run the light, but it generates 69pW. 2 This probably sounds like science fiction to you. It probably sounds like it violates the laws of thermodynamics, but a closer look reveals that it does no such thing. It amounts to a clever trick of physics that allows the light to be emitted at a higher efficiency because the LED is basically a tiny heat pump. The laws of thermodynamics are not violated because the extra energy comes from something called Lattice Vibrations. In other words, the LED picks up the extra efficiency from the air immediately around it. In practical terms, what it means for you is 2

18 that these lights generate more than twice as much light as you d expect, given the amount of electricity they use. The main point here is that if this kind of thing exists in the lab today, then it is only a matter of time before you can buy one in any hardware store in the country. Until then, you will have to make do with LED bulbs that are merely approaching 100% efficiency, but in any case, the trend, and the point, is clear. You can shave a ton of money off of your monthly electric bill by doing little more than upgrading the equipment you already use to a more efficient form. You are not sacrificing anything. You are not giving up anything. You are simply making it easier for yourself when the day comes that you start generating your own power, and really, why work against yourself? What kind of sense does it make to put the cart before the horse and start trying to generate your own power before you ve make your existing system more efficient? That is why we recommend this type of thing as the first step you could take. It is preparation, and this approach just makes the most sense. Do you have any appliances with a built in clock? Any that have those little black boxes that get really hot? I am betting there are three or four of them sitting around your house right now. Those are transformers, and they re hot because as long as they re plugged in, there s electricity flowing through them (yes, even when you are not using your laptop even when it is not powered on). This is known as a Phantom Load, and the more appliances you ve got with transformers attached to them the more things you have in your home with standby mode, the more phantom loads you ve got.

19 You can consider these to be energy vampires, that suck up electricity twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Killing these Energy Vampires off is an important second step in terms of making your home more energy efficient in advance of building your own power grid. One thing you can do, of course, is to unplug all of these devices when you are not using them, but honestly, is that something you ACTUALLY see yourself doing every day, every time you want to use a given device? Probably not. You could make it a bit easier on yourself and plug all these devices into one or more power strips scattered around your home. That way, it is faster, easier and more efficient to turn them off when you are not using them. That is an improvement, sure, but again is it something you are actually likely to do? Again, the answer here is probably not. Look, the bottom line is that the best, most effective system is the one that actually gets used. If you are not going to do those things that make you more efficient, then you are just wasting your time. That is why we recommend using something like the Tricklestar ( ).

20 You can consider these to be smart power strips. When the stuff that is plugged into them is not in use, they shut themselves off, with no input needed from you. They cost a bit more, yes, but it makes eliminating Phantom Loads a complete no-brainer. In short, it saves you money every month. That is a large part of what this book is all about. Teaching you ways to use technology to help you save money, month in, and month out. Third, you ve probably got a laptop or desktop computer in your home; possibly several. If you do, you should know that those devices eat up a TON of power. Most computers use a 650 Watt power supply just for the CPU, plus whatever power the monitor burns. By contract, a large handheld, tablet, or all-in-one burns about 80% less power and the display is every bit as good. That is a HUGE savings, and remember, the goal here is to reduce the amount of power you need to generate each month so that when you start designing your own power system, you ve got a lower hurdle to clear. It is just pragmatic. Finally, you do not have to do this all at once, but it goes without saying that as you begin to replace the major appliances in your home, look for the most energy efficient (Energy Star Rated) appliances you can afford. If you do all of those things before you even start to think about putting your personal power generation system together, you will be miles ahead of people who do not take this step. Depending on what kind of appliances you have in your home, how many lights you have (and how often you leave them on, etc.), you can save as much as 20-25% on your total monthly electric bill before you even start!

21 The Energy Audit Going through your house and making the changes outlined above won t take you very long. You can probably knock it out in a day or two with a determined approach. Once you ve done so, the next step is to conduct a Home Energy Audit. This is what s going to give you hard numbers so you will know how big you need to design your system. Every household is different, so do not try to take shortcuts here. Do not estimate. Just take a few hours and go through the process. You will be glad you did and it will save you headaches later. All the energy audit really is, is an accounting of how much power you use on a monthly basis. You ve got to know that so you can know how big to make your system. More is always better, so feel free to go FAR above your monthly power needs (if you live in a net metering state), because any excess power you produce, you can just sell back to the grid. So how do you perform an energy audit? Well, most power companies have worksheets you can download and print out. Here s a link to one ( There are a million different varieties, but they re all pretty much the same, and have the same goal in mind. To give you a solid idea about how much power you actually use/need in a given month. The reason I like this one is because there are actually four different flavors of it. To save you some time, we ve included copies of all four in the file with this book. Check them out and use the one that best suits your needs, or, as mentioned, you can always go looking for some other, or make a custom one for yourself. The important thing though, is that you go through the process. It will help you identify where your power is going, month to month, and give you a clear idea about how large you need to make your system in order to start providing all your own power. Once you are armed with that information, you are ready to continue to the next step!

22 Module Two Wind Power Even though we ve spent a couple of pages talking about solar power, we are going to start off with the discussion of generating your own power by talking about wind. Wind power has a long history in the United States. Farmers in Colonial America made frequent use of wind power, and continue to do so to this very day. You can drive into the any rural area in most any part of the country and see a windmill (and sometimes several) on most farms. They re common because they WORK. Now, it is true that you may not be able to general 100% of your power needs from wind, but It is definitely something you should not overlook. Areas of Suitability

23 How To Use This Map At a glance, you want blue. Blue is good. The darker the blue, the better the area is for wind power. The darkest blue in this map has an average wind speed of 21.1mph at 10m above the ground. Most wind turbines need a wind speed of 10mph to produce power. That would include all the areas of the map, with the exceptions of the white and lightest blue areas. This is not to say that you can t see SOME impact when you install a windmill in an area that is white on the map, but we are talking about return on investment here (ROI). The darker the blue, the more time the wind turbine will be able to operate. That translates into paying off your investment in the windmill faster. If you live in an area that is relatively poorly suited for wind power, or if It is not something you are personally interested in, then just skip this section. If you ARE interested, and/or you live in an area where you will see nice benefits from it, then keep reading and we will show you how to take the first steps toward building your own, personal power plant to provide all your own electricity. The faster the wind is blowing, the faster it will turn the windmill. This does not mean that the wind turbine will provide you with more electricity though. The key here is that wind turbines are designed with the idea of producing 12 VDC of electrical power, for charging a 12 volt battery backup system. The generator portion itself is optimized to provide enough power at that point.

24 If the wind turbine is operating at a higher speed, it will produce a higher voltage; but that will be cut down to a nominal 12 volts (actually 14.4 volts) by the controller. Components Of A Commercial Wind-Power System (Things You will Need) Generating power from a windmill is actually ridiculously easy, but getting everything set up can be a bit tricky. Assuming that you are going to use a commercially manufactured wind turbine, here s what you need: The Windmill itself A wind turbine controller An inverter Note that according to the official recommendation for using wind power is that you should have at least an acre of land. This is to account for the guy wires (more on that in a minute) and avoid disturbing your neighbors. If you live in a neighborhood that has a home owner s association (HOA), check their bylaws before going too far down this road. They may take a dim view of your project, and you wouldn t want to run afoul of your neighbors. Some municipalities have laws against wind power as well.

25 The problem that most people have with wind power is that it tends to be noisy. If you've ever been around a wind turbine, the blades rotating in the wind produce a fair amount of noise, like an electric fan does. This can be annoying to neighbors, especially those who spend a lot of time outdoors. A vertical wind turbine is quieter than a horizontal one (the common windmill is a horizontal one), but they are more complex to build, which makes them more expensive. Also note that you may need special permits, because you are building a permanent structure on your property. Each city has different ordinances, so the best advice here is to check before building, just to make sure you ve got all the necessary paperwork in order. If you do need permits, this process can take anywhere from one to three weeks, so the sooner you start, the sooner you will be able to proceed. Once you ve got the necessary permits, and have assembled the pieces of your system, getting it working happens in two steps. The first step is in assembling the windmill itself. Most commercial windmills require some assembly; at a minimum, installing the blades and tail. You also need to attach the windmill to the mast or tower you are going to use, before raising it. Otherwise you have to climb the tower to attach the windmill, a much riskier operation. It would help to have the assistance of one to three friends with strong backs. If you ve purchased an especially large wind turbine, you may need to build a foundation for it to sit on in order to make sure it is properly secured, and you may even need to rent a light-duty crane to help lift it into position. For a simple mast, digging a hole in the ground and anchoring it in cement is sufficient. In any case, none of this is hugely expensive, but if the windmill you have purchased recommends hoisting via crane, you should be sure to follow those instructions. If you do not, and you break it trying to set it up some other way, you are out a big chunk of

26 money and will have to start over. Even worse, someone might get hurt while raising your windmill. In most cases the tower or mast will need to be secured with guy wires to ensure that the windmill isn't blown over by the wind. These will need to be firmly anchored, either into solid cement anchors or the type which thread into the ground and are used to tie down mobile homes. Improper anchoring of guy wires makes them all but useless. The typical guy wire anchor consists of a large disk that is buried underground, with a metal loop sticking up through the ground for the guy wire to attach to. This large disk allows the ground to be compacted back in above the anchor, using the weight of the ground above it to prevent it from pulling out. The other means of anchoring guy wires, which is considerably more expensive, is to use a massive cement anchor, where the weight of the anchor itself is enough to prevent movement. Ideally, the guy wires should be anchored at a distance of 80% of the tower height. That means that for a 100 foot tall tower, the guy wires should be anchored 80 feet from its base. Since it is doubtful that you will use a 100 foot tower, you won't need as much distance. A 20 foot tower only requires that the anchors be 16 feet from the base. Still, that makes a 32' diameter circle in your backyard, which should be kept clear of other things and not used for the children to play in. Children playing in the vicinity of guy wires are a sure recipe for accidents. The final part of the process is connecting the wind turbine electrically. The windmill itself connects to a "windmill controller" which is actually a 12 volt battery charger. It differs from the type of battery charger that you might use to recharge your car battery in that it is designed to accept a 12 or 24 volt DC input, rather than a 120 volt AC input. If you are not going to use a battery backup system, then you can connect the output of the windmill controller directly to the input of your voltage inverter. Voltage inverters boost the 12 volt DC voltage coming off a charger or battery up to 120 volts and covert it from DC to AC so that it can be used for powering your home. Now comes the tricky part; connecting it to the house. Properly done, this means connecting it to your breaker box, before the breakers, just as the power coming into your home from the utility company. To connect it this way, I would highly recommend the services of a certified electrician. Not only do they know how to avoid injury in such a case, but if your home has a fire and it is found to be connected incorrectly by the fire investigators, your homeowner's insurance won't pay for the damage.

27 There is a simpler way of connecting the voltage inverter to your home, as long as your wind turbine and voltage inverter aren't providing more than 2400 watts of power; that's to plug the output of the voltage inverter into a regular electrical outlet. To do this, you will need to make a special "extension cord" with male plugs on both ends. The power from your generator will then go into your home's electrical system, powering whatever you need. This is perfectly legal and perfectly safe. That is it. That is really all there is to it. Once the system is in place, all that remains to be done is to simply wait for a stiff breeze and start enjoying some of your own power. Below are some links to the three key components you will need, to give you an idea of what s available. The Windmill itself: Generator/dp/B00C6OEWZC/ref=sr_1_19?s=lawn-garden&ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=1-19&keywords=wind+generator Inverter/dp/B0099AVMKY/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=8-14&keywords=wind+generator The Wind charge controller: Generator/dp/B00BKWPQD8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=8-1&keywords=wind+turbine+controller The Inverter: Inverter/dp/B0027VT0I8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=8-1&keywords=windmill+inverter

28 Building Your Own Wind Turbine A horizontal wind turbine is actually fairly easy to build, simple enough that you might want to try building one yourself. While you can buy a small commercially manufactured wind turbine fairly inexpensively, you can build your own for a fraction of the cost. In its simplest form, a wind generator consists of some windmill blades connected to an electrical generator. To do this, a hub of some sort is needed. A tail, added to the wind turbine helps to keep the blades facing into the wind and some sort of pivot is needed, to allow the tail to turn it. All this is mounted together and stuck up in the air, on top of a mast, where the wind can get to it.

29 To start with, you're going to need an electric generator. Now, let me let you in on a little knows secret of electrical engineering. An electric motor and an electric generator are essentially the same. You can use a generator for a motor and you can use a motor for a generator. All you need is the right sort of motor. Electric motors come in all sizes and varieties; but not just any motor will do. You're going to want your wind turbine to have an output of more than 12 volts DC. That means it needs to produce 12 volts when it is running slowly. In order to achieve that, you need to find a DC motor that will produce a higher voltage than that. You also need to take into consideration the motor's speed. Most motors operate at a speed of about 1,700 RPM. Chances are that your wind turbine will never reach that speed. So, what you want to find is an electric motor that is rated for something like 24 volts DC at a speed of 400 RPM. That way, when your motor is only running 250 RPM, it will still produce over 12 volts DC. There are many places to find such motors, but your best bet is to look for a used motor. That will help keep your costs down, while still providing you with a good motor. There are lots of used motors on ebay, which have been salvaged from old computer tape drives and other equipment. You should be able to find what you need amongst them.

30 With a motor in hand (or at least on the way) you can turn your attention to the blades and hub. These are going to be the hardest part to build. Typically, three blades are used on a wind turbine, although it is possible to use any number. Three is common simply because it spaces the blades out far enough that the disturbance that they create in the airflow has a chance to normalize before the next blade gets to that point in the rotation. The easiest way to make your blades is to cut them out of PVC pipe. A six inch diameter section of pipe will allow you to cut three blades easily, making them wide enough to catch the wind and be strong enough to withstand it. One nice thing about using PVC pipe is that it is curved. When the concave side of the blades is facing the wind, the curvature of the pipe naturally works to have the wind push the blade sideways around the circle of rotation. At the same time, the curvature adds strength to the blades, by putting a lot of the material off the plane of rotation. It is a bit difficult to see in the picture above, but the blades are actually tapered as they reach the outer end. At the near end, we see a lot of material sticking up, perpendicular to the hub face. At the far end, there is little material sticking up in that manner. The part close to the hub is there to add stiffness to the blade. These blades are 48" long. The longer the blade, the better; but they must be able to remain stiff. What the length does for you is increase the leverage of the blade. Even a small amount of wind hitting the tips of the blades results in more force than a strong wind hitting it near the hub. That's simply because of the mechanical advantage of leverage. In the picture, the hub is made of plywood. I would not recommend this. While plywood can make a strong enough hub, it will become damaged by the weather and weakened. So, you'll end up replacing it after a while.

