Listen to Renewable Energy World’s Podcast

Most wind experts say that VAWTs are simply inferior to traditional three-bladed horizontal-axis turbines. That’s why the technologies only make up one percent of the small wind market. The industry has also been historically dominated by sketchy companies and “inventors” who pushed fraudulent or under-performing technologies to unsuspecting consumers.

With today’s renewed interest in renewables, consumers have forgotten about many of the past problems and are again fascinated by such machines. Just go to youtube and type in “vertical axis wind turbine” to see the dozens – if not hundreds – of technologies that folks are touting as the revolution in wind.

“There’s nothing new here,” says Small-Wind Expert Ian Woofenden. “We see people coming up with the same old ideas” for harvesting wind on rooftops and within neighborhoods.

Woofenden is one of a number of wind experts who loath vertical axis technologies for both residential and utility applications. He sees them as a threat to consumer and investor confidence in wind.

However, along with what small-wind veteran Mike Bergey calls the “Bozos and Scheisters,” there are also a handful of companies in the space that are being a bit more cautious and transparent in their approach.

For example, Nevada-based Windspire Energy recently opened itself up to testing by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Another company, New York-based Urban Green Energy, had its power curve third party verified by China’s largest wind certification body. (The company manufactures products in China). Historically, VAWT companies commonly presented theoretical power curves as “proof” of how great their technology is.

The American Wind Energy Association also set up a small wind certification council this year that will help consumers make better choices. Many of the leading VAWT companies support the move, saying that it will help filter out much of the noise in the market.

“We believe in testing. As time goes, certification will be more prevalent and we’ll be right there with everyone else,” says WindSpire CEO Walt Borland.

With that said, many of the “leading” VAWT companies are tiny compared to other small wind companies. The performance of these products will determine whether or not companies move beyond experimentation and curiosity. Even the most anti-VAWT folks agree: A more rigorous testing and certification process will be good for everyone involved.

Well, good for everyone except the Bozos and Scheisters.

To hear from Ian Woofenden, WindSpire and Urban Green Energy, check out this week’s podcast, linked above.

Via RenewableEnergyWorld.com

In general, DIY projects are a good thing, from hacking IKEA furniture to making bento boxes. But solar panel installation is something that’s best left to professionals, both for your own safety and to protect your home.

1. You could hurt yourself.

Whenever you’re working with electrical wiring, there’s a very real risk of electric shock. As soon as you attach wiring to a solar panel on your roof, it’s immediately live. If you don’t truly know what you’re doing, you could be seriously injured. When you wire your inverters, you could come in direct contact with electrical energy; worst-case scenario, this could cause electrocution. Even a minor shock can cause an involuntary muscle reaction as you jerk away from the the electricity, and if you’re on your roof, this could cause you to fall. Which brings us to our second point: it’s also dangerous to work on steep roofs, high above the ground, especially if you’re not experienced.

2. You could damage your house.

Although it’s rare, you could put holes in your roof when you install solar panels, which is another reason why it’s important to choose someone with the right skills– and avoid going the DIY route. If installed incorrectly, there’s also a small risk that the solar panels could later cause a fire. Experienced installers, like those we select after careful vetting at 1BOG, can give you peace of mind.

3. You might not install the panels optimally for best performance.

Unless you’ve done a lot of research, you won’t know how to find the best location for your solar panels in order to get the most power from them. Professional installers know how to assess your home and determine where to put the solar panels based on direction and shading, with a consideration of how the position of the sun will change throughout the year.

4. You might be breaking the law.

If you’re not a certified electrician, you can’t legally connect the wiring for your installation. There are very good reasons that a professional is required, as listed above. Even if someone has an electrical contractor license, that doesn’t mean they have the right skills to safely and correctly install solar panels, so it’s really necessary to work with someone who’s well-qualified and experienced in the specifics of solar power.

5. Figuring out how to install solar panels takes a long time.

Aside from the time it takes to figure out where to locate the panels and how to install them, you’d also need to research the number of panels you need for your electricity consumption, the type of panels to choose, the correct inverter to choose, and more details about the equipment itself. Actually performing the installation of solar panels also takes time, and usually happens with a full crew of installers. Using professional installers ensures that you’re getting the best equipment for your home, installed safely and properly (with a multi-year warranty from the installer to boot).

Sign up for One Block Off the Grid to let us do the research for you and choose a company with high-quality panels, high-quality installation practices, and stability as an organization. And keep yourself safe and sound, and off the roof.

