Chrissy and I went to the Homebuilder's show today, mainly because it was something interesting to do indoors on a Saturday. It was still pretty cold out today and its hit that point of pseudo-spring that makes you just want it to be occasionally warm outside. So, indoors was the name of the game. While we were there we ended up talking with some people at a solar power booth. I am really intrigued by the idea of being able to live off grid, while still having the available grid if necessary. The only problem with that up here is that the Electric Co-op currently has a buy back power program that is paying $1.50 per k/w when they sell it for only .17 cents per k/w. In turn the way it was told to me was that you can't have a solar system with a battery bank in combination with the grid power line. You can have the panels and the inverter feeding your daytime or "lighttime" power comsumption, but after dark you'd be dependant on the grid. That doesn't fit in well with my idea about power independance, so it would only make sense to look at "off grid" units. For what its worth, they really didn't seem that expensive compared to what I had figured they would be. The company that we talked to has a primer on the basics of how the system works here.
This all got me thinking about a couple differnet things, we're going to be building a greenhouse soon and one of the things that I have always been intrigued with is a biotherm. Its a water heater with a pump that runs warm/hot water through a bunch of small hoses that sit on top of your shelves but under your plant trays in the greenhouse. It keeps them warm as they are starting out.
I was wondering if its possible to make a closed loop water heating system that would get its energy soley from the sun and not need an inverter or pump or anything. Could the action of heating water be enough to make it funnel through a system of hoses and circulate? Would the sun warm it enough that it would make any difference? Is there enough Fairbanks sun in March and April for the whole thing to even work?
I don't know, but I think that its worth looking into a little bit further.
Here is a link to my terrible diagram of what I was thinking about earlier. Its terrible, I know. I was essentially just scribbling, but the idea seems doable. I was reading about all sorts of differnet solar systems on Build It Solar and realized that you can pretty well adapt it to most any application. At worst it looks like I may have to get a small electric pump to run the whole thing.. Looks like this solar pump might do the trick.
Who knows, it just seems like interesting stuff to look into. That is just about all that is on my mind tonight.
-Justin
This all got me thinking about a couple differnet things, we're going to be building a greenhouse soon and one of the things that I have always been intrigued with is a biotherm. Its a water heater with a pump that runs warm/hot water through a bunch of small hoses that sit on top of your shelves but under your plant trays in the greenhouse. It keeps them warm as they are starting out.
I was wondering if its possible to make a closed loop water heating system that would get its energy soley from the sun and not need an inverter or pump or anything. Could the action of heating water be enough to make it funnel through a system of hoses and circulate? Would the sun warm it enough that it would make any difference? Is there enough Fairbanks sun in March and April for the whole thing to even work?
I don't know, but I think that its worth looking into a little bit further.
Here is a link to my terrible diagram of what I was thinking about earlier. Its terrible, I know. I was essentially just scribbling, but the idea seems doable. I was reading about all sorts of differnet solar systems on Build It Solar and realized that you can pretty well adapt it to most any application. At worst it looks like I may have to get a small electric pump to run the whole thing.. Looks like this solar pump might do the trick.
Who knows, it just seems like interesting stuff to look into. That is just about all that is on my mind tonight.
-Justin
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