31 The easiest way to make a hub is to start with a pulley that has the right size hole to mount to the motor's shaft. Then, cut a piece of sheet aluminum or steel into a circle and attach it to that pulley, making the pulley larger. Fasten the two together securely, either by welding them or by bolting them together, taking care to ensure concentricity so that the hub will be in balance. Drill holes in the hub at 120 degrees spacing, for mounting the blades to. The hub and blades attach to the motor, which in turn attaches to the boom. Unless the motor has mounts that you can use, the easiest way to attach the motor to the boom is with straps, such as large wire ties. Make sure that you use sufficient of them and that they are tight enough that the motor can't come loose. The boom itself can be as simple as a piece of 2"x 4" dimensional lumber. The tail can be made of anything, but aluminum flashing works well. If you use flashing, you will need to bend the edges in order to give it rigidity. Otherwise, the tail will be bent over by the wind and not do its job. Another way you can do the tail is by cutting a piece of plywood and screwing it onto the boom. If you use plywood, be sure to seal the edges well, so that the rain doesn't cause it to delaminate. Ideally, the entire wind turbine head would be mounted to the mast with a bearing. However, this makes the project much more complicated. The easy way around this is to use a couple of pieces of metal pipe or conduit. Find two that will slip together, with minimal space between

32 them. The part that attaches to the boom can be mounted with a pipe flange. This will then slip into or over the mast, which is anchored to the ground and stabilized with guy wires. The easiest way to handle the electrical connection is to run it down inside the mast. While it will become twisted somewhat, the wind will probably turn the head in both directions, allowing the wire to untwist as well. Leave a little slack so that the turning doesn't cause it to stretch. Drill a hole in the mast, near the bottom, for this wire to come out.

33 Module Three Solar This is the longest section of the entire book, not because we favor solar power over other types of home power generation, but because it is the most dynamic field, and one that shows the most long term promise. It is also the most popular form of off-grid power there is. Micro-hydro (which we'll discuss later) is the hands-down most efficient and effective method of generating your own power, but not everyone can make use of it. In fact, only a small minority of the people reading this book will be able to take advantage of the awesome power and potential of micro-hydro. To a lesser extent, That is also true of wind, and while most people can make use of biogas, the idea of working with manure tends to turn most people off of that idea, so they do not, or won t start a bio-gas operation. Solar, on the other hand, is relatively easy to set up, and can be used in just about any part of the country. Even better, the price of solar panels has dropped tremendously in recent years, thanks mostly to China s entry into the market in a big way. You can drop that price even more by building your own panels, an operation that isn't really as hard as it sounds. Best of all, scientists are making enormous strides in solar technology on

34 multiple fronts. Whereas micro-hydro is a technology that hasn t changed much over the last hundred years, solar is changing by the month. There s a lot to talk about in this section, and we will cover it all. The China Effect China s impact on the price of solar panels almost can t be understated. Since big Chinese firms began ramping up their production, the price of panels has fallen more than 60%, with no end in sight. That alone took solar from being fun to talk about pet project or toy, to being something that even companies like Google are taking an interest in. It is true, recently, Google applied to become a power reseller, and aims to become a net power producer within the next ten years, selling their surplus power to nearby communities. There are more solar cells and solar panels manufactured in China, than there are anywhere else in the world. While China still depends mostly on coal for its own power generation, they

35 are providing solar power to the nations of the world, especially in Europe and the United States, making a profit off of our gradual transition to renewable energy. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, England was known as the Workshop of the World. There were more machines, per capita, in England, than there were anyplace else on the planet. These days, China has taken that title, and with good reason. With their increasingly educated workforce, almost unlimited manpower, and rapidly expanding technological base, there s no market that China can t dominate, if it puts its mind to it. We are seeing that now in solar, and it appears to be something beneficial to the consumer. Among other things, it means that for you, it has never been easier to generate all your own power and potentially much more than that from the sun. Nations around the world and even some states here at home have been quick to jump on the solar power bandwagon. Germany is now generating about 30% of its demand for electricity with solar power alone. Hawaii can now generate ALL of its electricity using solar power, except for on cloudy days when it has to rely on diesel generators as a backup. Hawaii doesn t get that many cloudy days though, and they re continuing to add solar capacity. It is just a matter of time. The point though, is that without China s entry into the market, we would not be HAVING a Solar Renaissance. Their impact has been huge. Misplaced Fears A lot of people naysay the idea of installing solar panels. One of the biggest arguments you hear against the idea is that the price of oil (as of the writing of this manuscript) is falling. When oil prices fall, nobody cares about solar any more, and it becomes a non-issue.

36 That argument doesn t really make a lot of sense, when you think about it. The largest percentage of the energy in the US is generated by coal-fired plants, producing 39 percent of our electrical power usage, not oil. Oil is, of course, what we use for transportation, but we are not talking about installing solar panels on our cars, we are talking about installing them on our homes and elsewhere on our property. In short, do not pay much attention to the people who make this argument. Only 16% of the nation s electricity is generated via oil. The price of oil doesn t really have much bearing on the price of solar panels or on what you are paying for your monthly electric bill. Another common fear/misconception is that solar panels are not really all that efficient. There s some truth in that, but that's an antiquated argument. They are far more efficient than they used to be, but people are usually thinking about the old power yields when they say that; they haven't bothered to look at what the current technology provides. Then, of course, given the amount of sunlight that hits the earth every day, they do not really have to be all that efficient. In about an hour and a half, the sun bombards the earth with more energy than the total, annual energy generated and used from all sources combined. 3 Given that reality, even if solar panels were only as efficient as they were thirty years ago, we could still generate all the electricity we d ever need for centuries, simply by tapping into this one source. The short answer is that there s little to fear with regards to the relative inefficiency of the solar panels we have today. It is just not an issue. 3

37 The real issue in solar power is the investment required to buy and install the equipment. While China's entry into the solar marketplace has made solar much more affordable than ever before, it is still much more expensive than other methods, especially on a commercial level. The investment for converting your home to solar power is still rather large. But once it is installed, there is virtually no maintenance cost and the system will last your lifetime. Of course, the solar industry itself is sometimes prone to flights of fancy that lead it down silly/goofy/wrong-headed paths, which make people roll their eyes. The most recent example is this: Now, do not get me wrong the concept of solar panels embedded in our roadways is really, insanely cool to think about, it is just not even slightly practical for all sorts of reasons that would take too long to go into here. Suffice it to say that It is ridiculous notions like this that get media attention all out of proportion to their actual impact on the industry as a whole, and it tends to give solar a bad name. That makes it a technology that people see as frivolous, so they are reluctant to take seriously. Anyway, all of this to say that there are a number of reasons people will use to try to talk you out of investing in solar. Most of them are baseless and silly. The reality is that solar is an increasingly attractive power generation option, and ideally suited for a great many parts of the country. Without further ado then, let s dive right in and get you set up!

38 Are Permits Needed? In order to implement most of the other power generation strategies we ve talked about so far, there are usually a number of hoops to jump through. While it IS true that any time you make any sorts of additions to your home, you need to check with your local government about what permits are required, solar has a distinct advantage. That is, installing solar doesn't require any structural changes to your home. So, in most cases, there are no permits required. That makes it so that of the methods we re talking about, solar has one of the lowest number of hoops to jump through. One thing you may want to do is have an inspection performed at the end to make sure the system is safe, even if you aren't required to by law. What you want to know is that your system meets or exceeds any legal requirements there might be. That will give you peace of mind, but it will also give you something to show your insurance company, if they become skeptical. Your completed inspection will prove that your solar power system is safe, so the insurance company can't use that as an excuse to not pay you in the case of a fire. Electricity, after all, can be dangerous and even be deadly. The idea behind all of this is to PROTECT your family, not expose them to danger, so an inspection should be seen as nothing more than cheap insurance. IMPORTANT Ask About Rebates! Because the government's interest in promoting clean, renewable energy, they have offered a variety of tax incentives and rebates for people who install solar systems. This has happened at both federal and state level, so make sure that you look into both possibilities. In addition to that, competition is growing in the solar energy market, so sometimes manufacturers or installers run specials, so you should ask about all three. Part of why you are doing this is to free yourself from Big Brother and the utility companies; but hey if they re willing to help pay to get you out from under their thumb, why not let them, right?

39 All told, you can save anywhere from between 5 and 30% on the total cost of your system, depending on the mix of tax breaks, incentives, and sales at any one time. Even at the low end, that is significant enough to make it worth looking into, so do not hesitate to ask questions relating to price breaks and deals when talking to a vendor or installer. Start With Your Water Heater Rather than starting off trying to generate all of the electricity you need, a great place to begin is by installing solar hot water. You can either install a sufficient number of solar panels to handle your hot water needs or install a turnkey solar hot water heater. The major difference is that with a solar hot water heater, the water tank will be on the roof, while with solar hot water panels, you use your existing hot water heater as a tank. This also allows you to use the hot water heater to heat water at night or when it's too cloudy to heat the water. This is a great medium-scale project that will see your monthly bill drop dramatically. Heating hot water accounts for about one-fourth of most family's energy consumption. So, by converting to solar hot water heat, you free up money that can be used to work on the rest of your solar projects. Solar hot water works by passing water through a collector, where sunlight strikes it and is converted to heat. That heat is absorbed by the water, which is then returned to the storage tank. For the creation of solar hot water systems, it is important to always keep the water flowing uphill, so as to avoid air pockets inside the solar collector.

40 Simple convection is an important part of any solar water system as well. We learned in elementary physics that heat rises and cold drops. This is true whether we're talking about water or air. So, when water is put into a container, the colder water will naturally drop to the bottom and the hotter water will naturally rise to the top. In a properly designed solar hot water system, where the tank is at the same level as the collector, this actually makes it possible to have the water circulate through the collector, without using a pump. Unfortunately, we usually have need of a pump, simply because the collector is higher than the water tank. In that case, the pump should be on a timer, so that it only runs during the day, when the sun can heat up the water. There is no sense wasting electricity to run it at night. The easiest way to get solar hot water is to buy a solar hot water heater, which consists of the solar collector and tank connected together and mounted on the roof. The hardest part of using such a system is that you have to run the lines that went to your old hot water heater out through the roof to the new one. Depending on the direction your home points, this could be easy or difficult.

41 Here in the northern hemisphere, the sun is always to our south. So, in order to catch the most possible sun, the solar hot water heater must be mounted on the south facing roof of your home. That means that people who have north facing homes have an easier time installing any solar system, than people with homes that face any other way. All they have to do is to mount everything on the back side of their roof, where it won't be visible from the street. You can also buy solar hot water panels and install them, connecting them to your hot water heater or another water tank. This option is actually considerably less expensive than a roof mounted solar hot water heater, especially if you use your existing hot water heater as a tank. Often, when commercial solar panels are used for solar hot water heating, there is a heat exchanger added to the hot water heater. Instead of water passing through the solar panels, anti-freeze is used. That helps to protect the system in the wintertime. The heated anti-freeze passes through one side of the heat exchanger and the water from the hot water heater passes through the other side, allowing heat to pass from the anti-freeze to the water. Building Your Own Panels for Solar Hot Water Solar panels for hot water are considerably easier to build than solar panels for producing electricity. In a nutshell, any solar collector for heating hot water is nothing more than a long copper tube. Copper is used because it is the second best thermal conductor there is. Since silver (the best thermal conductor) is considerably more expensive, we use copper. I have seen many designs of solar collectors for hot water through the years. Some use 1/4" copper line, making a big spiral out of it. Others have made them out of the coil off the back of

42 an old refrigerator. The problem with either of these designs is that their limited size reduces the amount of water that can flow through and be heated. A better solar hot water panel can be made by using 1/2" copper pipe. This allows more water to flow through, increasing the amount of hot water produced. Coupled with a low volume pump, so that the water is moving slowly, a collector using 1/2" pipe will heat enough water for all your family's needs. Copper pipe is soldered together with a small gas torch. A flux is used to clean the surface of the copper and the copper is heated. The solder is then melted by the hot copper, naturally wicking into the small gap between the fittings and the pipe. As you can see here, we have two 90 degree elbows, with a short piece of pipe between them, putting the pipes as close together as we possibly can. There are two basic patterns which can be used for the solar collector, when making it with copper pipe in this manner. The one on the left uses elbows, as shown above, to create a single long path for the water to flow through. The one on the right uses copper Ts, instead of elbows, to create a number of parallel paths for the water to flow through. The multiple paths will cause the water to flow slower, allowing the shorter pipes to heat the water to about the same temperature. Regardless of which style condenser coil you build, it needs to be encased in a sealed box with a glass top. The collector coil should lay flat in the box, so that the maximum possible surface

43 area is exposed to the sunlight. Paint the coil itself and the inside of the box black, so that it will absorb the maximum possible sunlight. The most effective homemade solar hot water systems I've seen are fairly large, allowing the water to flow through a total of about 60 feet of copper pipe, inside the collector. The pipe outside the collector doesn't do anything to help absorb heat and will in fact radiate heat, cooling the water. For this reason, you want to run your pipes to and from the collector as short as possible and insulate them to reduce the amount of heat loss. The other end of the pipes should connect to the hot water heater. The send pipe, which is sending cooler water to the collector, needs to come out of the bottom of the hot water heater tank. This is easily done by removing the drain valve and installing a T. One branch of the T can have the valve reinstalled on it and the other should have the pump to circulate the water to the solar collector. Another T needs to be added to the water inlet on the top of the hot water heater. This is where the water from the solar collector will return to the hot water heater. It is a good idea to put the pump on a timer, so that it only operated during daylight hours. If your purpose here is to save on electricity, then allowing it to run overnight would be counterproductive. If your family needs a lot of hot water at night, a second timer can be put on the hot water heater, allowing it to work normally after dark. Sourcing Solar Panels for Producing Electricity Compared to installing solar hot water, developing a solar power system is a much bigger job. The main reason for this is the number of solar panels needed. While solar hot water only requires one to two panels, you can easily end up installing 30 electrical solar panels or more. Solar panels for producing electricity are also a little harder to build than the ones used for hot water, if you do it yourself, mostly due to the delicacy of the solar cells themselves. Most people either buy finished solar panels and install them or hire a solar contractor. Of course, the moment you talk to a solar installer, they re going to try to sell you on their solar panels. Most companies will have a fact sheet readily available about why their panels are the best, and what makes them different. The bottom line is this; they re not different, or at least not significantly so. The core technology is essentially the same. Yes, it is true that there are some new KINDS of solar panels either out now, or in laboratory testing, but these will tend more toward special cases, and are not generally something you are going to install on your rooftop. Do not worry, we will talk about the advances in solar power later. For the time being, just understand that for our purposes, a PV

44 panel is a PV panel is a PV panel. You want to find as many as you can, as cheaply as you can. Panels with Blemishes or Imperfections Commercially manufactured solar panels are fairly expensive, especially in the quantity needed to create a complete solar power system. The secret here is to source your panels in bulk, and to get panels that have manufacturing flaws or imperfections in them. These are not any less effective or efficient than the ones you can buy online or at some stores, but they have got blemishes or other imperfections that make them non-saleable. Retail outlets won t accept them unless they re perfect. That works to your advantage, because the companies that make them have to do SOMETHING with them, and what they invariably do with them is sell them at a deep discount. If you know where to look, you can pick up a tremendous number of panels, and therefore, a tremendous amount of power generating capacity, for pennies on the dollar. As ever then, knowing WHERE to look is the key. You can probably buy blemished solar panels from pretty much any manufacturer, although they don't advertise them. You have to ask if they have any at that time. You can also find blemished panels at times on ebay. Many people will avoid them, thinking that they don't function properly, but you know the secret; they work find but something is wrong with their appearance. In addition, there are also outlets which specialize in selling blemished panels, such as the one here, advertising on Slickdeals:

45 Surplus Solar Panels Another strategy to employ in your quest for cheap, efficient power is to buy surplus solar panels. Sometimes, installers and contractors buy more than they need. There are inventory carrying costs for holding onto them, so they d rather just sell their excess and buy more later for the next job. That works very much to your advantage, again, IF you know where to look. Here are some great sources for picking up surplus panels on the cheap: Used Solar Panels Finally, you can consider used solar panels. Used panels are a bit of a question mark. You either need to know something about them so you can properly assess the quality and condition of the panel you are considering buying, or you need to have an expert evaluate them with you. In either case, you can pick up some GREAT panels for next to nothing using this approach. You'll want to test these panels, before buying them. That means having a sunny day and setting them out in the sun. You'll need to connect a multimeter to each panel and read the output voltage, checking it against the voltage that the panel is supposed to produce. If it is producing the voltage that is should and the individual solar cells are not broken, it should also produce the wattage that it should. So, this one check is enough to verify that the panels are usable. Sometimes, you can find them on Craigslist, but that is rather hit or miss. Here are some other sources to consider:

46 Again, the point of all of this is to get the very best deal you can. I can promise you that if you buy your panels at retail prices from the guys you are paying to handle the installation for you, you will pay too much. More, by far, than you will pay by taking my advice and treating the acquisition of the panels separately from their installation. Save your money. You will get more panels that way! Building Your Own Solar Panels One way of saving a considerable amount of money on your solar power system is to build and install it yourself. Some would say that this isn't practical or that you can't do it, but that is far from the truth. The average handyman or do-it-yourselfer should be able to build and install their own solar panels. The one skill you have to have is the ability to solder electronics. Solar panels are not especially hard to build, but the work is tedious. More than anything, you need to be careful so as to not break the solar cells themselves. Solar cells are extremely fragile. If you think of them as thin pieces of glass (which is what they are), and treat them accordingly, you will have less of a chance of breaking them. You can buy packets of individual solar cells through a number of outlets. Probably the easiest is to buy them online through ebay. That will give you the opportunity to compare different sizes, suppliers and their costs. You can also find "chipped" solar cells on ebay as well. These are marginally less efficient than the perfect ones, but the difference is small enough that you won't be able to tell. However, the difference in cost can be considerable. If you are looking to save money on your project, this is an excellent way to do so. A Little Bit of Electronics Before starting to build the panels, we need to understand a little bit of electronics. Solar cells produce 0.5 volts DC (direct current). Voltage is often referred to as the electricity's potential. Direct current means that the electricity travels in only one direction. Alternating current, which is what is used in our homes, produces alternating current. That has the electrical power moving back and forth in both directions. This is possible because electricity is the movement of electrons from one atom to the next. While the equipment needs to be designed to work with either AC or DC, as long as there is movement, there is electricity.

47 The other important measurement of the electricity being produced by the solar cells is the wattage. This is the amount of electrical power is being produced. If you imagine electricity flowing through a wire as water flowing through a hose, voltage would be the width of the stream and wattage would be how much water is being pumped through the hose. In solar cells, the physical size of the cell affects the amount of watts it produces, even though it doesn't affect the voltage. We need both voltage and wattage. So, we need to connect the solar cells together in a way which will allow for the accumulation of both voltage and wattage. Actually, what we do is connect a number of cells together to get enough volts and then connect that string of cells together with other strings, in order to accumulate watts. How we connect them together determines whether voltage or wattage is being accumulated. Like batteries, solar cells have a positive and a negative side. The negative side is the one that is blue and has lines going through it. There should be two wider lines passing through the cell, perpendicular to the rest of the lines, which are also wider. These are the contacts for the negative side. This side of the cell must face the sun. The positive side is the "back" of the cell. It will be mostly grey, with a few small squares. These are the electrical contact points for the positive side of the cell. Connecting solar cells or batteries in series adds their voltage together, while leaving the wattage the same. In this picture, we have two 1.5 volt AA size batteries connected together in series. This produces 3.0 volts DC from the batteries. The batteries are marked for us with a positive (+) and negative (-) end. To connect them in serial, we need to connect the positive end of one batter to the negative end of the next battery. We can do this with as many batteries as we need to, in order to reach the voltage we need. The solar panels have to be able to charge a 12 volt battery. This would make it seem that we would only need to connect 24 solar cells together, in order to have enough voltage. However, we have to consider inefficiencies in the system. We don't have bright sunlight on all days, so there will be days in which the solar cells won't produce their full voltage. As the cells age, they will also lose some efficiency, although it will take almost 20 years to see this effect.

48 Nevertheless, the solar panel must be built so that it will create enough voltage to charge that battery, even when taking these inefficiencies into consideration. So, most solar panels are built to produce 18 to 20 volts. That means stringing together 36 to 40 individual cells. The strings of cells are then connected together in parallel. Parallel means that all the positive ends are connected together and all the negative ends are connected together. In the picture below, the two batteries are connected together in parallel. That means that the two batteries will only produce 1.5 volts DC, but they will produce twice the current that the batteries in serial can produce. It doesn't matter how many batteries or how many solar cells are attached together, it produces the same effect. The voltage will remain the same, but the wattage will be increased. We need that wattage so that we have enough electricity to run appliance, lights and other home electronics. Stringing the Solar Cells Together Solar cells can either be purchased tabbed or untabbed. The "tabs" refer to wires being already attached to the negatives side of the solar cell. Buying tabbed solar cells does save you some work; but like always, you're paying someone else to do that work for you. I mentioned that there were two wider lines running perpendicular to all the others on the negatives side of the solar cell. These are the contact areas, where the tabbing wire needs to be soldered. Tabbing wire is a 1.6mm wide, flat wire, that is already tinned (meaning that it has been coated in solder). Pieces need to be cut which are twice the width of the solar cell, as the tabbing wire needs to solder all the way across the negative side of one solar cell and then solder to the pads on the positive side of the next solar cell in the string. Since the tabbing wire is pre-tinned, it is actually fairly easy to solder. The contact area on the solar cell needs to be painted over with solder flux first. This is most easily done by using a flux pen, which works much like a white-out pen or magic marker. Pushing down on the flux pen's tip

49 causes flux to flow down and soak the tip. Then, you "draw" the flux onto the location where you need it. Soldering the tabbing wire is accomplished by heating the top side of the tabbing wire enough that the solder on the bottom side of it melts and sticks to the soldering pad on the solar cell. It helps to hold the loose end of the tabbing wire down with a weight, so that it can't move. You will also need a handheld tool to hold down the other end as you are soldering it, so that the soldering iron can't cause the tabbing wire to move. When the soldering iron melts the solder, it is visually obvious. You can assume that if the solder on the top side of the tabbing wire is melted, then it is on the bottom side as well. Move the soldering iron tip slowly across the tabbing wire, melting the solder and attaching it to the solar cell. Once the tabs are attached to the solar cells, it's time to string them together in series. This is done by soldering the tabbing wire from one cell to the pads on the back of the next cell. In the photo, the tabbing wire from the cell on the right is being soldered to the pads on the positive side of the cells on the left. The sticks glued to the cardboard help to maintain alignment, so that the finished string of cells will fit into the panel properly. This will continue until there are enough cells soldered together to provide the needed voltage. That means for an 18 volt string, 36 solar cells will have to be soldered together in serial.

50 Please note that it is possible to break a string, such as making two strings of 18 cells and then soldering them together in series to reach the 18 volt requirement. This is necessary if your finished panel is not going to be big enough to allow a 36 cell long string. A small space needs to be left between the individual cells in the string to allow space for the tabbing wire to pass from the front of one cell to the back of the next cell. Attaching the Strings Together Once the individual strings of solar cells are completed, it's time to connect them together. The strings are usually mounted to the backplate of the solar panel before connecting them together, just to keep things manageable. However, for explanation purposes, we're going out of order here. Since we have already reached the required voltage by creating the strings of cells, we are now going to connect the strings together in parallel, so that we can increase the wattage produced by the solar panel. Our creating the strings of cells increased the voltage, but the wattage is the same as one cell produces. For 6" x 6" cells, that means about four watts. You will need buss wire for this, rather than tabbing wire. The only difference between the two is that buss wire is 5mm wide, rather than the 1.6mm width of the tabbing wire. The wider width allows the wire to carry more current. The strings will need to be connected in parallel; with all of the positive leads connected together and all of the negative leads connected together. The two sets of wires cannot touch, as they are not insulated. The easiest way to accomplish this is to connect the positive wires together at one end of the panel and the negative wires together at the other end. A piece of insulated, stranded 22 gauge wire is attached to the buss wire, for passing through the frame. Building the Solar Panels

51 There are a number of ways of building solar panels, but the easiest is a simple sandwich construction. This consists of a backing board which the solar cells are attached to and a single pane of glass. The sandwich is sealed on the edges and capped with an aluminum C channel to make it rigid and protect the edges. The aluminum C channel is only 1/2 wide, so there isn't a lot of room to stack up materials. If you use a 1/4" thick piece of plywood for the backing board and a piece of glass is 1/8" thick, that leaves only 1/8" for the solar cells and wires. That's enough, but you don't want to have any solar cells that are sticking up higher than their neighbors. Before attaching the solar cells to the backing board, it should be painted well to seal it from moisture. Plywood that becomes moist will delaminate. The easiest way to connect the solar cells to the backing board is with silicone caulking. A small dab in the center of the cell works well as an adhesive and will not damage the cell in any way. Be extremely careful pushing the cell down into the silicone, so that you don't break the cell. Replacing cells already soldered into a string is possible, but difficult. A spacer needs to be placed between the backing board and the glass. The easiest way to do this is with the double sided foam tape that 3M sells. Be sure to buy a tape that provides you with the right thickness or use multiple layers to attain the right thickness. The lead wires will need to come out through this spacer, so be sure to leave a space for them. Once the sandwich is assembled, seal the edges well with silicone caulking, before attaching the aluminum C channel. In fact, the same caulking that is used to seal the sandwich can also be used to glue the aluminum C channel in place. Miter the corners of the C channel and be sure to put holes for the lead wires to go through. Once the lead wires are through the holes, seal them with silicone caulking. The frames serve one additional purpose, that of providing something to attach your mounts to. You will need to be extremely careful drilling the frames for the mounts and putting screws into them. Since there is glass on the front side of the panel, it is a good idea to drill the holes for the screws into the side of the C channel (not the back), so that they only go into the backing board. The arrow for the aluminum C channel in the diagram above points to an ideal location for drilling. Alternate Solar Panel Construction Another way of building your own solar panels, which can save money over the first way, is to buy used aluminum windows. These can be found on Craig's list, under "materials" in the "for

52 sale" area. Contractors who replace windows on homes will often sell off the old ones for a cheap price. When using used windows, the C channel isn't used. Instead, the aluminum windows are screwed directly to the backing board, which needs to be a wider margin around the edges to accommodate the window. A thicker backing board may be used, in order to make it possible for the screws to grab. The window frame should still be sealed with silicone to keep moisture out. When making your solar panels in this manner, be sure to seal all the edges of the plywood thoroughly with silicone caulking. Moisture will wick into these edges very easily, causing it to delaminate. Installation of Your Solar Panels Solar panels can be installed anywhere that they have a clean line-of-sight to the sun. Commercially, solar "farms" are spread across a field, with panels that are mounted together in clusters that are kept pointed at the sun throughout the day. For home power systems, the panels are individually mounted to the roof, keeping them out of the way of damage, as well as giving them a clean line-of-sight to the sun. As mentioned earlier, solar panels must face south. Ideally, you want them facing directly south, so that they receive the most sunlight through the longest stretch of daylight possible. While using solar tracking mounts could prolong this somewhat, those aren't really practical for a home installation, due to the added cost. It's actually cheaper to add more panels, than to install the tracking mounts. The angle of the panels is important as well. This refers to the angle off of vertical. The exact angle you need will depend on your home's latitude. You can calculate it by: If the latitude is below 25 o, the latitude needs to be multiplied by If the latitude is above 25 o, the latitude needs to be multiplied by 0.76, plus 3.1 degrees. If the latitudes is above 50 o, it require some special calculations, but this only applies to people living in Alaska

53 The solar panels will be mounted in frames, which are then attached to the roof with some sort of mount. Some commercial systems come with rather complex mounts, but you can accomplish the same thing with an angled piece of metal. Be sure to add sealant underneath the mount, so that you don't cause a roof leak by adding on your solar power system. Typically, the panels are then electrically connected to each other in parallel, with a main trunk line going into the house. Some panels have micro-inverters installed in them, eliminating the need for inverting the power inside the house; but most will not be built this way. Their output will be somewhere between 18 to 24 volts DC. Tricks of the Trade Some houses are better suited than others for solar. If your roofline is situated such that the peak of the roof points east and west (so that the surface area of your roof is north and south facing), you will get more sun than if the major surface area of your roof is oriented east-west. The reasons for this are obvious. Since the sun tracks across the sky east to west, then having a roof that is situated north-south will allow the roof surface exposed to the sun for a longer period of time.

54 You will automatically have a less efficient system if the pitch of your roof faces the wrong way. Doesn t mean you can t install solar, but you WILL see less of an impact from it. To help mitigate the loss of power, special considerations will need to be made while mounting the solar panels. In addition to mounting them at the angle shown in "Installing Your Solar Panels" above, the panels will need to be tilted to one side or another, so that they point directly south. This creates a much more difficult installation, but the increased energy efficiency of the panels makes it worth doing. Another trick of the trade is this: The roof of your house is not the only roof you can use. If you ve got a shed, workshop, or other out-building, these can be wired up with panels too. Of course, you do not have to put them JUST on rooftops, either. You can install them in or on any part of your lawn that is not being used for some other purpose. You can even install tracking mechanisms on these freestanding ones that will follow the course of the sun throughout the day, so that they re collecting energy for the entirety of the day. One other thing that bears mentioning is the fact that people who own one-story homes are at a bit of an advantage when compared to those that have two-story homes. Consider a two-story, 2,000 square foot home. It will have roughly 2000 square feet of roof area to work with.

55 A comparably sized two-story home will only have about 1,000 square feet of roof space, and as such, probably wouldn t have enough roof space to place enough panels to power the entire house without using some of the other ideas above. That is not a knock against people who own two-story homes, just pointing out the reality of their situation. At the end of the day, the only real limits to how much power you can generate becomes how many places you can think to mount solar panels. You can put them on every bit of available roof space you ve got. You can mount them on, near, or around greenhouses, storage sheds and outbuildings. You can install them free-standing all over your lawn, and pretty much anyplace else you can think to add them. High Heat Solar Most of the time, when people think of solar power, they think in terms of panels. Panels are good, and the most practical for most home use applications, but they re not the only way to harness the power of the sun, as anybody who has ever started a fire using a simple magnifying glass can attest to. You can find solar collectors that do useful work by collecting the sun s rays to generate heat. Solar cookers use this method. Most people (even the ones who have started fires using magnifying glasses as described above) tend to scoff at or dismiss the idea of using solar collectors. Mostly, this is because they haven t really thought it through. Did you know that it s possible to generate so much heat using a solar collector that you can actually liquefy asphalt? You can! Of course, liquefying asphalt isn t terribly useful for most people, but the point is, that kind of heat can be put to more productive use. You can, for example, use it to power a Sterling Engine to generate electricity for your home (remembering, of course, that Sterling Engines are fuel agnostic. They don t care where their fuel comes from, or what source it takes. Only that it is present. All that to say, don t overlook solar collectors and other methods of generating high heat when you re designing your system and deciding what components work best for you. Passive Solar Heating The single biggest energy user in the average home is heating and cooling. Even if your heating is done through gas, a fair amount of electricity is going to be used in powering the blower to get that heat through the ductwork and into the living spaces of your home. Besides, paying for natural gas is still an energy cost.