Photo Credit

Via 1bog.org

Here is some more info from Dsire USA on solar in New Jersey.

And here are some thoughts about going solar in New Jersey from our friends at 1Bog.org:

$5,000 – that’s how much you could be getting paid in New Jersey this year, just for having solar panels on your roof.

It may come as a surprise, but New Jersey has the best financial incentives in the country forhome solar power. The combination of high electricity rates, the federal tax credit, and solar renewable energy credits (which pay you for producing renewable energy) means a typical solar array will pay for itself in just 4 years. After that it’s free electricity and, thanks to the renewable energy credit market, a viable source of income for the next 11 years.

Even without a solar rebate, NJ beats every other state, even sunny California (where solar is immensely popular):

The two left columns show New Jersey solar payback time with and without a state rebate. No rebate = no problem.

Why is the payback time so fast? Here are the 5 reasons why New Jersey is the best place in the country to go solar:

1. Electricity in NJ is expensive

The typical cost of electricity in NJ is $0.19 / kWh, compared to the US average of $0.11 / kWh. That means that the average electricity bill in New Jersey is around $190-$228 per month. An average-sized solar array will cover most of this, knocking about $175 / month off of that bill.

2. The Federal Solar Tax Credit puts 30% back in your pocket*

The Federal solar tax credit is a tax credit for 30% of the total system cost. While you’ll have to shell out the money up front, at the end of the year you will get a tax credit of $11,000 for a $35,000 system (assuming you have tax liability for that year–otherwise it will rollover into another next tax year). Confusing? Yes. But don’t worry – your solar installer can help you with the right forms, and you can always consult your accountant.

3. SRECs turn your roof into an ATM*

Solar Renewable Energy Credits (SRECS) are credits you get for producing renewable energy. A home accrues 1 credit for every 1,000 kWh of solar energy produced, and each credit is currently worth around $650. We’ve estimated that the average home will produce about$5,000 worth of SRECs on average per year. A new solar energy system is eligible to produce SRECs for 15 years, meaning that an average roof could earn over $75,000 by selling credits over that time period.

4. You’re getting a 15-30% discount on panels and installation with group discounts

Although we can’t disclose our south New Jersey 1BOG rate for solar just yet**, we can tell you the price for our last New Jersey solar campaign: $5.54 / DC watt. If you went to a local big box store for solar today you would see prices around $8 per DC watt–or $17,958 more for an average sized system. Our group discount is typically around 15% off competitive market rates, although in New Jersey we anticipate it will be considerably more than that.

5. If you don’t want to purchase, you can go solar for $0 down.

Our local installation partner offers PPA-financing through SunRun, which means that you can install a system for $0 out of pocket.

Even though it’s our job to bring you good deals, we’re blown away by how good solar in New Jersey looks right now. There’s no better time to make the investment, especially since you can start generating SRECs as soon as the system is installed.

Want to evaluate the numbers for yourself? Use our calculator to estimate the cost of solar panels for your home. Want access to the 1BOG group discounts on solar? Sign up now! It’s free.

Stay tuned, as we’ll be writing more about solar in New Jersey soon. You can also learn more about our Southern NJ Solar Campaign.

* We are not tax professionals, so please make sure to consult your accountant on the tax implications of a solar installation. Additionally, please be aware that these calculations are based on several assumptions, including the future cost of electricity and value of SRECs. Yearly SREC payments have been updated in this post based on the most up-to-date information we have.

**1BOG discounted member pricing for southern New Jersey will be announced on Monday (June 14). Sign up here to be among the first to get 1BOG exclusive pricing details.

If you’re like us (and millions of other people around the world), and got up at odd hours and, in some cases, even skipped work to watch the World Cup this year, you saw something new: solar power! This year Chinese solar panel manufacturer Yingli Green Energy was one of the World Cup sponsors, along with the usual suspects like Adidas and Coca-Cola.

The first solar company ever to sponsor the World Cup, Yingli said they wanted to reach new customers. They’ll also get attention from those who already know something about solar power, like soccer-crazed fans in Germany and Spain, two of the countries with the most solar panels in the world.

If you were lucky enough to go to a game at the Johannesburg Soccer City stadium, you might have seen something more than just an ad– Yingli also powered an exhibition for sponsors at the stadium that’s completely carbon neutral. The commercial display uses solar panels along with locally-produced materials, and Yingli bought carbon offsets to cover the remaining carbon emissions. The solar array pumps out 1.2 kilowatts of power, and if it stayed up at the stadium over the course of a year, it would eliminate around 1.5 tons of coal-equivalent CO2 emissions.

