# My Solar/Wind Home Addition



## JeffNY001 (Apr 6, 2008)

Hello All,

I am new to the forum. I have started trying to figure out if I can make my home (and maybe my next car) energy independent. Here is the web site I just started to outline my project.
http://home.earthlink.net/~solarjeff/

It would involve adding a "greenhouse" room to the side of my current home. Then using solar panels to heat a rock/water storage tank that would in turn be used to heat (and cool) the house. I would love to hear any thoughts or ideas on doing this. This project would also involve adding a wind generator for electric.

I hope to add more info to my site as I try and figure out the best way to do this and make sure it is a viable project (before I start spending $$$ trying to do it haha).

Thanks,
Jeff


----------



## WisJim (Jan 14, 2004)

Those vertical axis wind generators are pretty much a scam. I would not invest a nickel in one until you talked to someone who had concrete data on energy production for a year or more from one of them. The companies don't give you good info on output because they don't work as you would hope. The basic fact about wind energy is that you have to be up above turbulence etc to get good wind speed, and that means it has to be on a tall tower, not a roof.


----------



## Jim-mi (May 15, 2002)

Ditto WisJim


----------



## wy_white_wolf (Oct 14, 2004)

I don't see your greenhouse/addition doing that much good. Look at areal photo. it's in the shade. By the location you gave that pic was taken in the morning. So with it facing southwest it's going to be cold in the morning, take a long time to warmup, and overheat in the late afternoon. Better if you could face it more toward the south or southeast.

From my research verticle windmills are about 5 times more expensive than there horizontal counterparts. Don't try and reinvent the wheel. Stick closer to what has provin to work and let the researchers play with the unknowns.


----------



## JeffNY001 (Apr 6, 2008)

I will wait and see how these Platek generators really work before buying one. Will be interesting to see if they stand the test of time. I do love the design though. I really can't put up a wind mill tower where I live.


On the location of the green house addition. I realize how it is oriented, and pointed that out on my web page. But I would have about 1200 sq ft of roof to mount solar water panels on. At about 1000 watts of solar energy per sq meter hitting the roof that is a lot of solar.

Anyone out there got an "upbeat" view of the project? 

Thanks,
Jeff


----------



## Steve L. (Feb 23, 2004)

Jeff, the satellite pic on your website is captioned "...Latitude N. *73* 37' 47"..." The only places on _this_ planet that are north of 73Â° are in Siberia, Northern Canada, and Greenland. Typo? Or did I not notice a little continental drift?


----------



## WisJim (Jan 14, 2004)

JeffNY001 said:


> I will wait and see how these Platek generators really work before buying one. Will be interesting to see if they stand the test of time. I do love the design though. I really can't put up a wind mill tower where I live.



If you can't put up a tall tower, forget a wind generator. You MUST get up high--anyone telling you otherwise is a scammer.


----------



## JeffNY001 (Apr 6, 2008)

Steve,

Ya, typo  Last time an ice burg was seen around here was about 10,000 years ago 

Jeff


----------



## JeffNY001 (Apr 6, 2008)

WisJim,

>>you have to be up above turbulence etc to get good wind speed<<

What kind of height are you talking about?

The plan, as I mentioned on my web page, is (once I get a spare $500) to get a Davis wind and solar weather station. If you look at the pics of the house (the 5th one down showing the back of the house) you will see a tree that has three trunks to it (just to the right of the white house in the distance). My plan this spring is to cut the tops of these three trunks off about 28' high. The tree is going to cause problems no matter what I do in the yard. But the plan is to mount the Davis weather station wireless sensor package on top of one of these three trunks to see what kind of wind is available at that hight....about the height of my two-story solar addition.

I can tell you, the past few weeks we have had some good wind here. Even today my neighbors flag was flat out all day!

Jeff


----------



## greg273 (Aug 5, 2003)

JeffNY001 said:


> WisJim,
> 
> >>you have to be up above turbulence etc to get good wind speed<<
> 
> ...


 Unless you are in a very favorable wind zone, considering the maintenance and moving parts involved with wind, solar photovoltaics might be the way to go. All depends on your site, but the maintenence-free aspect of PV is a big plus.
Solar thermal is even better, as far as energy gained...


----------



## greg273 (Aug 5, 2003)

BTW Jeff, cool looking house! Very aesthetically pleasing. Since you are on-grid, solar hot water probably has the fastest payback period.


----------



## JeffNY001 (Apr 6, 2008)

Greg, yes (for electric) looking at, and trying to get up to speed on, solar voltaics too. It may come down to cost and return on investment (kw per dollar). The one thing the wind does do is blow at night  But the electric part of this project may come second, after thermal solar part to help with the heat bill is figured out and up and running.

I am thinking I might like to make most of the roof on this addition flat and with easy access so I can add or service solar electric and thermal panels and/or wind generator easily.