56 Passive solar heating is a great solution to the cost of heating a home. Typically, this requires designing the home with solar heating in mind. However, it is possible to retrofit passive solar into home in some cases. A lot depends on what direction the home is facing and how easy it is to replace the existing home's construction with the necessary components for solar heating. Let's look at how a passive solar heating system works. Each of the four components in the diagram above performs a specific task in making a passive solar heating system work. They need to be carefully thought out and built, so that the system will not only provide heat, but not overheat the home during the summer months. An improperly designed system will only cost a lot of money, without providing any true benefit. Aperture - The aperture is the windows which the sunlight is allowed to shine through, warming the home. As a general rule of thumb, the more window area, the better. But that window area must provide sunlight to the absorber, or it isn't accomplishing anything. Allowing sunlight in, which only hits the white-painted walls of the room, won't add any perceivable amount of heat to the home. Absorber - The absorber is what captures the sunlight coming through the aperture and converts it to heat. As such, it works best if it is black or at least a dark color. Black absorbs all light, whereas any other color reflects at least some light. Typically, black stones are used for the absorber, because the heat they absorb must be transferred to the thermal mass. If carpeting or linoleum is used, the material itself acts as an insulator, impeding the transfer of heat. Thermal Mass - The thermal mass is the "battery" of the system, storing the heat that is generated by the sun striking the absorber. In most cases, the thermal mass is concrete, although natural stone can be used as well. If stone is used, then it must be mortared, to provide a continuous mass, without air pockets.

57 Control - Since the passive solar power system needs to be used in the wintertime, but not in the summertime, it is important to have a way of shutting it off. That's what the control does. In homes where the eaves are wide enough, they form a perfect control, blocking out the sunlight during the hotter summer months. Curtains or blinds can also be used as a control, if the eaves aren't sufficient. Seeing how the system works, you should be able to examine your own home to see if it might be possible to retrofit part of it for passive solar heating. The biggest requirements will be adding more windows and a thicker cement slab for the floor. That's the expensive part, as it requires either tearing out the existing slab or adding on top of it. Many homes can't be converted to passive solar, because they have basements. The floor is made of wood, which doesn't work as a solar collector. In those cases, it might be possible to add passive solar by building a stone wall inside the room, close enough to the windows to act as the absorber and thermal mass. You would lose some floor space and the view out the windows, but gain in energy-efficient heating. Another excellent way of retrofitting pretty much any home for passive solar heating is to add a sun room onto it. If your home is facing north, then you could put it on the back of the home, off the kitchen or family room. This actually adds space to your home and eliminates much of the demolition typically involved in retrofitting a home to passive solar.

58 That sun room can even serve double duty, allowing you to use it as a greenhouse as well. In fact, the greenhouse was the first passive solar structure ever built. By using passive solar in a greenhouse, the plants are able to be kept warm, with little to no energy cost. Even if your passive solar system won't provide heat to your whole home, it's still worth doing. You can close off the vents to the rooms which are being heated by passive solar, allowing the heat from your furnace to go to the rooms where it is needed. This will reduce the duty cycle of your furnace, lowering your overall energy costs. Low-speed fans, like ceiling fans, can be used to spread the heat created by passive solar out to other rooms, increasing the overall efficiency of the system. The Solar Chimney If you re looking for a cost effective way to provide cooling for your home that doesn t involve solar panels but are still interested in solar technology in general, then look into having a solar chimney installed on the side of your home. It might sound counterintuitive to use solar power to provide cooling, but take a look at the diagram below and you ll see how it works. Essentially, it works like a fireplace chimney. The chimney depends on the fact that the ground under our feet is cooler than the ambient air around us. While the chimney itself draws the warm air out of the house, it is pulling air through the underground heat exchanger, as shown in the illustration below. Ambient air from the outside is passed through this underground heat exchanger and then brought into the home as cool air. This is a fairly experimental way of cooling a home, using natural convection and solar power. However, it has been shown to be fairly effective. The major concern is having a long enough piece of pipe buried deep enough underground to allow the outside ambient air to cool sufficiently before being drawn into the house. As with many other projects, there are some permitting requirements needed. As with every other project of this type, you ll want to check with your local government to find out exactly what is needed before you go too far down this road.

59 What Comes Next? Having pointed out some at least one of the silly/goofy/strange directions solar research has taken in recent years (the solar road project), we are now going to spend some time talking about some promising emerging solar technology that is not commercially available yet, but that you will be able to make use of in short order. It is important that you be aware of these, because in one way or another, all of them will radically change the game when they hit the market, and you will be able to incorporate them into your energy production mix.

60 The first of these is clear solar panels. 4 For many, this has been the Holy Grail of solar research, especially given the rise of handheld computers. Imagine a handheld that can be continuously powered and recharged, by nothing more than its own touch screen. Sound exciting? You are not alone in thinking so, but the advantages do not stop here. Once this technology hits the market, you can bet that millions of people will begin replacing their windows with the new solar panel versions. This will give homeowners an enormous boost in the number of panels they can install, and the amount of power they can ultimately generate each day. It is true, for the moment, these solar panels only have a fraction of the efficiency that today s top end panels enjoy, but that will be improving as the research matures. For the moment, it is something to keep on your radar, because this one s coming to market. The demand for it is just too great. Another exciting development is something called the Counter-Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator, and yes, that is a mouthful. It is the R5, for short. This fabulous device already exists in prototype form, although in its current iteration, it is only about 2% efficient. It doesn t matter though, because that efficiency continues to climb. The purpose of the device? To re- 4

61 energize carbon. Essentially, it generates fuel you can use to power your home or your vehicles, literally from thin air. Read more about the device and progress on the research at the Sandia labs website. 5 Finally, there have been a number of advances in battery technology. This has been driven, at least in part by Elon Musk and Tesla Motors. Elon Musk deserves a special mention here because if there s one person who has been responsible for bringing solar energy from the fringes and into the mainstream, it has been Mr. Musk. For decades, the truism has been that if someone, somewhere could design an electric car that could get 200 miles to a single charge, it would change the entire auto industry. That seems to have been proven correct. Mr. Musk has not only achieved that goal (the original Tesla Roadster, in addition to being one of the sexiest sports cars on the road (see photo below) also happened to be all electric, and happened to get 200 miles to a single charge. Not content with merely reaching the mark set by industry experts decades earlier, Musk went several steps further, first by creating a nationwide network of fast charging stations that spanned the country. Yes, it's true. Right now, today, you can hop in your Tesla Roadster or Sedan (the significantly cheaper of the two models) and drive from one end of the nation to the other, making use of fast charging stations all along the way. Not only did Musk accomplish that, but the advances he s made in battery technology now allow the most recent models of his vehicles to get a staggering 300 miles to a charge. 5

62 Those advances are currently trickling into deep-cycle battery tech used by every industry on the planet. Handheld devices have increasingly longer useful life between charges. The batteries people use to build their battery backup systems (if and where they choose to build them) are also reaping the benefits, allowing them to store more power, more efficiently, with fewer batteries in their array. It doesn t stop there. Musk has recently invested a mind-boggling five BILLION dollars on a new, state-of-the-art battery factory in Arizona, and if that wasn t enough, researchers have discovered a way of storing HUGE amounts of power using simple fluid-based based technology that is poised to revolutionize the entire storage industry. It blurs the lines between chemistry and engineering, because the molecules that are actually responsible for the energy storage are commonly found in plants. You can read more about the Harvard research here: This is important because of something we touched on at the very start of this book. It s not just scrappy, up and coming companies like Tesla that are getting into the solar game in a big way. I assume you ve heard of Sharp? They make some fantastic TV s for every budget. Their flat screen LCD s and plasma sets are some of the best in the industry. At a recent trade show, Sharp unveiled a full featured, 52 inch flat screen television that comes with its own solar

63 panels. It s not available for sale just yet, but it soon will be. You can read more about it here: One of the reasons it has been so expensive to build your own energy production system at home was that before the advent of net metering laws, you had to not only generate all your own power, but you had to build a storage network so that you could even out your energy flows, storing your excess when you produced it, and drawing it back out of your battery array when you did not produce enough. Net metering laws changed all that of course, but in doing so, they cut the total cost of building a home system by more than fifty percent, because batteries are (to this day) HUGELY expensive. One of the reasons they re so expensive is that they are all built using exotic metals. This new system can increase battery storage capacity, AND do it more cheaply. That is a huge win, and it is coming. There used to be a time when big business could bury promising technologies for decades. It happened with the compact fluorescent lightbulb, and many other technologies over the years. The internet has changed all that. Once an ideas like the magic LED lightbulb that is more than 200% efficient, or the R5, or these groundbreaking new batteries gets published on the net, there s no taking it back. There s no reeling it in. Yes, the internet has led to a general erosion of privacy. That is one of the downsides. One of the upsides is that it makes it impossible to hide or bury promising new technologies like this. If someone tried, you d see a Kickstarter project spring up the very same day. There s just no way to put the genie back in its bottle, and that is a very good thing. The point is, solar is one the most dynamic, rapidly-expanding energy technologies there is. Keep your eyes peeled on these, and many other exciting developments in the world of solar. Using today s tech, solar can change your life. Combining that with the tech that is coming, it will change the world. That is not speculation, it's just a simple fact. The Battery Backup Array At the start of this book, we talked about the reasons you DID NOT need a battery backup system. Those reasons are valid, and certainly hold true, but the fact remains that many solar power systems for home use have been, in practice, installed with battery backup arrays. That's because solar panels can only produce electricity during the daylight hours. We got around that by saying that you could pull power off the grid at night. But what if the grid is out?

64 The truth of the matter is that the grid is not reliable and it is becoming more and more unreliable. So, depending upon the grid is not the best of ideas. That means having your own electrical power available 24/7. If you're depending on solar power to produce that power, you'll need to have a battery backup. What scares most people about a battery backup is the cost. There's no doubt about it, a full battery backup system, is expensive. However, like solar panels themselves, you can build a battery backup over time, adding batteries to it as you have the funds available. This makes the cost of a battery backup system more accessible, as you can use the savings from your energy bills to cover the cost of building it. The type of batteries usually used for a battery backup system are 12 volt deep cycle lead-acid batteries. These are similar to normal car batteries, with the exception that they are deep cycle. This type of battery is also used in boats and recreational vehicles, due to the high drain that gets put on the batteries in these applications. When we talk about deep cycle, we're talking about discharging the battery to half of less of its full charge potential. The problem with this is that doing so tends to destroy car batteries. To make up for that, deep cycle batteries have thicker plates and more space at the bottom. That way, the damage to the battery won't render it unusable. On the flip side of the equation, the cost of this is a more expensive battery that doesn't have as much of a charge capacity (when comparing batteries of the same physical size).

65 Another option for a battery backup array is to use Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion) batteries. Lithium-Ion has a much greater power density than lead-acid does, allowing you to store more energy, without the battery backup system taking over your home. However, Li-Ion batteries are still a relatively new technology, so are rather expensive. We can expect the price to come down over time, but as of this writing, they are about eight times the cost of lead-acid. The big question is how much battery backup power you need. If you have already done a home energy audit, you should have a pretty good idea. If all you're talking about is emergency power, you'll want enough to run your critical systems for a minimum of 24 hours. If you are planning on getting off the grid entirely, than you need enough battery backup power to power your home for at least 24 hours, during your peak power usage time of the year. In the north, that will be the coldest months of winter and in the south it will be the hottest months of summer. Batteries are rated a number of ways, but the specification you want is the one for amp-hours. A typical deep cycle battery will store somewhere between 25 to 50 amp hours of power. However, your home's electrical power usage is rated in kilowatt-hours. To convert from one to the other: Amps to watts: Multiply the voltage (12) times the amps; this will give you the watts Watts to amps: Divide the watts by the voltage (120); this will give you the amps To determine how many batteries of a particular type you need, simply divide your total power usage in kilowatt-hours, in a 24 hour period of time by the number of watt hours each battery provides. That will give you the number of batteries you need. Building a Battery Backup Array If you've already installed solar power and connected it to your home, you have most of what you need for your battery backup array. Back when we were talking about that, I mentioned that you needed a solar charge controller and a voltage inverter. The charge controller is essentially a battery charger, designed for charging 12 volt batteries from the output of a solar panel array. The voltage inverter converts the output of the batteries into the 120 volt AC power you need for your home. Please note that you will need a big enough voltage inverter to handle your home's power load. This may mean connecting more than one inverter in parallel, so that you have enough power. The charge controller needs to be big enough to handle the total power output (as measured in watts) of your entire solar panel array.

66 To add a battery backup to your existing system, simply disconnect the voltage inverter from the charge controller. Then, connect both of them to a battery, being careful to ensure that the positive wires go to the positive contact on the battery and the negative wires go to the negative contact. In the diagram below, the red lines represent the positive wires and the blue lines represent the negative wires. The single yellow arrow represents the AC power going out to your home. For multiple batteries, the only difference is to add more batteries to the system. These must be wired in parallel. In the diagram, you can see three batteries installed in the system. All of the positive battery contacts are connected together and all of the negative battery contacts are connected together. Even though the charger and inverter wires are only connected to the bottom battery, they will charge the batteries and draw current from them evenly.