GOOOAAALLL!!

Photo Credit

Via 1bog.org

I have long promised to write about a backup power system for small electrical loads, including the Neuton Lawn Mower (On Amazon Here). Here is the promised post, outlining the installation of the XPower and Kyocera Solar panel. This system will keep the XPower (Also on Amazon) nicely charged using the sun, without a need for shore power.

Here is the complete system. We have a Kyocera 130W solar module, a Morning Star charge controller (Of Course, on Amazon), 20′ of cable to connect the solar panel to the XPower, some different adapters for connecting the charge controller to the XPower, and a tension relief connector to keep the cable snug in the junction box on the solar panel.

The first thing you are going to need to do is unpack the solar module.

Then you are going to find the Junction box on the back of the module and open it up.

Notice the hole in the side of the junction box. This is where the wire will fit through.

Then we’re going to strip the main cable. You have to remove the outer sheath, and then strip both the red and black wires inside. This cable is a 2-wire, 12AWG THHN cable.

Slip the bushing into the hole in the junction box, and unscrew the head of the bushing. Slip the head of the bushing onto the cable, and insert the cable into the junction box.

Land the red wire to the outside screw on the positive side of the module, and the black to the negative side.

Then land the red wire to the positive side of the “Solar” pair of screws, and the black wire to the negative. Also cut the DC plug cable, and strip the wires. Land the wire that has bumps or a white line on the negative side of the pair of “Battery” screws, and the smooth, unmarked wire to the positive.

Then you can plug the DC plug into the side of the XPower and…

…push the battery status button. If the panel is out in full sun, and there is no load, you should see all the lights light up. Now you can connect a load to the AC plug in the XPower, and turn on the “AC Outlets” button. There will be a beep. If you have a load that is bigger than 130W, you will see fewer lights lit on the Battery Status. This means that the load is not only using all the solar power, but it is also using the battery. The same is true if there is less than full sun, and a 130W load, because the solar panel will be producing less than 130W.

So now you have your XPower up and running. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. The XPower and Charge Controller are on Amazon, but not the Solar panel or Cable. If you would like to buy those items, feel free to order them as a kit off of our online store (with PayPal or Google Checkout) here: http://www.in2solar.com/store/index.php/solar-battery-charging-kit.html

I just found out that the Voltaic Backpack is available highly discounted on Amazon.com!

I would very highly recommend this backpack for charging small things like cellphones, iPods, iPads and the like.

Here is a video review of the backpack.

Here is the link for the Voltaic Generator, which can charge your laptop: Voltaic Generator

I am getting really close to finished with my post about the XPower for Portable Power. I just have a few more things to add, and then it will go public.

I have been using the XPower extensively over the past few weeks. I have been running my laptop, a boombox, iPod and fan all day, as well as a vacuum from time to time. It has been working very well, and with the solar charging, it could go on indefinitely until either the sun stopped shining or the battery reached the end of its life (5 to 7 years is the expected battery life).

XPower and Kyocera solar panel

So, thank you for your patience, and I will have the full post to you all shortly.

Isaac

On Friday we made our first direct investment in a utility-scale renewable energy project — two wind farms that generate 169.5 megawatts of power, enough to power more than 55,000 homes. These wind farms, developed by NextEra Energy Resources, harness power from one of the world’s richest wind resources in the North Dakota plains and use existing transmission capacity to deliver clean energy to the region, reducing the use of fossil fuels. Through this $38.8 million investment, we’re aiming to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy — in a way that makes good business sense, too.

A clear windy day at the Ashtabula II wind farm

To reach a clean energy future, we need three things: effective policy, innovative technology and smart capital. Through our philanthropic arm Google.org, we’ve been pushing for energy policies that strengthen the innovation pipeline, and we’ve been dedicating resources to developing new technologies, including making investments in early-stage renewable energy companies such as eSolar and AltaRock. Smart capital includes not only these early-stage company investments, but also dedicated funding for utility-scale projects. To tackle this need, we’ve been looking at investments in renewable energy projects, like the one we just signed, that can accelerate the deployment of the latest clean energy technology while providing attractive returns to Google and more capital for developers to build additional projects.