Thanks for the comments on the house. I actually had another house I was going to build on this site but the (old ice) pond that was next to me was filled in when the town didn't want the liability...and encon would not allow the dam on the creek to be repaired. Dumb really...the whole area on the other side of the creek was a swamp 55 years ago, then filled in to build houses on and to control the creek. But today you can't even run a few gallons of water through a pond. I'm for protecting the environment, but the pond would have ADDED to the environment for wild life.

Anyway, I actually built the house (including the land) for under $100k 15 years ago (bought the land around '84). I picked the design in part based on the cost to build. But I really like the design now. A bigger kitchen might be nice. But I am thinking now of putting is a cooking area (grill, oven, sink) in the addition. Even an area to prep food grown in the greenhouse for freezing or canning.

The past few years I was working crazy hours, working nights and not home much. Now I want to do some nice upgrades to the house and start enjoying it more.

This is all a work in progress  I keep getting more ideas. I do need to stay in some sort of budget though. I know I won't be able to all this for $30,000 

Jeff


----------



## Jim-mi (May 15, 2002)

"28ft" will be a waste of time and effort.

Think 100ft+ to get real wind energy.


----------



## JeffNY001 (Apr 6, 2008)

Are there any articles online that explain the optimum height for wind? I am here to learn. No doubt higher is better. But in my residential neighborhood going to 100' is just not an option for me. I can also imagine a 100' tower would not be cheap. Let alone easy trying to service that turbine on top.

My decision on whether to use a wind generator is still a year+ in the future. Lets see if Platek and Everwind actually ship products and if they stand up to evaluations by the press. If they don't no skin off my nose. If they do great. In the mean time I will continue seeking some pricing on solar photovoltaics and see how they compare at kw/$$.

Jeff


----------



## WisJim (Jan 14, 2004)

The "optimium" height is as tall as possible, and 120 feet is often used around me. 50 feet above anything within 500 feet is a minimum rule-of-thumb height for wind generators. Often it needs to be higher because of buildings, trees, terrain that is farther away and causes turbulence and interference.
An article about wind power:
http://www.homepower.com/article/?file=HP122_pg28_Woofenden
Read what Mick Sagrillo has to say about small wind systems and the details you need to consider.
http://www.awea.org/smallwind/sagrillo/index.html

If you have houses around, and can't put up a 100 foot tower, my reaction is to forget it. If you have a knowledgable wind person around who can do an actual wind energy survey of your specific site, it might be worth the $500 or so it might cost to have a professional site survey done, which would tell you how high you need to be, and what you might expect to get from a wind generator, and what it might cost.


----------



## JeffNY001 (Apr 6, 2008)

Ran across this tonight while surfing around the net....the EEStor ultra capacitor......

"Based on these claims, a five-minute charge should give the capacitor sufficient energy to drive a small car 300-miles (480-km)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eestor

"For a 52 kWh unit, an initial production price.....falling to $2,100 with mass production is projected. This is half the price per stored watt-hour as lead-acid batteries, and potentially cheap enough to use to store grid power at off-peak times for on-peak use, and to buffer the output from intermittent power sources such as wind farms."


Lockheed Martin Signs Agreement with EEStor
http://gm-volt.com/2008/01/10/lockheed-martin-signs-agreement-with-eestor/
".....a new type of ultracapacitor that can hold 10x the energy in 1/10th the weight of typical batteries, at a fraction of the cost."


Dang gasoline hit $3.57 at the pumps here today!!! I want an electric car.....

Jeff

PS I really like the part where is says "No degradation from charge/discharge cycles" !!


----------



## JeffNY001 (Apr 6, 2008)

I ran across this tonight. Sort of what I had in mind, except in stead of having a shed separate from the house I'd have the sun room/green house ATTACHED to the house (which for me would also remove one of my exterior walls out of direct contact with the winter cold):
http://builditsolar.com/Projects/SpaceHeating/SolarShed/solarshed.htm

I would also like to be able to use this tank for cooling in summer if possible.

I need to figure out:
- How big a tank of water would I need?
- How many BTU could it hold?
- How many solar panels would I need?
- How to best get the heat stored in the tank to a hot air system in the basement and attic.

I think I can add to the HVAC air system I have in the basement so it can get hot and cool air to the 1st floor....and add a similar air-handler and duct work to it and another to the attic for the 2nd floor...that use heat or cooling from the tank instead of natural gas for heat or electric powered condenser for cooling.

I am working on a drawing to lay this out, in case some could not follow my description above


----------



## JeffNY001 (Apr 6, 2008)

I added a page to my solar project page. I am trying to get an idea of the size of the "tank" I would need to store enough heat to heat my house in January. I figure I need 20,000,000 BTU's for the month (actually a bit over what I need by about 20% but I like round numbers hehe).

http://home.earthlink.net/~solarjeff/tank/SolarStorageTank.html

You guys see anything wrong with my math so far?