67 Module Four Biogas If you do not live in an area where wind power is an option, or you are just not interested in generating electricity in this manner, then biogas might be for you. In any case, it is certainly worth looking into. While it is theoretically possible to make your own biogas digester, as you will see when we start describing the process, there s actually quite a lot to it. For this reason, unless you are just extremely adept at building and machining, going the do-it-yourself route is NOT recommended. Methane is deadly. You do not want to try making a homemade system and put your family at risk. Fortunately, there are several great turnkey systems available commercially. These will save you an enormous amount of time and effort, plus take all the guesswork out of the equation. Are Permits Needed? If you live inside the city limits, there may be some permit requirements, so you will want to check before you get too deeply involved in the project. Also, if you live in a neighborhood that has a home owner s association, you will definitely need to check their bylaws to see if this kind of thing is allowed. Also bear in mind that there s some odor involved with setting up this system. You are essentially cooking garbage and getting methane as a result of it. This is a micro-version of the same system that landfills use to generate methane. That is one of the ways that landfills help

68 defray their costs. The garbage is piled high enough that the debris most deeply buried stays hot enough to begin to digest in the same way it does in the digester system you mean to set up. That is why landfills are always constructed with underground pipes that vent the methane to the surface. The landfills then use this to power their operation, and sometimes sell the excess to the community. You are doing the same, exact thing, but on a much smaller scale. The potential problem though, is that it carries all the same downsides, and your neighbors may not appreciate your stinky attempts at generating your own power. How It Works Biogas works by creating methane, then turning that methane into useable power. In practice, what ultimately gets produced in the tank is about two thirds methane and one third CO2. Without doing anything else to it, the gas you will produce using such a system can be used to power any machinery or appliance that was designed to run on natural gas. If you do not have any appliances that run on natural gas, then you can use the gas produced to power a generator that will ultimately provide electricity. Note that if you decide you want to pursue this angle, then you will probably WANT to start investing in appliances that run on natural gas. The two biggest contenders here would be your water heater and/or your kitchen stove, though there are other options as well. To give you an idea of what s available, here are some examples of the gas powered stoves and water heaters you might be interested in:

69 Stoves: Controls/dp/B003JFT3XI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=8-1&keywords=gas+powered+kitchen+stove Gas powered tankless heater: Heater/dp/B001IBQN9M/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=8-8&keywords=gas+powered+water+heater A complete system: Natural/dp/B008DC1OYI/ref=sr_1_20?ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=8-20&keywords=gas+powered+water+heater The centerpiece of any biogas system is the digester. A digester is simply a tank into which biomass is fed in order to be digested. It is essentially the same thing as a compost pile, but totally enclosed to capture the methane gas that is being created. The organic process is the

70 same as well, as it is bacteria which are breaking down the biomass and turning it into useful methane gas. The digester tank is actually composed of two tanks an inner one and an outer one. The inner tank is the one where you feed the organic material to be digested. Typically, this includes things like kitchen waste, grass cuttings and other non-woody garden waste. You can even use manure (human, animal, or both), and in fact, this is recommended. You will want to create a slurry out of these components. To do that, simply mix your waste materials with a bit of water. In order to get the best results, you will want to grind the waste before it enters the tank. If you have decided to buy a turnkey system, you are in luck, because these will almost always come with a feedstock preparation chamber. That fancy name refers to nothing more than a food grinder, which works much like the garbage disposal under a kitchen sink. It grinds all the biomaterial added to fine particles, so that they can be digested and converted into methane gas faster. Once the digester is filled with slurry, the next step is cooking. The biomass slurry needs time to cook at around 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit). This is the ideal temperature for the bacteria which are performing the process of breaking down the biomass. At this "cooking" temperature their metabolism is the highest and they consume the most. As a result of consuming the biomass, they produce the methane you will be using for power. Temperature regulation is a fairly important part of the digestion process. Too hot, and the heat can kill the bacteria that are fermenting the slurry. Not hot enough and the bacteria's metabolism is slowed, leaving you with nothing but a big, smelly tank of goo. Turnkey systems come with an on-board heating system that helps regulate the temperature of the cooking chamber to a precise degree. Herein is the benefit in buying a turnkey system, rather than attempting to build your own. As the mixture cooks, gas flows from the digestion chamber into the secondary chamber, then into your home via pipes. At some point between the digester and your home there will be a small overflow chamber to catch water buried in the ground. Invariably, there s at least a little bit of water vapor in the gas that gets produced, and this small tank simply catches that vapor. While there are trace elements of methane and other chemicals in the water that collects, there s not a high enough concentration to be dangerous. Once the gas hits your house, you can use it as is, if you have appliances that run on natural gas, or, if you need to convert it into electrical power, you can feed the methane into a small generator that runs on natural gas to provide electricity for your home. In that case, during installation, you will want to route the pipe that runs from the digester to your home to the wherever you plan to locate the generator (in your garage, in an outbuilding near the home, etc.). In summary then, if you invest in a turnkey system, you will need the system itself, like this one:

71 And possibly a generator that runs on natural gas, like this: Generator/dp/B005NHQXDI/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=8-3&keywords=natural+gas+powered+generator That is it. That is really all there is to putting this type of system together. The hardest part is actually running the pipes to carry the methane gas you produce into your home. Unless you ve worked with natural gas before, you may want to hire a contractor to assist you with the installation. It is necessary that these pipes don't leak at all, to avoid any potential safety problems. Scaling Up Your Gas Production How much electricity you can make using this method depends entirely on how much scrap biomass (kitchen scraps, non-woody gardening debris, and manure) you generate on any given day. A typical family is not going to produce enough biomass per day to keep the system running at a rate that produces enough methane to meet your home's needs. It is necessary to have a few acres of land, along with a modest amount of livestock, in order to produce sufficient biomass to generate the methane you will burn on a daily basis, even without using it for electrical power.

72 Of course, that means collecting the manure from your livestock to feed to your biogas digester. If this sounds distasteful to you, this may not be the best system for you to use. There are other options which might be more appropriate to your needs. The other issue here is that although you may not outright NEED significant acreage in order to build the system, the more land you have, the less likely you will be to offend your neighbors (a point we talked above), but there are other reasons this system is better suited to people with acreage. If you and your family have a small farm, then the manure from any livestock or other animals you may have on your property will only add to the amount of biomass you generate to feed into the digester. You CAN make arrangements with your neighbors, offering to collect their unwanted biomass to further add to your stock and increase production, but here you may wind up ultimately being a victim of your own success. If they start to see what you are able to do with it, they re likely to want to set up their own system, and then you will lose your supply. That is kind of a happy dilemma though, because it means that you are system is working and other people are SEEING it working and want in on your success. In any case, as we ve explained, it is a great system, though like any other, it has its plusses and minuses, strengths and weaknesses. If you play to those strengths, you will be miles ahead.

73 Module Five Micro-Hydro People who own property with a source of flowing water on it, in the form of a stream or a river, are almost at an unfair advantage when it comes to generating their own electricity. If that describes you, then you are in luck. Micro-Hydro is hands down the cheapest, most cost effective method of generating your own power. That, however, is a bit of an oversimplification. Not just any stream will do. You see, the amount of energy you can get out of a hydroelectric power (regardless of its size) is dependent on two things. Head and Flow. Head describes the distance that the water falls from a given altitude. For every 2.31 feet of vertical drop in a pipe, 1 pound of pressure per square inch (psi) is created. Flow is a measure of how quickly the water flows, measured in gallons per minute, cubic feet, or some other unit of measure. The other variable depends on the kind of turbine you use to generate the electricity. Each turbine comes with an efficiency rating that can range from around nine to thirteen, depending on the size of the system you buy. If you want to determine amount of power you can expect from the micro-hydro system you are considering investing in, the formula is (head x flow) / efficiency factor x 24 (twenty-four hours in a day).

74 To put some real numbers into this, let s say your property has a stream with 100 feet of head, with a flow of 60 gallons per minute. The turbine you are looking at has a factor of 10. Plugging those numbers in gives you: (100x60)/10x24 = 14,400 watt-hours per day. Note that any time you divert water, even water flowing through your own property, the act of doing so is subject to both state and federal regulation, especially those of the EPA. So, you will need to get the appropriate permits before you get too far down the road of designing and building the system. Permits in hand, you can start getting down to the particulars of your specific system. Fortunately, there are calculators available to help you determine exactly what you will need. Having looked at dozens of them, I am partial to the one by Rocky Hydro, a copy of which has been included in these materials. It is just a matter of plugging in the values you started with, but modifying them slightly to account for things like the diameter of the pipe and the number of bends in it. Components of your Micro Hydro System The following are the various components that make up the system you will be building: The intake and screen This is the part of your system that feeds the water into your turbine, screened off to keep any debris that might be in the water from clogging the mechanics Penstock The pipe that carries your water to the turbine Turbine This is where the magic happens. The engine that turns water into electricity Control System Manages the turbine and various electrical components Metering System Monitors overall system performance Disconnects A safety feature. Basically an emergency shutoff that prevents your wires from being exposed to too much current As you can see, this system has more components (by far) than anything we ve looked at so far. Setting up and configuring a micro-hydro system is not a casual, do-it-yourself project, so unless you are in the business, you will almost certainly need to do some extensive investigation and

75 experimentation to create a system which will work for you; either that, or you need to hire a professional. The intake and penstock are readily available from most any hardware store, but the turbine, which is the central component of the system, is always custom built. Here s a link to a listing of good quality turbines and accessories to fit most any budget. If your needs are modest, you could try this one as well: It is possible to build your own turbine, but don't expect to get it right your first try. Some do-ityourselfers have succeeded in building their own micro-hydro systems, but in every case I've seen, they went through several iterations of their design, before they produced a satisfactory one.

76 Module Six - Sterling Engines/Energy Appliances You may not have given much thought to the Sterling Engine, but if not, you should. It is a remarkable technology that modern innovators have been able to really take to new heights. If you are not even sure what a sterling engine is, it is an external combustion engine. You ve undoubtedly heard of internal combustion engines. We use them for everything from lawnmowers to cars. The chief difference between an internal and external combustion engine comes down to fuel source. For an ECE, the fuel source exists externally to the system. Imagine a generator that draws its power by virtue of a fire burning. This external heat source heats the air within the sterling engine's regenerator cylinder. This excess air then travels to the working cylinder, where it drives the piston, causing the air to cool once again. The pistons of the two cylinders are connected together at the crankshaft, so as the working piston continues its cycle, it creates a vacuum in the regenerator and positive pressure in the working cylinder, drawing the air back into the regenerator to be heated once again. While this seems like a cumbersome process, it can happen hundreds of times per minute. Until quite recently sterling engines were a curiosity, more than anything else. People would build them as a science experiment or expensive toy. While there were a few commercial uses for sterling engines, you could hardly call them mainstream, even though there is at least one oceangoing ship powered by a sterling engine. But you d have been hard pressed to find

77 Sterling Engine energy appliances in the United States. They have been big sellers in Europe for a number of years now, but are only just starting to make an appearance here. There are now at least three companies in the US that make and sell them. You will need to call to get the dealer nearest you, but they re out there, and ready to be purchased. Most of them are about the size of a dishwasher, so can fit just about anywhere. One of the most compelling advantages with Sterling Engines as a technology is that It is fuel agnostic. The engine doesn t care WHAT kind of fuel you use to provide the heat it needs to run, only that the heat is present. That is good news for you, because it means you can use anything handy or convenient as a source of fuel. Some of the commercially manufactured sterling engines use natural gas exclusively, but this doesn t have to be a deal breaker. Even if you select one of these, you can simply employ the strategies in the Biogas module and make your own. Then, EVEN IF the grid fails, your lights are still on. Your life continues more-or-less uninterrupted. The fact that Sterling Engines can run be powered by most any fuel source makes the technology absolutely perfect in times of crisis. Should a crisis event happen, there s no telling what you might have on hand and readily available. Maybe you will have gas, maybe you won t. Maybe you will have wood, and maybe you won t. With a Sterling Engine, it won t matter. You can even power it with solar power. Any fuel source that will produce heat will allow you to be up and running while the rest of the world is mired in chaos. Is any other argument in their favor needed? I do not think so. Unless you live a minimalist lifestyle or are merely looking for an energy solution to be used in times of emergency, a Sterling Engine or an energy appliance based on this technology will not, by itself, be able to provide 100% of your power needs. At a minimum, you will need to combine it with biogas generation and have scale your production up appropriately. This is simply because these devices have to run on some kind of fuel, and the most common configuration available commercially is natural gas, which you are probably getting from some centralized, grid-based source. Some versions of these machines will provide sufficient power for your home, but you will pay a premium for these. It doesn t matter though; if you ve read this far, then you also know that it doesn t have to. ANY system that relies on a single source is, by definition and design, a fragile system and prone to failure. If you want to generate your own power and do so in a robust, sustainable and responsible way, then you are going to want to generate that power using a variety of technologies. Even if you have the ideal property for micro-hydro, and could generate more power than your family could ever realistically use from that one source, you d still be well served to (eventually) create a second power generation source. Conditions can change. An extended drought could

78 dry up your stream. An earthquake could take it away from you entirely. A sinkhole could even open up on the stream bed tomorrow and it ll be gone before you wake up. The point is, you're best off avoiding looking for a single point solution. Even if you found one, you would just be trading the current problem (described in the introduction) with another one that is every bit as dangerous to your family. Just say No to that kind of thinking. In any case, the commercial versions of these appliances are self-contained. There s nothing else you need to buy, and when you buy one from the dealer nearest you, the price comes with the setup and installation, so there s literally nothing for you to do but sit back and enjoy your newfound energy independence. Here are the companies currently selling these energy appliances in the United States: If you are looking for a more homegrown, cheaper, and smaller scale solution, consider the Volo. This device grew out of a Kickstarter campaign and is currently for sale. It is only good for 1kW, but again, if you lead a fairly minimalistic lifestyle, or plan to use a mix of energy

79 technologies to power your home (and you should, for all the reasons described above), then the Volo is a great addition to your energy production mix. Building Your Own Sterling Engine for Electrical Power As with just about anything else you can find, it is theoretically possible to build your own sterling engine and connect it to a generator. Remember when we were talking about building a wind turbine and I said that you can use a motor for a generator? That would work here as well. The problem with building a large enough sterling engine to produce even a portion of your own electrical power is that I haven't been able to find any plans available, where others have done so. I have seen some pictures of homemade ones, but the builders have not offered plans as of this writing. So, if you're going to build one, you'll need to do some experimentation. That's what I'm planning on doing, I just haven't gotten to that project yet. For a starting point, you can buy a kit to build a sterling engine. These kits are along the line of science experiments. As such, they are small and don't produce enough torque to really use them as a generator. But, building one would give you an understanding of the technology and how they are built. With that information, you could scale up the design, building one big enough to connect to a generator. As mentioned earlier, you can use literally anything as a heat source for your sterling engine. If you happen to live in a part of the country where you have a lot of sunlight, then powering it with solar power might be ideal. Using sunlight means that you wouldn't need to be worried about constantly feeding fuel to the sterling. All you would need is an array of reflectors that would ensure that the sunlight hit the regenerator and heated it, or a Fresnel lens to focus the sun's rays on the regenerator. A Final Note About These Kinds Of Devices These are co-generation devices. That means that they generate both electricity and heat. The way the system works, they can t generate one without the other. Since the heat that is generated won't be fully captured by the sterling engine, you'll need some way of dealing with the heat.

80 In a cold climate, that excess heat could be used to heat your home, providing dual duty and reducing your need to constantly search for fuel. However, if you live in a hot climate, then the obvious solution would be to put it in its own room (say, in a basement somewhere) so you can reap the benefits of the electricity without having to deal with the unwanted heat. This, however, will make the unit somewhat less efficient and effective for you, as you are ignoring one of the benefits engineered into the system itself. That is not necessarily a deal breaker, but it amounts to using these kinds of devices with one arm tied behind their back. It will also mean that it will take these devices longer to pay for themselves, so definitely keep that in mind and plan or buy accordingly. Combining These Kinds of Devices with Wood Burning Stoves While most of the commercial-grade cogeneration devices are set up to run primarily on natural gas, you can, of course, reconfigure them to run on other fuels. The Volo is probably the easiest of these to reconfigure, and there have been several sustainability bloggers who have reported success with combining these with wood burning stoves. Remember, Sterling Engines are EXTERNAL combustion engines. Their fuel supply resides externally. If you HAVE a wood burning stove, then you are either using wood or pellets (or some combination of the two) to power the stove. The same heat that the wood stove produces can ALSO power the Volo, which will generate electricity for your home and provide additional heat. Again, this kind of configuration works best when used in cooler climates. I do not know of anybody living in the southeast who relies heavily on wood burning stoves for either heat or power It is just not a necessity in that part of the country, so this is going to be a configuration That is most favorable, efficient, and effective in cooler parts of the country, but if you already have a wood burning stove, then adding a Volo to your home energy production mix is a good fit. In fact, we will treat wood burning stoves as a kind of subset of these types of cogeneration devices. Since they re not used to generate electricity (except in the configuration mentioned above), they re not firmly within the scope of the book, but they do deserve a footnote mention because if you have one, and you rely on it to satisfy your winter heating needs, then of course, you are specifically NOT relying on electricity, or any grid-based system to tend to that portion of your power generation needs.