We’re excited about this first project investment because it uses some of the latest wind turbine technology and control systems to provide one of the lowest-cost sources of renewable energy to the local grid. The turbines can continuously adjust the individual blade pitch angles to achieve optimal efficiency and use larger blades with 15 percent more swept area than earlier generations, allowing capture of even more wind energy for each turbine. The control systems for these wind farms are also advanced and dynamic, allowing for remote 24/7 monitoring and operation to ensure maximum turbine up-time and power production. A couple of us got a chance to climb 80 meters up one of the 113 turbines to see firsthand how the rotating blade motion goes through a gearbox to turn the generator that makes the electricity. The climb to the top also provided a great view of the entire wind farm (don’t worry — we all had harnesses and turned the turbine off!).

My colleague Matt takes a rest after the 80-meter climb

We look forward to finding more opportunities to invest in renewable energy projects that use the latest technologies to push the envelope for delivering low cost clean energy. We’ll let you know what we find.

So do fuel cells like Bloom Energy mean that solar is soon to be a dinosaur technology like coal powered plants? Not at all, and here’s a bunch of reasons why:

• First of all, as you’ll note in this brief report, a little Bloom box does not work by itself. It needs an outside fuel source. That fuel source can be fossil fuels like dirty coal or cleaner natural gas, or, as stated in this report at about 8 minutes in, renewable energy such as solar.
• Second, as noted in this report, the Bloom Box is still in its experimental phase. There are still kinks to be worked out, and there’s long term history to show that it will last 25 years. Solar has been around since the 1950’s and has a great, reliable track record.
• Solar is ready now, today. According this 60 minutes report, even if all the kinks were worked out, you’re still not going to see a Bloom box in your house for 5 to 10 years. Maybe longer.
• Solar, you can have tomorrow. Then, when and if the Bloom Energy box becomes available for your home or business, you can use your solar panels as the fuel source. [from Calfinder "K.R. Sridhar himself told 60 Minutes that the Box could run off solar power (although if you watch the segment you may notice choppy editing which likely eliminated some caveats from being aired to “sexy up” the piece). Whether it can run on solar or not, the Bloom Box cannot be the renewable resource the hype would have us believe without being connected to some other power source, like solar power."]
• Finally, if you wait for the Bloom Box, you’re going to continue polluting, as well as losing money to the ever rising utility rates. And what if 5 to 10 years from now, all of the Bloom boxes go bust for some unexpected reason, and they never develop a residential system? You’ve waited for nothing. You’ve lost 5 to 10 years of energy savings for well meaning, but failed device. Because there’s no question the solar will be there. The Bloom box…not so certain.

Honest, we want Bloom to succeed because it’s good for the planet, plus solar can be its fuel source. So, it’s a win-win. But as I said, solar is ready and available now. It’s also clean and affordable now, thanks to local and federal rebates.

Even better, check out if there’s a solar group purchasing program available in your area. Some of the latest ones are in Northern New Jersey, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Antonio, Texas.

Find out if solar is right for you now, then check out Bloom Energy later.

Via Solar Power Rocks

The Honda ANF125i Innova motorbike is a super-efficient bike to start with, but to bring it to the next level of fuel economy, it takes a certain level of ingenuity and craftsmanship, as well as a good understanding of the factors at play in how much fuel a vehicle uses. Allert Jacobs obviously has those qualities; he turned his 100+ MPG Honda (see photo of what it looks like unmodified below) into a 200+ MPG low-CD streamliner.

Honda ANF125i Innova. Not exactly same as bike below, but close.

Some Specs

The modified motorbike weights 319lbs (about 88lbs more than the standard bike). The engine is a fuel injected, four stroke, 125cc single, producing 9 hp (6.85 kW). A realistic figure of real-world MPG for the unmodified bike is around 114 MPG (though Allert got a 133 MPG average while babying it).

The modified bike, despite weighting 88lbs more than the unmodified version, gets over 200 MPG in real world driving (214 MPG during a trip in rather cold and windy weather, but more is expected in better conditions). This shows how important aerodynamics is for fuel economy. Sometimes it can be better to add a bit of weight if it’s going to make the vehicle more slippery (and the benefits can be compounded by using taller gearing in the transmission; since you need less energy to push against air resistance, you can use gears that keep the engine at a lower RPM).

One of the things that reduces the frontal area is the lower seat and feet-forward seating position. This quote from Ecomodder highlights the importance of aerodynamics:

“Being a long time cyclist, motorcyclist and velomobile enthusiast, Allert intuitively understands what many people either don't know or greatly underestimate: the enormous impact of aerodynamics on fuel consumption.

