A Scotsman living in Japan
This is a guest post by a good friend of mine who goes by the name of Mr. Dirty Boots. He runs a blog all about self sufficiency which discusses how technology can be used to help us live independently. His current interests include harnessing the sun's energy with solar panels. The sun's energy can be harnessed to power things like solar exterior lights. Here goes:
More than 5 years ago myself and my partner moved to a remote mountainside home in Spain. For a few years we spent all our time renovating the stone cottage until it was at least habitable. From the very beginning we have lived totally off grid using solar panels to power all our appliances and lighting.
There are many misconceptions about running a home using solar panels so here I want to explain the realities behind living with no electricity bills and explaining the sacrifices you may have to make if you choose to live a similar lifestyle.
Many people think of solar as almost impossible to live with. They believe that to run a home they must spend an absolute fortune on a massive solar array. I have found that it can be done for a fairly low cost if you change the way you live to some degree. Of course, the more panels you have the more appliances you can run, and factors such as the number of people living in the house will certainly be a large factor to consider.
Myself and my partner have learned that although you do have to change the way you use your power supply you can still have most of the modern conveniences while using only the power of the sun. Here is our system:
This is a very basic system and with the prices now so much lower than they ever were you can buy lots of cheap solar panels that makes living off grid a much more viable proposition.
There are many changes that we had to make however. We use energy efficient laptops rather than a power hungry monitor and tower system. We use a cold wash on the washing machine with eco wash balls rather than detergent. I was truly amazed that this still gets clothes clean but it does work. We use minimal power because we do not use the expensive hot wash that is very power hungry.
We also have a gas cooker rather than electric which would have meant a much more expensive Inverter and more panels. We never leave anything on standby when not in use. We only have energy efficient light bulbs.
We also have a gas fridge, but I am less than happy with this. It uses a lot of gas and was very expensive. As of now I have been looking in to going back to electric for a fridge and soon am going to put a very innovative idea in to practice. As normal fridges consume thousand of watts a day the alternative is to buy a chest freezer and via an inexpensive temperature controller you can effectively turn it in to a fridge. The result is that as it is so well insulated and the door opens up, thereby leaving the cold air sinking to the bottom it will only consume a few hundred watts a day, which can easily be run on solar.
These are just a few of the easy ways that we have changed our lifestyle to rid ourselves of costly electricity bills and to be able to still use all the modern conveniences we have all got so used to. Looking on Amazon I am just amazed how much lower in price solar panels are now than five years ago when we bought our system. Even more reason why you should consider at least running part of your home via solar.
06.01.2010. 04:46