81 There are really only two types of fuel for a wood burning stove. Wood, or pellets. You can buy pellets and get them pretty cheaply (here s a source, if you do not already have one: Grade/dp/B007XXJ7SS/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=8-2&keywords=pellets+wood+stove While pellets are actually more efficient when used in a wood burning stove, they do have one important limitation. That is, you have to stock the pellets. If you buy a stove that is specifically configured for burning pellets, you can't use regular firewood, without reconfiguring the stove first. That means that the stove won't be effective for heating your home in an emergency situation. So if you choose to use pellets, make sure that you have a stove which you can easily reconfigure to use firewood. The other fuel source is, of course, wood, and if you ve got a wood stove, then you ve probably already got a local source for wood, or you have a sufficient quantity of land that you are harvesting your own to keep your family warm. If that is the case, then you are miles ahead of those who are just starting out on their energy independence journey, because you are probably saving hundreds of dollars per year in heating costs. Wood Stove Limitations If you ve had, or ever used a wood stove, you have undoubtedly stumbled across their chief limitation; they do not circulate the air very well. It is blisteringly hot a couple feet from the stove itself, and cold in the rest of the house. To get around this, most people attach circulation

82 fans on or around their wood stoves. The best of these fans draw absolutely NO electricity to use. They are powered by the heat from the stove itself the exact same principle you can use to power your Volo Sterling Engine. When the temperature reaches a certain threshold, the fan begins to circulate, spreading the warm air through the home. As the fire begins to die in the stove, the temperature drops below the fan s operating threshold, and it shuts off automatically. This is a simple, ingenious device that can radically improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your wood stove; and I highly recommended it. Here s an example of the kind of fan I am talking about: Powered/dp/B00GXHUCQQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=8-2&keywords=wood+stove+fan This exact same mechanism can also be used to power the Volo Sterling Engine (mentioned above). To accomplish it, you simply run a pipe to channel the heat from the stove to the Volo. The hot air can then power the Volo, with the warmed air then being allowed into the home to help heat your home.

83 Module Seven Biodiesel Now we are going to shift gears a bit. We are still talking about energy generation, but this book would not, COULD not be complete without mentioning your car. The average American spends more than four thousand dollars a year on gas for their vehicles. Add that to the $1300 or more we spend on electricity, and you begin to see just how much of our annual budget is tied up in just keeping us moving and keeping the lights on. Having talked about a number of strategies to reduce your electric bills to zero, now let s turn to your car. Wouldn t it be great if there was a way you could get your gas for pennies on the dollar? Actually, there is! The process of making your own biodiesel is very well understood, and this is a project you actually CAN undertake as a Do It Yourself initiative, which we will talk about below. Before we get to that point, however, just like you did with your home energy needs, It is important to take a few moments to work out how much fuel you would actually NEED over the course of an entire year to power your vehicles. You can get a good estimate of the number of gallons of fuel you need by simply saving your gas receipts for a month, adding up the total number of gallons purchased, and multiplying by 12. That gives you a great estimate, and place to begin from. Once you know the number of

84 gallons you use, annually, you can then begin to picture the scope and scale of the operation necessary to make 100% of your own fuel. Once you actually SEE the number, you may decide that it would be too ambitious to make all of your own fuel; that is fine. The number is probably fairly daunting. The fact remains though, that you can make your own for far cheaper than you can buy it at the pump, so the more you can make, the more money you will save in the long run. Also, consider the various pieces of equipment outlined below. Making your own fuel does carry some pretty hefty up-front costs, so this is not something you should enter into casually. Only do it if you are prepared to attack the problem with gusto. I can guarantee you that your first few batches will be at least a bit frustrating, but stick with it. Once you ve mastered the process, you will find time per batch dropping dramatically. At first, it will seem like you are spending every waking moment just seeing to your family s fuel needs. Once you get some experience at it though, it won t take any longer than mowing the lawn or tending to your other household chores, and this particular chore pays you big dividends! You will need the following in order to complete the process and start making your own fuel: A reactor (you can either make your own, or buy a turnkey system)

85 A source of oil to convert to biodiesel Methanol (99% pure) Catalyst (Lye) potassium hydroxide (KOH) Beakers, a glass sampling vessel, and measuring pipettes Do not worry we will cover where and how to get each of these below: The Biodiesel Reactor This is the heart and soul of the system, and the single most expensive piece of equipment you will need. You will find reactors to fit most any budget. If you want to build the reactor yourself, you can do that. There are tons of designs available, but the most popular of these is the Appleseed Reactor. Its straightforward design makes it relatively easy to build, and the end result is a safe and effective means of producing biodiesel at home. You can find the plans all over the internet, but to save you time, you will find a link to the best, and most comprehensive plans I ve found online (complete with a parts manifest showing everything you will need for the build). Find it here: If you are not interested in building your own processing plant, or if you find the process of doing so to be a bit daunting, then you are in luck. There are a number of turnkey systems available. The very best of the best, however, is this one:

86 processor/dp/b00fh9vbx4/ref=sr_1_238?ie=utf8&qid= &sr=8-238&keywords=biodiesel That is a pretty expensive piece of equipment (though well worth it), but if it proves to be too much to lay out all at once, then they do offer a scaled down version: processor/dp/b00fh9uufe/ref=sr_1_52?ie=utf8&qid= &sr=8-52&keywords=biodiesel Again though that can represent a HUGE outlay for many families, and our goal is to make sure that no matter what your budget picture looks like, you can start making your own fuel without putting you into a financial tailspin, so if your budget won t support something top end like this, then here are a couple of more budget friendly options: Processor/dp/B00284DI46/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=8-10&keywords=biodiesel or processor/dp/b003zhj0lk/ref=sr_1_9?ie=utf8&qid= &sr=8-9&keywords=biodiesel Finding a Source of Oil Aside from the reactor itself, the biggest thing you will need is a steady, reliable source of oil to put IN the reactor. There are two primary ways to get a constant supply of oil. I recommend using method one first, while method two is coming to fruition. The first method is to source waste vegetable oil from area restaurants. Fast food restaurants are a great place to start. When they change out their oil, they re faced with an awful dilemma. Properly disposing of waste oil can be an expensive proposition. Often, they ll be willing to just GIVE it to you to get it off their hands. They win, because they do not have to pay for disposal. You win, because you get a free supply of a resource you need. All that is required is to go pick it up. That can be backbreaking work, because they tend to dispose of oil in bulk, so either drive with a friend when you make the rounds, or invest in a hand truck; preferably both.

87 The second method is to grow your own oil. If you are going to do that, then the next logical question is what plants do you want to focus on, in order to get a steady supply of oil? There are no right answers here, but in general terms, you want to focus on the plants that provide the most oil per plant or per acre. Implied in this equation, of course, is that you have enough land to do this effectively. Among the various choices here, the single most productive plant is the Jatropha tree. You can buy seeds here: DIESEL/dp/B00CG1M9RS/ref=sr_1_97?ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=8-97&keywords=biodiesel Of course, if you are going to go that route, then eventually, you will need a seed press in order to extract the oil from the nuts produced by your trees. It is counterproductive to use a gas powered seed press, so get a manual one like this: Expeller/dp/B00PANZEKS/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=8-6&keywords=screw+press If you do not want to waste time with a hand crank, you can get a hydraulic press to do the hard work for you.

88 Working/dp/B00F6G14M6/ref=pd_sim_sbs_indust_6?ie=UTF8&refRID=0MT6RETZT3C25820M PN4 Granted, you can go far beyond this, and buy machines that are specifically built for this kind of work, but the expense involved only makes sense if you are planning to scale up to the point that you turn it into a full time business. Unless you are planning to do that, then this setup is fine for home use. There are many other approaches you can use. Peanut oil, soybeans, algae the possibilities are virtually without limit. In fact, algae has been identified by the government agency NREL as having enormous promise. There s an extensive article on the subject here ( ) which outlines what they re currently doing with oil production and algae. If that is of interest to you, It is entirely possible to build your own photo bioreactor to grow large quantities of algae and run the biomass through your hydraulic press to extract the oil from it to make fuel.

89 Setting up A Homemade Photo Bioreactor Yes, you can buy commercial grade bioreactors to grow tons of algae, and over the course of this book, we ve mentioned a lot of turnkey systems. We do that when it makes sense to do so, and we recommend doing it yourself when THAT makes the most sense. The distinction is, when we make references to a do it yourself project, we want to make certain that the project we are recommending that you undertake is something that almost any do-it-yourselfer can do. We do not want to recommend starting a build that only a tiny fraction of our readers can actually, realistically hope to finish. Not to mention, in this case, a top quality bioreactor will set you back tens of thousands of dollars, while a homemade one can be built from mostly scrap. In this case, and especially since we are not dealing with hazardous materials in this case, the choice is obvious; homemade all the way. What you will need: An open, wire shelving unit A number of clear plastic bottles of uniform size (as big as you can get) Some number of 8-port sprinkler system manifolds and plastic tubing (count the number of bottles in your system and divide by 8 this is how many manifolds you will need) Step One Creating the CO2 Delivery System This simply amounts to attaching the plastic tubing to each of the eight ports of each of your sprinkler manifolds. CO2 is what s going to prompt and promote the growth of the algae in your photo bioreactor. Using a simple T-Connector, you will connect the sprinkler manifolds to a foot-long length of PVC. Step Two Mounting and Attaching Mount each of your CO2 delivery systems to the metal rack using zip ties and connect the other end to a small tank of CO2. Use a glue gun to mount your clear plastic bottles to the metal rack. Step Three Algae Growing Medium You can mix water and common gardening fertilizer to create a mixture that will allow your algae to grow and flourish. You can find algae for free in any pond, or mail order a specific type of algae if you want to experiment with different yields using different strains. Step Four Populating Your Bottles Fill each bottle with your nutrient mixture and a small amount of the algae you ve collected. The rest is up to Mother Nature.

90 Set your rack in a place where it will get plenty of sun. You will likely have to wait about two weeks before you can start harvesting. Depending on how much oil you want or need, you can build as many of these as you like. The biggest expense will be the racks themselves, though you can often find these for free on Craigslist. Failing that, you can make your own racks out of wooden shipping pallets and accomplish the same thing. The best part? Once you press the oil out of the algae, you can sell or use the remaining plant press cakes as feed for livestock; you can even use it as composting material for your garden, so there s no waste. And that really is all there is to it. Why spend thousands of dollars on a professional grade bioreactor when It is so easy to build a functional reactor at home? It just doesn t make sense to do it any other way. Sourcing the Chemicals You will Need for Biodiesel You can buy methanol in small batches (5-gallons) from Amazon, like this: Spout/dp/B003EE5GH6/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=8-3&keywords=methanol If you plan to make enough biodiesel to fuel all your vehicles though, and possibly run a generator to provide electrical power for your home, then you will want to buy in bulk to save money. Amazon won t sell it to you in bulk, so you will have to look elsewhere. Here is an alternative: When working with methanol, invest in a hand powered pump!! DO NOT use an electric pump, and do not use anything that can create a spark. If you do, you risk blowing yourself to high heaven. Do not do that. Safety first!! The type of hand pump you need is something like this: Unfortunately, Amazon doesn t sell potassium hydrochloride, but again, you can find this elsewhere online, and in bulk; The Other Equipment You will Need All of the other equipment is readily available online.

91 Beakers Interval/dp/B004DGIII8/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=8-6&keywords=beakers ml/dp/B006UKICJA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=8-2&keywords=beakers Measuring Pipettes Graduation/dp/B008FRFOS8/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=8-3&keywords=measuring+pipettes You will also want to perform a Titration Test on the finished product to check for quality and consistency. Catalyst/dp/B0039CRMI4/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=8-7&keywords=biodiesel Titration Test (Mostly For Waste Oil) The titration test is an extra necessary step when using waste oil that you are getting from a restaurant. Basically, the purpose of this test is to determine how much fatty acid is in the oil you are using. Free Fatty Acids can slow, or even stop the transesterification process, and there s bound to be more of these in used oil than fresh. Depending on the ph level of your oil (revealed by the Titration test), you will need to add more lye. Do not worry the kit we recommended will help you make that determination. The important thing is that you RUN the test! You may (this is optional, however) want to run the test even on fresh (unused) oil because all oils are somewhat different, and this will allow you to make fuel of a consistently higher quality.

92 Actually MAKING Biodiesel There are a number of biodiesel recipes on the net. If you buy a turnkey system, the instructions that come with whichever system you buy will probably include their own recommended recipe. If you build your own (Appleseed, or other) reactor, then you will need a recipe. Below is one of the simplest ones to follow, which will consistently yield high quality fuel. This process LOOKS complicated if you ve never done it before, but once you ve made a few batches, you will find that it is actually incredibly easy. We will start by describing the method for making a test batch of oil, 1 liter in size. When you scale up your operation, just multiply these values, depending on how much oil you will actually be working with for the batch in question. Here goes: What You Will Need For Your Test Batch 1 liter of vegetable oil (recommend just buying some from the store for your test batch) 200 ml of 99% pure methanol Lye catalyst (KOH) 92% pure A small blender A scale for accurately measuring 0.1 grams Separate measuring beakers for methanol and oil A half liter, translucent white (#2 plastic container with a screw-on cap 2 funnels that fit the container above 1 funnel for methanol 1 funnel for lye 2 liter plastic soda bottle (this, to be used for settling) Two 2-liter plastic soda bottles for washing Some duct tape A thermometer To start with, you are going to mix 5.33 grams of lye with 200ml of methanol. Shake this mixture gently by swirling in circles. Do NOT shake up and down. The goal here is to shake/swirl until the lye is completely dissolved in the methanol. With five or six swirling shakes, it can be ready to use in half an hour. Faster if you are swirling constantly. Heat your oil to 130 degrees and pour into the blender. With the blender OFF, add in your lye/methanol mixture. Secure the lid tightly and turn the blender on low. Mix for half an hour. You do not have to be exact here. If you run a little longer, it is fine.

93 Pour the mixture from your blender into the Settling bottle and screw the lid on tightly. You will observe that the bottle will begin to contract as the mixture cools. When that happens, unscrew the lid of the bottle to let more air in. This is perfectly normal. Allow your fuel to settle for at least twenty-four hours. The more time it has to settle, the better. You will see a dark colored layer on the bottom. This is the glycerin. The lighter colored layer at the top is your fuel. The exact color of your fuel will vary, depending on what kind of oil has been used. DO NOT be alarmed, as you experiment with different types of oil, to see that your biodiesel has a sometimes dramatically different color to it. Once the mixture has settled, carefully pour the fuel layer into one of your other bottles. If, during the pouring process, the glycerin gets mixed with the fuel, stop and let it re-settle before trying again. You DO NOT want glycerin mixed with your biodiesel. Perform a Wash Test

94 This is a simple test. Pour 150 ml of separated biodiesel in with a like amount of plain tap water. Shake vigorously for ten seconds. It will turn cloudy in color. Let sit overnight. If the fuel is good, then the water will sink to the bottom, and the biodiesel will rise to the top. There will be a clear, distinct line of separation between the two. If the mixture remains cloudy, then you do not have good fuel. Something has gone wrong and you need to start again. It can sometimes take a few tries to get the process right, especially if you ve never done anything like this before, but stick with it! There s a learning curve, sure, but the reward that waits for you at the END of the learning curve is that you will know how to make your own fuel, and that is a skill that no one can EVER take from you! If your fuel passes the washing test, then let it sit until it is clear. Once it is clear, it is ready for use. Put it into the tank of any vehicle that runs on diesel, and she ll crank right up! Byproducts You probably noticed in the process above, that producing your own biodiesel produces a byproduct that you do not want to run in your car (truth be told, you do not want it anywhere NEAR your engines, which is why you strain it off). The question/problem then, becomes what to do with it? After all, you will get some with every batch of fuel you make. It is considered a hazardous substance, and bad for the environment, so you can t just dump it into your lawn, or down the drain of the kitchen sink. If you do the former, then it will seep into your groundwater and pollute it. If you do the latter, not only will it clog up your drain, but it is a nightmare for waste water treatment plants to filter out. Worse, disposing of it properly can be expensive, so at first glance, it would seem that you have few good options. Wouldn t it be great if there was some way of putting it to good use? As it turns out, there IS! Glycerin can actually be used in a number of different ways, all of which are useful. We will outline a few of them below. In later sections, we will talk more about synergy, and when we do, we will mention glycerin again, but it bears a more thorough explanation here, in this section.