Unlike the average person, he is not surprised by the fact that a typical car burns 50% of its fuel overcoming air resistance at just 40 mph (64 km/h). Or that the higher drag of a typical motorbike means half of its fuel is used to overcome air drag at just 15 – 20 mph (24 – 32 km/h)!”

via TreeHugger.

CSI Rebate Graph

Here is the EPBB rebate explained by the CSI website:

Owners of solar systems less than 50 kilowatt (kW*) may apply for an up-front cash rebate known as the Expected Performance Based Buydown (EPBB)**. Program Administrators calculate a customer’s rebate using the expected performance of the owner’s system based on equipment ratings and installation factors such as geographic location, tilt, orientation and shading. Customers receive their incentive payment in a lump sum after their system in fully installed and interconnected.

And here is the PBI:

Customers with solar systems between 50 kW* and 1 MW must* apply for the Performance Based Incentive (PBI) structure. PBI incentives are a five-year stream of fixed monthly payments determined by the actual output of the system, as metered and reported to the utility. After January 1, 2010, all systems greater than 30 kW must choose the Performance Based Incentive structure. The PBI incentive path is available at any time to ANY size system.

The table below shows the effect of prices as these step declines occur, with current prices in the three territories highlighted in yellow. Residential and commercial incentives are the same price in each step; however, local governments and other tax-exempt organizations receive a slightly higher incentive because cannot qualify for Federal Investment Tax Credits on their solar systems.

The table below shows the rebate levels available at various steps, and information on currently applicable step in your region is available at the California Solar Initiative Trigger Tracker.

However, there is a catch. In order to use this great incentive, the homeowner or business must “record the output of the PV generator”, and “pay for 5 years of data communication and performance monitoring and reporting services” (emphasis mine). So who are these Performance Monitoring and Reporting Services? After some major digging through the beaurocratic labyrinth of CSI and Pacific Gas and Electric’s websites, I found this list:

1. Applied Power Technologies, Inc.
2. Deck Monitoring, LLC
3. Draker Laboratories, Inc.
4. Energy Recommerce, Inc.
5. Enflex
6. Enphase Energy
7. Fat Spaniel Technologies
8. Locus Energy
9. NergyOS, Inc.
10. Recurrent Energy
11. SatCon Power Systems
12. SolarCity
13. Thompson Technologies, Inc.
14. Trimark Associates, Inc.

So there you are! The list of the 14 privileged Performance Monitoring and Reporting Service providers. These chosen few capitalize on every solar installation in the state of California.

December 18, 2009 – A successful solar photovoltaic installation is one in which the customer is happy and has received what was expected. Some would say that a proper installation is the first step. While a proper installation is of crucial importance, the most important first steps usually occur during the selling process where information is gathered, a proposal is generated and where the customer expectations are set.

In order to properly set and manage customer’s expectations, a certain amount of customer education is required. Many times a solar salesperson will avoid some of the technical detail if he or she believes the customer may not be interested or not be technically astute enough to understand. Also, some salespeople may often omit what they consider borderline requirements or specify less capable equipment in order to have the lowest bid and win the sale. In situations where any of the above occurs, the likelihood of an unhappy customer situation is increased. It is far better to cover everything up-front and risk losing the sale, than it is to make the sale and later have to apologize and explain important information after the fact.

A good first step is to explain to the customer how solar panels are rated and how efficiency is related to the larger picture. Once a customer (and the salesperson!) understands this basic information, most of the additional information that we will recommend sharing will be more easily understood.

Rating

Solar PV panels are rated in Watts-peak. This means for example, a solar panel rated as “200W” really means that (±3-5%) this is the maximum or peak instantaneous wattage that can be produced under STC (standard test conditions). STC assumes several important factors that are not always present at a specific customer location. STC is stated to be a condition where the panel temperature is 25°C (77°F) and where the panel is perpendicular to the sun, and where the sunlight conditions produce 1000W/m² of insolation (direct sunlight). A 200W panel will not produce 200Wh (watt-hours) each hour all day long, rather, it will produce up to 200Wh per each hour of full strength insolation. In many parts of the US, the adjusted hours of insolation will be between 5-6 hours per day in the summer, and 3-4 hours per day in the winter. The table at right provides a snapshot of insolation values for a few major US cities.