Next is to see if there are thermal solar panels that could deliver these kinds of BTU's at a reasonable cost....THAT is where most of the cost would be I think in a system like this.

These panels look high tech....but I see no price on them....
http://www.solarpanelsplus.com/solar-water-heaters/

Jeff


----------



## Kevingr (Mar 10, 2006)

I don't see why you couldn't get a tall tower in that neighborhood. You might need a variance, but it's not like you have 80 foot wide lot's and houses on top of each other.

You need to get a good passive solar book. There's a book out there called "The Passive Solar Energy Book, Expanded Professional Edition" by Edward Mazria. I don't think it's in print anymore, but if you can find one of these books it has a ton of info on exactly what you want to do.

I purchased 7, 4x10 foot absorber plates from SunRay Solar for space heating. Haven't got them up yet, but they were reasonable and they were real nice to work with and helped out with the design too.

My local Electric Utility offers an off peak electric program where they store heat in a bed of rocks. Then during the day when the off peak electric is turned off you draw your heat from the rocks. Maybe your utility offers something similar, have them give you information on what they would put in and then use the rock bed information for your project. Personally I like the water storage option better, easier to work with. Check out Gary's space heating project at builditsolar.com. You could do something similar, but if infloor heat isn't an option just put an exchanger in your current furnace.


----------



## SolarGary (Sep 8, 2005)

JeffNY001 said:


> I ran across this tonight. Sort of what I had in mind, except in stead of having a shed separate from the house I'd have the sun room/green house ATTACHED to the house (which for me would also remove one of my exterior walls out of direct contact with the winter cold):
> http://builditsolar.com/Projects/SpaceHeating/SolarShed/solarshed.htm
> 
> I would also like to be able to use this tank for cooling in summer if possible.
> ...


Hi,
Here is a rough way to get to a system size:

1 - Estimate the one day heat loss from your house:
You can use this calculator to get an idea: 
http://www.builditsolar.com/References/Calculators/HeatLoss/HeatLoss.htm
Enter the data for your house (areas and insulation levels), run the calculator, and note the UA total in the output.
To calc the day heat loss, multiply:
(UAtotal)(70F - TaverageOudoor) (24 hrs) 
For example, if your house UAtotal is 400 BTU/hr-f, and the average outdoor temp for (say) Jan is 30F, then your rough daily heat loss is:
(400 BTU/lb-F)(70F - 30F)(24 hrs/day) = 384,000 BTU/day 
Do this for one day of each winter month.
Be sure to use real averages, not the lowest temps -- you can look up historic averages on Yahoo Weather.
In very rough terms, this calculated heat loss should agree with what your heating bills show for energy expenditure.

2 - Estimate the gain from the solar collectors:
Each square foot of collector will see about 1700 BTU per sunny day. At 50% efficiency, half of this will go into your storage, so about 850 BTU per sunny day per sqft of collector. 
So, as an example, if you put in 300 sqft of collector, you might collect about (300 sqft)(850 BTU/sqft) = 255,000 BTU on a sunny day. To get a monthly output you need to estimate the effective number of sunny days you have in each month -- part cloudy counts as a part sunny day.
At this point you will probably find out that its going to take more collector area than you can practically put in to heat your house 100% solar. So, the question becomes how collector is it practical to put in, and how much can I afford. This is basically because homes are insulated at a level that is consistent with cheap fuel. Just as one data point, the Solar Shed on my house is 240 sqft, and this provides the equivalent of about 30% of my space heating needs -- this is after putting a fair bit of effort into reducing the heat loss on my house (something you need to do as well). I do probably live in a colder climate than you (SW Montana).

3 - Estimate the storage size:
Water as storage holds 1 BTU per lb of water per degree F. So, if you have a 500 gallon tank and run it from (say) 140F down to 90F, then it would store:
(500 gal)(8.3 lb/gal)(140F - 90F)(1 BTU/lb-F) = 207500 BTU.
If you can afford to put up a collector area large enough to provide one full days worth of heat loss, then you probably want enough storage tank capacity to hold about 1 days worth of heat loss -- this might work out to about 1.5 gallons per sqft of collector. 


Just some general thoughts:
- You are going to find that its usually more cost effective to work on improving your heat loss first, and then think about solar heating. Maybe you have already done this. You can use the same calculator listed above to see what kind of savings that insulation, window treatments, and better sealing will give you. Solar heating is always going to be more worthwhile on a home with low heat loss.

- The active water heating collector with storage and then heat distribution from the storage is the most complex, expensive and time consuming end of the heating with solar spectrum. You might want to think about some of the simpler schemes first?
Some ideas here:
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/SpaceHeating/Space_Heating.htm
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Sunspace/sunspaces.htm
Its not that these more complex active solar heating systems don't pay -- they can do quite well, but be aware its not a 1 weekend project -- as its more like a one summer project 

On your drawings, it would be helpful if you could add a due south arrow.
Gary


----------