95 First, the stuff is an EXCELLENT degreaser. You can use it just as it is, exactly in the form that it comes out of your biodiesel processing tank. Yes, it ll leave whatever you apply it to (your hands, or anything else) smelling like diesel, but it does its job well. You can use it to make soap, but if you decide to go this route, you will need to purify it first. It makes great soap, but of course, the initial problem is that if you do not purify it, then your soap will wind up smelling like diesel fuel, and let s face it, nobody really wants to wash up with diesel-scented soap! The purification process mostly amounts to gradual heating in order to boil the substance down to pure glycerin. It is time intensive, but by the time you are done, you will have a high quality product that you CAN add scented oils to, in order to make soaps. But maybe you do not want to spend a couple days on each batch to purify it sufficiently to make soap. Or maybe you are not all that interested in making soap in the first place. I do not blame you. Soap is pretty cheap, and that seems to be a long, drawn out process for not very much gain. If It is your hobby, then great! You can secure a stable, reliable fuel supply for your family and gain raw materials to support your hobby too. That is win-win, but if you are looking for something else to do with it, then here s an even better idea. You can turn it into something you can burn in your wood stove (assuming you have one).

96 How, you ask? If you do any gardening, or like to work in your yard, then odds are pretty good you ve got a wood chipper that you use to either get rid of limbs and branches that you trim for easy disposal, or for making your own mulch. This is especially true if you have a nicely landscaped lawn, or are a serious gardener. The mulch can be used to surround your raised planting beds, to serve as the floor for your greenhouse if you have one, or merely as a decorative enhancement. Even so, you will probably have a fair bit left over. If you do not have a chipper, then maybe you do a bit of woodworking in your garage. The point though, is that there s probably something you do around the house that generates either wood chips or sawdust. You can take cardboard milk cartons, fill them two thirds full of wood shavings, chips, or sawdust and then top it off with glycerin. Give it some time to settle and set, and you can toss it into your wood burning stove as fuel. It ll burn hot, but not so hot that it will in any way risk damage to your system, and is a great way to get a fire started on those cold winter days. Here again, we see how the various strategies presented in this book work together to create a seamless, cohesive whole. That is where the real power and beauty of this book comes from. It is one thing to make your own biodiesel to fuel your cars. It is another to make enough to both fuel your cars AND power a generator that provides electricity for you and your family. It is still another if you do all of that AND use the byproduct from making the fuel to power your wood stove, so that you provide heat for your family, reducing the total amount of electricity you need to produce over the course of a year. You begin to see, I hope, the awesome power of these various systems all working together. If that doesn t get you excited about the future, then few things will! This is the kind of thing that makes providing for your own power needs so rewarding. This is where you really start to see the fruits of your labors coming together and paying big dividends. Some Notes About Biodiesel Biodiesel tends to be harder on rubber seals than regular diesel. They make fuel additives you can add to your tank periodically to help lessen this effect, but it won t ever completely be rid of it. This is not an argument against using biodiesel, simply a cautionary note that you will need to pay slightly closer attention to the maintenance of your vehicles. Also, it should go without saying, but we will specifically mention this here if you buy one of the turnkey bioreactors, most of these steps are done for you. With the BioPro, for example, all you do is add the chemicals in at the start and push the button. It handles everything for you

97 automatically, mixing the chemicals in at the appropriate time and washing the fuel after. To get the glycerin out of the system, there s a simple spigot on the bottom. You just fill a five-gallon bucket till what s coming out of the spigot turns light in color and you are done. The Biopro even comes with a gas station style fuel pump to get the diesel from the reactor to your car.

98 Module Eight Generators In this section, we are going to tie Module 7 back into the topic of home power generation. In the last section, we showed you how you could build a system to make fuel for your car for around fifty cents a gallon. There s absolutely no reason you couldn t ramp up the production of your biodiesel and use it to run a generator to provide power to your home. In fact, using your cheap biodiesel in this manner would allow you to generate electricity for your home at prices that would be far cheaper than what you d pay the power company. Remember though, that biodiesel has a shelf life of about three months. If you haven t used it by then, it will start to lose its potency, so if you are making more than you can use by driving, then it make sense to find some other use for it. Normally, using a generator is a very inefficient means of producing power for your home. They use a considerably amount of fuel and you have to purchase that fuel. However, when combining a diesel generator with a biodiesel system, you have a very cost-effective means of producing electricity; something that could even serve you during a time when the grid is down. When we talk about generators, we're really talking about two different types of generators; portable generators and whole-house generators. Both are used to provide power in the case of an emergency and neither should be used as a constant source of off-grid power. The main difference between the two, besides wheels, is that a whole house generator is permanently attached to the home's power and turns on automatically when the power goes out.

99 Just to give you an idea of the cost of running a generator, a typical portable generator, say one that produces 4.5 Kw, will burn about one-half to one gallon of gasoline per hour. So, you're looking at a minimum of $35 per day to produce electricity, and that's nowhere near enough electricity to power your home.

100 Whole house generators are much larger, able to produce enough electrical power for the entire home; but they are very expensive to run. A 15 Kw whole house generator (which is actually a pretty small one), will consume about 200 cu ft/hr of natural gas. With a cost of $10 per 1,000 cubic foot, it would cost $48 per 24-hour day to operate it. But one that runs off of LP gas is even worse. The same size whole house generator running off of LP gas uses 85 cu/ft of LP per hour. That works out to a cost of $ per day. If you have a 500 gallon LP tank, it will hold enough gas to last 8 3/4 days. Due to the high cost of operations, using any sort of a fuel-burning generator for your off-grid power is unrealistic, unless you are producing your own fuel for it. Then, for every gallon of fuel you burn, you're saving money that you don't have to pay the electric company. People who put in whole house generators aren't thinking about energy efficiency or saving money on their energy bill; they're thinking about keeping their home powered in the case of a short-term emergency. But those whole house generators won't do them the least bit of good in a long-term emergency, as they will run out of fuel to burn. In that case, they'll need some of the other methods of generating energy that we are talking about.

101 Systemic Synergy Bear in mind that you can buy generators that run on a variety of fuels. Sure, you pay a little more for these upfront, but they more than make up for it in their sheer flexibility. I am sure you can see where I am going with this. If you ve got a biogas digester up and running, as well as making biodiesel, there s no reason why you can t alternate between the different fuel sources, depending on which one you have more of on hand at the moment. What we are talking about here is synergy. The mathematical proof that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Buckminster Fuller proved this mathematically, then went on to design a radically different kind of home based on the concept. You may have heard of the Geodesic dome. It lies outside the scope of this book, but is worth at least mentioning for a couple of reasons. First, the design encloses more habitable space for less material than any other design in existence. Second, the bigger you build a dome, the stronger it gets. There s a reason that Arctic observation sites are built using the technology. Even a modest sized dome can withstand hurricane force winds without any significant stress to the structure. The same concept of synergy holds true here. You will find that the energy production system you are building gets stronger, the more components you add to it. It can turn into almost a game, an obsession; with you constantly tweaking and improving your system to make it more and more robust and useful to you and your family. We mentioned this in an earlier module, but it bears repeating here. One of the goals, as you build your system, should be to make the various parts work together, in harmony. They all work together to a slight degree of course, in that every component you add to your personal power generating system all work toward the common goal of providing power for you and your family, but you can clearly go far beyond that. Running a biogas digester to create methane that powers your Sterling Engine for electricity is one example. Adding a wood stove to provide another potential power source for that same Sterling Engine is another. If you do any gardening, then you ve probably got a wood chipper to make your own mulch, in which case, you can use the wood chips as-is in your wood stove... more synergy. You can go even further. If you are making your own biodiesel, then one of the byproducts you are left with is glycerin. As mentioned in the section on biodiesel, one of the things you can do with THAT is to combine it with wood chips (from your chipper) in a cardboard milk carton to create your own fuel logs for your wood burning stove.

102 In doing all of these things, you create a highly interwoven, incredibly efficient system where all the component parts are helping each other, and where everything is working together seamlessly to produce more power, more easily and efficiently than you ever thought possible. This then, is the ultimate end point; the ultimate goal of CREATING such a system in the first place. The bottom line is that you want to keep your family safe, and you understand that one of the best ways you can do that is to find ways of producing and providing for all your own electrical needs. The problem though, is that in doing so, you do not want it to become a huge time sink. You want to be sure that you are designing a system that works with and for you, not one that requires you to sink huge amounts of time into its maintenance and continued operation. Ultimately, that is why synergy matters.

103 Module Nine Other Components Having looked at a total of seven different power generation systems, and spent some time looking at how they can be made to work together, you might be wondering what s next? What else is there that could possibly be said on the topic. Energy independence is a much larger topic than can even be fit into a single volume, so the one thing you can be sure of is that there s NEVER a shortage of things to talk about! If you look back at the first couple of sections, one thing becomes strikingly clear. There are two basic TYPES of technology that help you attain energy independence. Technologies that help you cut the amount of electricity you use (such as LED lightbulbs, compact fluorescents, the smart power strips, and so forth), and technologies that help you GENERATE electricity. A properly assembled energy production matrix includes plenty of examples of both types of technology, which is why you have seen so many of each listed throughout this book. What you ll find in this section is a collection of wonderful alternate energy powered gadgets and gizmos that will surprise you. Sometimes they ll amuse you, but mostly they ll amaze. Many people, uncertain of how, if, or whether they re ready to undertake this journey, will start right here in this section, buying a few products that accomplish specific goals. This is perfectly acceptable. In fact, when you think about it, it s not so different from what we described in the module on solar power, when we recommended that you start by installing enough panels to heat your water. Same exact principle, but on a smaller scale. If you re not comfortable, or ready to make the leap, then by all means, play around with some of the things we talk about

104 here. Once you see exactly what they can do for you, it ll build your confidence to undertake larger projects. Moser Lamps Want to install free lighting in your home or workshop? It s easier than you might think, and it involves something that s almost ridiculously low tech. Invented by Alfred Moser to provide free lighting for African villages, this is nothing more than a clear plastic bottle filled with a mixture of water and bleach. The purpose of the bleach is to keep the water clean and clear. These are suspended in holes in the ceiling, sealed with caulk to make them watertight. Sunlight shines down, hits the water and is diffused by it, illuminating the room below. Each one produces light equal to a 40 to 60 watt bulb. This is a really fantastic little invention that can save you a ton of money. It s not for everyone, but if you lead a minimalistic lifestyle, this just might be the perfect way for you to get started on your quest for energy independence. Recharging Your Devices

105 Let s start with something we can all get a lot of value out of. These days, everybody has at least one handheld smartphone, tablet or other device, and possibly more, right? You may have heard of solar powered recharging devices but not really thought much about them. This, however, is a FANTASTIC way to begin your journey toward energy independence. It s a small step, sure. But on the other hand, every little bit helps, and every time you use your phone, you can do so with a smile, knowing that the power it s running off of is absolutely free. Here s an example of what I m talking about. _-pla-_ &mr:trackingcode=7b a6c-e211-ba78-001b21631c34&mr:referralid=na&mr:device=c&mr:adtype=plaonline&mr:ad= & mr:keyword=&mr:match=&mr:filter= &msid=xqxkimki_dc pcrid Solar Powered Window Socket Sure, there are solar powered chargers, but this little device is unlike anything you ve ever seen. It s in the same spirit as the solar powered chargers for your handheld devices, but this one takes it to the next level. You can attach it to any convenient window, and plug in. Voila! You re charging, or, if you re not charging, then you re up and running. It s innovative, and REALLY handy, especially if you travel frequently. How many times have you been in a café, coffee house or airport without a single power outlet in sight? All you have to do is whip this out of your pocket and attach it to the window. Again, this is a small thing. Handheld devices don t eat up a lot of power. Even so, it s an important first step on the road toward your energy independence, and you ll quickly find it to be an indispensable tool.

106 Multi-Tool This is another variant on the recharge your devices idea, but it comes with some extras that makes it worth mentioning. It s got enough solar panels to reach a full charge in four hours, and can fully recharge one handheld device. In addition though, it s got a flashlight (also solar powered and rechargeable), and a USB fan. A pretty versatile little piece of equipment. A Hand Cranked Charger One more type of charger for your handheld devices, and this one deserves a special mention because sometimes, you need a bit of power and there s just none to be had. If the sun is hiding and you ve got no other options, then brute force and a little elbow grease can have you back in business in next to no time. If you re a survivalist or a minimalist, then you ll especially love this device. Again this tech won t move the needle much for you on your quest for energy independence, but every little bit helps. In this case, you re saving energy by providing it yourself... the old fashioned way.

107 Solar Powered Stereo Stereo might be overstating the case a little, but we wanted to showcase a broad array of devices to demonstrate just how far solar technology has come. These speakers produce surprisingly good quality sound. It s Bluetooth compatible and has ports that will allow you to plug your favorite handheld devices in for music on the go, anywhere you are. A fairly robust, ingenious little device, and another great addition as you inch your way closer to your energy independent future. Wireless/dp/B007HSOB4O/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=1-2&keywords=solar+powered+speaker An Alternative to Solar Panels Some of our more aesthetically-minded readers might not like the look of solar panels, and for that reason, you might be somewhat reluctant to have them hanging all over your roof. If that describes you, then you re in luck. There s an alternative that is much lower profile. Solar shingles. If you didn t know they existed, then check these out. A fantastic alternative to consider.

108 A Green Golf Cart/Runabout Depending on what part of the country you live in, or if you have property, you may have (or want) a golf cart or small, light utility vehicle. If you re interested, you can get a fantastic little vehicle that is fondly referred to as The Big White Egg. It s formal name is the ELF, and it s a delightfully weird cross between a 3-wheeled bicycle and a minimalistic electric car. It comes with its own solar panel running across the top. This cute little contraption gets fifteen miles to a full charge, and has a top speed of around twenty miles per hour. You can either plug it in to charge it up, or let the solar panels work their magic. It even comes with turn signals, not that you ll need them for cruising around on your property, but they could come in handy if you live in a residential neighborhood. Well worth a look! Home Appliances The task of providing all your own power in one go can seem so daunting that you might feel as though it's a project you can never succeed at. It's just too big. The total power you need can seem utterly overwhelming. It's actually not, but it can certainly feel that way. One approach that some people have found success with is the idea of eating the elephant, one bite at a time. Rather than trying to get off the grid all in one go, start at a smaller scale. There are a variety of individual appliances that have been outfitted with solar panels and can be run entirely from the power of the sun. By gradually replacing your existing appliances with these, you can eventually take much of your home off the grid, without actually putting in an off-grid power system. Solar Powered Refrigeration This refrigerator is much more than it appears. While it requires five hours of sun a day to maintain its full charge, it also has a sufficient battery backup that will enable it to run for a full week with no charge whatsoever, once it has reached peak charge capacity. Basically, it's an entire solar power system, with battery backup, built into a chest-style refrigerator. NASA had a hand in its creation, so this is a solidly engineered piece of equipment. They make these fridges in a range of sizes, so whatever your needs are, there s one big enough to meet them. A truly fantastic way to break into solar, and start making a meaningful difference in terms of generating your own power.

109 W/dp/B002EOZF2S/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=1-1- catcorr&keywords=sundanzer+solar+refrigerator You can also find a broader range of fridges AND freezers that run off of solar power here: Solar Powered Cookers and Stoves Most people like grilling and cooking outside. If you re one of those people and want to try something other than your traditional gas grill, then there are a variety of solar powered ovens and cookers you can experiment with. Here are two great examples. Thermometer/dp/B008SGB2KU/ref=sr_1_3?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=1-3&keywords=solar+cookers or

110 Building Your Own Solar Cooker Solar cookers are another place where you can do it yourself, saving money and enjoying a nice project at the same time. All solar cookers work by concentrating the sun's rays and focusing them on the food to be cooked, or at least on the pot or pan which is holding the food. Quite a bit of heat can be produced in this manner, enough to melt soft metals, such as pennies. Simple Solar Oven The solar cooker shown above is really a simple solar oven. It works by reflecting the sun's rays towards the food to be cooked or dehydrated. You can do the same thing with a cardboard box and some aluminum foil. The entire inside surface of the box needs to be coated in aluminum foil, shiny side up. This is easier to do if you find the seam where the box is connected together and deconstruct it. Once you have it coated in aluminum foil, you can reattach it at the same point with hot melt glue (that's what it was originally attached with). As much as possible, you want to keep the aluminum foil smooth, while attaching it to the inside of the box. This is virtually impossible, but the smoother it is, the better it will reflect the sun's light. Use a spray adhesive to attach the aluminum foil and cut the foil with scissors, rather than using the cutter built into the box. That will help reduce wrinkling. The food to be cooked is placed in the box and the box placed in the sun. Adjust the position of the box flaps, so that the most possible sunlight is reflected onto the cooking pot. Ideally, your cooking pot should be black, so that it will absorb as much sunlight as possible; cast iron is great for this. You can also contain the cooking pot in a oven roasting bag or cover the mouth of

111 the box with clear plastic wrap. Either one will work to help trap the heat generated inside the box, where it will cook the food. In the solar cooker shown in the picture, a second box was cut to make a frame for stretching the plastic wrap on. This allows the solar cooker to be opened to check the condition of the food being cooked, without having to redo the plastic each time. If you are going to do this, use a box that is just marginally smaller than the cooker for the frame. The space shown in the photo is actually too much; it was made that way for illustration purposes only. This type of cooker is a slow cooker, like a Crockpot. It is ideal for making stews, chili, soups or even cooking a roast, as long as you start early enough. Check the condition of the food you are cooking from time to time, as well as verifying that no shadows have covered the cooker. Parabolic Solar Cooker The parabolic cooker greatly increases the efficiency over the simple solar cooker, by ensuring that all the sunlight is reflected directly to the cook pot. Being made from a parabolic dish, it can reflect the sun's light much more perfectly. That results in more heat and faster cooking. Parabolic solar cookers are available commercially, but you can also make your own. To do so, you'll need an old satellite television antenna; the large ones they used to use. In fact, the larger it is, the more heat it will generate. Find someone who has one they're not using anymore and offer to haul it off for them. The parabolic dish of the antenna is just a big reflector. The actual antenna is the thing sticking out in front of it. There is a small antenna there, on the end of the arm, at the exact focal point of the parabolic dish. That position is important, as you will want to put your cook pot in the exact same position. To convert your satellite dish into a parabolic solar cooker, you need to coat the entire inside surface with aluminum foil, shiny side up. Once again, this is best done with spray adhesive, so that you can minimize wrinkling. Cut the aluminum foil into two or three inch squares for gluing. Any bigger than that and they will wrinkle as you try to smooth them onto the curved surface of the parabolic dish. There is no problem with the pieces of aluminum foil overlapping, just as long as they are stuck down.

112 You will need some sort of a stand to hold the parabolic dish, as well as a stand for the cook pot. Ideally, the stand should hold the dish at the same angle discussed for the solar panels in that module. That will allow the dish to reflect the most sunlight. The stand for the pot is usually a bit more complicated to make, than the stand for the parabolic dish. I have seen a wide variety of stands, including freestanding units, like the one in the photo. One of the best I've seen was a net, made of cord, loosely stretched over the opening of the parabolic reflector. That allowed the pot to be placed anywhere, to accommodate the movement of the sun. Another excellent one was an arched metal rod, from which a pot could be hung by a wire bail. Fresnel Lens Solar Cooker Solar cookers made out of a Fresnel lens are the most efficient. These are the ones I mentioned, which can produce enough heat to melt a penny. The secret is that they focus the sun's rays extremely well. A Fresnel lens is just a big magnifying glass. You've probably seen one at some time. They look like a sheet of clear plastic, which is textured on the back side. That texture is a series of ridges forming concentric circles. Each one magnifies only a small portion of the image, but when seen with the eye, it looks like one continuous image. Small ones are commonly sold for people who have poor vision, so that they can magnify small print, such as in phone books.

113 You can buy a large Fresnel lens on ebay or salvage one from an old-style big-screen TV. Before the current flat screen technology was developed, the only way you could have a bigscreen TV was to buy one that took up the whole corner of your living room. Those units projected the image onto the screen, either from the front or from the back. The kind we want, which was by far more common, are the ones that project the image onto the back of the screen. If you take the screen apart, you find it is made of several layers. One of those layers, farther back, is a large Fresnel lens, the size of the screen. In the photo below, the Fresnel lens used is 20" x 30", but you can find bigger ones as well. The lens is flexible, so it needs to be mounted in a frame and the frame mounted to some sort of a stand. In this case, I've chosen to make the lens swivel at the vertical midpoint, so that it can be adjusted to the angle of the sun throughout the year. The stand is made of wood and is selfsupporting, allowing it to be used anywhere in the backyard. The lens must be used with the textured side towards the food you are trying to cook. If it is reversed, you won't be able to get a focused point of light. While the angle of the lens needs to be adjustable, it also needs to be able to be held constant. This was accomplished by putting a rubber washer between the lens frame and the stand. The bolts holding the frame to the stand are molded into knobs, making it easy to adjust them. They tread into threaded inserts which

114 are installed in the frame. Once the angle is adjusted, the knobs are tightened, holding the lens at the right angle. You will also notice a separate stand for the pot to go on. That's the black circle with the X in it (no, it's not the X-Men logo). This is mounted to a threaded rod, which goes into a stand, which has an X shaped base. The top of the base, where the threaded rod is installed, has a nut welded in place. This allows adjustment of the stand's height. The focal point of this Fresnel lens is about two feet from the center of the lens. That's where the food needs to be or the pot which is being used to cook the food. The easiest way to find this point is to put a piece of cardboard about where the stand is and move it closer and farther from the lens until the smallest possible point of light is found. That's the place where the food needs to be. One precaution however, if you aren't quick enough, the cardboard will catch fire. This type of solar cooker is much quicker than the others. I've actually seen an egg cook in just over a minute with it. That's because of the high concentration of sunlight, providing a considerable amount of heat. You must take care when using this type of cooker, as it is extremely easy to overcook your food. Exotics A Word of Warning When you start down this road, on the path to your energy independence, you ll invariably find yourself doing independent research. When you do that, you ll see all sorts of people promising all sorts of things. Secret inventions originally made by Nikola Tesla that promise limitless power. Perpetual motion machines. Strange magnetic devices invented by people who promise the world, but never wind up delivering on what they promise. There are probably more hucksters on the net than there are people pushing genuine solutions, so you ll undoubtedly cross paths with them. It can be hard to both keep an open mind and maintain a healthy dose of skepticism, but it is something you must do. There are probably more people on the net hawking their pie-in-the-sky miracle inventions than there are people selling legitimate tech, so it s not hard to run afoul of them. What makes that problem worse is the fact that most people, especially when they first start out on the road to their energy independence, don t really know much about energy or energy technologies. That s why it s so easy to get caught up in the hype. The bottom line though, is that if something sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. Anybody who promises you unlimited anything is probably just trying to separate you from your money. Don t let it happen. Just remember that no matter what people promise you on the net, there s no getting around the laws of thermodynamics. That just can t be done. Tesla didn't do it either, regardless of what anyone tries to tell you. Anybody who pretends otherwise is feeding you a line.

115 In this report, we ve tried to take all the guesswork out of the equation by demonstrating real, viable, working technologies that you can begin to implement right NOW. Today. Now its true, some of the technologies we ve talked about here seem almost magical. The LED lights developed by MIT that are more than 200% efficient sounds like something from the future. But the future is here in that case. The R5 from Sandia labs that can generate liquid fuel to power your vehicle from thin air (albeit, at only 2% efficiency). Another future technology that's here today, although in this case, it's not ready for market yet. The difference though, is that we've explained how and why they work, and provided links to the labs conducting the research. These aren t random guys in a basement who have promised a groundbreaking, world changing breakthrough, these are some of the most well respected labs in the nation. I m not saying that guys in their basements can t make breakthroughs. Sure they can. Apple computer started in a garage. So did Xerox. The guy that designed the Volo Sterling Engine did it from home (it began life as a Kickstarter campaign, and is highly recommended), but the reality is that those are the exceptions, and not the rule. What I don t want to happen though, is I don t want to see you make any wrong turns get taken in by someone s hype and wind up investing your time and money on a technology that promises the world and never quite delivers. All that will accomplish is to see you spend your hard earned money on unproven tech, and ultimately make you throw your hands up in frustration and just give up. This is too important to give up on, which is why we ve been so careful to only recommend PROVEN systems and technology. Putting It All Together And with that, we ve reached the end. Or rather, the end of the beginning. If you ve read this book from the first page to this point, you are now an armed and dangerous citizen, and I mean that in the very best of ways. You know have everything you need at your fingertips to build your own personal energy supply for you and your family. You can weather any storm, and keep your family safe; living the life that you are accustomed to, no matter what is going on in the world around you. Even if the grid falls apart completely, you and your family will be living in an island of calm, with access to all the modern conveniences you have right now. You will be beholden to no one, and no one can take away the power and the FREEDOM that you have gained for yourself. In addition to that, you will have helped make America (or whatever country you are living in) safer. You will have accomplished this by helping to decentralize the grid. You may even become a net power producer, supplying a portion of the electricity that your friends and neighbors use to keep THEIR lights on.

116 As you have seen in the pages that have come before this one, there are a STAGGERING number of technologies you can use RIGHT NOW, today, to begin building your way toward a totally independent energy future, one small step at a time. Yes, it s a big task. Yes, there s time and effort involved in getting to that point, but the rewards are worth it. They are so incredibly worth it! When you begin your journey, taking those first tentative steps along the path, you may not notice much of a difference at first. You re changing a few lightbulbs, investing in some high-tech power strips, making a handful of other tweaks and changes along the way, maybe investing in some new high tech gadgets for yourself to power specific devices. You ll reach a point where it will probably feel like you re just spinning your wheels, but then, almost as if by magic, you will find that your power bill has inexplicably dropped. Things are beginning to work. Your project is gaining momentum. Except, of course, YOU know that it s not magic at all. The drop you see in your power bill will have come about as the direct result of your diligence and hard work. You ll know, of course, that there s much more to be done, but suddenly, rather than feeling as though you re spinning your wheels, you ll be energized and amazed by how far you ve come! Once you start seeing the tangible results, you ll be energized, and will redouble your efforts to get to the end point. The main thing to remember about distributed power generation, and distributed society in general (which you will be a proud part of), is that you re almost certain to be deriving your family s electrical needs from multiple sources, rather than just the single, amorphous grid that you re currently getting all your power from. That s one of the things that some people find a bit scary when they think about taking on the mantle of the awesome responsibility for generating their own power. There are lots of balls to juggle. Even a modestly sized power generating system will have a fair number of moving parts, and almost certainly be made up of at least two or three different components. DO NOT let that frighten you, however. The way we ve designed this course, all you have to do is assemble the pieces in one place. The knowledge you ve gained here will enable you to know the WHAT, WHY and in some cases the HOW. For the rest, you'll have to outsource to professionals who deal with this everyday; there s not a thing in the world wrong with that!

117 Pay special attention to the section on systemic symmetry. Don t get me wrong. ANY power system you put together using these methods will work for you and enable you to generate all the power your family will ever need. Once you start seeing the symmetry of several of your components working seamlessly together, each supporting the other, you ll see the overall effectiveness and efficiency of your system explode. That s when you ll know you ve really arrived. That s when you ll know you ve arrived, so to speak. Don t think, however, that once you ve put the final touches on your personal power system, that you re in any way finished. This the idea of energy production, is just the beginning. From here, your options and opportunities are limitless. Have you considered, for example, modern homesteading? Starting with a blank slate, using everything you ve learned, both here, and during the practical application of building your first system to create a custom-built house for you and your family one that is more solidly and efficiently constructed than ANYTHING you can find on the market today? Have you considered seeing how much of your own food you can grow, even if you don t have much land to work with? We have invented our own, hybrid, small footprint, ultra-high-yield farming methodology that will BLOW YOUR MIND, and even better, it s just one of the methods of growing food that we can teach you.

118 What about planning, constructing and owning your own micro-factory? One that can be used to build virtually anything you can envision, all from the same factory space, and all contained in a space about the size of a two car garage. Sound impossible? Not at all. In our companion courses to this work, we can introduce you to technologies and ideas that will BLOW YOUR MIND. As with what you ve learned in this course, the things we will teach you are all possible right now, TODAY. You just have to know what they are, where to look, and how to assemble the individual components to create a cohesive SYSTEM. We can guide you through that, step by step, showing you everything you need to know to make it a success. There s one more section to go. It s a summary. A series of checklists so that when you settle on a given strategy for generating your own power, everything you need will be right at your fingertips, and you won t have to go digging around through the book itself. We d love to hear from you, so as you claw your way closer to the completion of your system, DO let us know your experiences. We d love to hear from you as you work toward gaining your energy independence.

119 Module Ten Checklists Whew! Okay, so we ve covered a tremendous amount of material here, and to save you some time, we ve assembled all the links to various components you will need, and a quick series of checklists to make sure you do not miss anything when setting up your system. This saves you from having to go digging about in the book, looking for the specific components you need. Initial Steps Swap out current lightbulbs with compact fluorescents or LED s Invest in a number of smart power strips like the Tricklestar to help kill phantom loads Consider swapping out computers and PC s with handhelds, phablets or all-in-ones to save power As you begin to replace large appliances, purchase the most energy efficient models Conduct a personal energy audit for your home (use the included spreadsheets to do this) Wind Power Here are the important steps to keep in mind when building a wind-based power system for your home. Bear in mind that the official recommendation is that you have at least an acre of land to work with, but of course, you are free to build your system with less land than this.