Efficiency

The efficiency of a PV panel is often misunderstood and misused in the sales process. A “high efficiency” panel is usually not the best value for the customer. Efficiency of a typical poly- or multicrystalline silicon PV panel may be in the range of 14%-16%. Efficiency of a more expensive monocrystalline panel will usually be in the range of 15%-18%. Some very expensive panels are reaching the 22% range. At a practical level, efficiency only affects (in a relatively small way) the amount of roof-space that a panel will need. For example, 200W panel at 14% efficiency will take up about the same amount of roof space as a 210W panel at 15% efficiency, but at a lower cost/W. In most cases, the customer’s cost/W is the more important factor; the best cost/W will be found in the lower efficiency ranges.

Power production

When a PV system does not produce the expected amount of power, the cause is often traceable to the original system specifications and design that were proposed during the sales process.

Most power production problems seem to occur not as a result of faulty installation, but rather as a result of faulty expectations or faulty design. These kinds of problems are mostly created during the specifications and design phase leading up to the sales proposal, and are most often the result of cost-cutting mixed with an effort to indulge the customer’s aesthetic considerations, without full disclosure of the ramifications. The customer doesn’t want the panels on the front of the house (which is the south-facing, best location), for example, or says “it looks better over there” — right where a telephone pole casts a small shadow that travels across the row of panels every afternoon as the sun moves (of course the pole can’t be removed).

Partial shading of a panel or string of panels can dramatically reduce the performance of the array. Within each panel, if a single cell is shaded, its lowered performance will cause a bottleneck effect that lowers the output of all other cells to match it. Within a string of panels, a shaded or partly shaded panel has the same bottleneck effect on all other panels.

Mismatched orientation causes the same effect. If some of the panels in a string face in different directions or have differing tilt angles, all of other panels in the string will drop production in real time to match the lowest performing panel of the moment. There must be a separate string used for each angle and tilt used.

It is important to show the customer much more than the rated output peak of the system. It’s far better to do a conservative calculation of average output considering all of the factors including temperature, sun angles, transient shading, inverter inefficiencies, etc. A proper calculation will ultimately be confirmed by measured production just a surely as an overstated capability will be noticed and challenged.

There are many other sales and preliminary design issues that must be considered, like string sizing, inverter selection, logging and monitoring capability, cosmetics and aesthetics, tax credit and rebate issues (and surprises). We hope to address many of these topics in future articles.

John Williams is COO of Solar Panels Plus, 533 Byron Street, Suite E, Chesapeake, VA 23320 USA; ph.: 1-757-549-1494, e-mail: jwilliams@solarpanelsplus.com

.via Solar PV installations: Beyond “measure twice, cut once” – Photovoltaics World.

Glitter Solar Cells

By Neal Singer, Sandia National Labs

New Mexico, United States [RenewableEnergyWorld.com]

Sandia National Laboratories scientists have developed tiny glitter-sized photovoltaic cells that could revolutionize the way solar energy is collected and used.

The tiny cells could turn a person into a walking solar battery charger if they were fastened to flexible substrates molded around unusual shapes, such as clothing.

The solar particles, fabricated of crystalline silicon, hold the potential for a variety of new applications. They are expected eventually to be less expensive and have greater efficiencies than current photovoltaic collectors that are pieced together with 6-inch- square solar wafers.

The cells are fabricated using microelectronic and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) techniques common to today’s electronic foundries.

Sandia lead investigator Greg Nielson said the research team has identified more than 20 benefits of scale for its microphotovoltaic cells. These include new applications, improved performance, potential for reduced costs and higher efficiencies.

“Eventually units could be mass-produced and wrapped around unusual shapes for building-integrated solar, tents and maybe even clothing,” he said. This would make it possible for hunters, hikers or military personnel in the field to recharge batteries for phones, cameras and other electronic devices as they walk or rest.

Even better, such microengineered panels could have circuits imprinted that would help perform other functions customarily left to large-scale construction with its attendant need for field construction design and permits.

Said Sandia field engineer Vipin Gupta, “Photovoltaic modules made from these microsized cells for the rooftops of homes and warehouses could have intelligent controls, inverters and even storage built in at the chip level. Such an integrated module could greatly simplify the cumbersome design, bid, permit and grid integration process that our solar technical assistance teams see in the field all the time.”

For large-scale power generation, said Sandia researcher Murat Okandan, “One of the biggest scale benefits is a significant reduction in manufacturing and installation costs compared with current PV techniques.”

Part of the potential cost reduction comes about because microcells require relatively little material to form well-controlled and highly efficient devices.

From 14 to 20 micrometers thick (a human hair is approximately 70 micrometers thick), they are 10 times thinner than conventional 6-inch-by-6-inch brick-sized cells, yet perform at about the same efficiency.

100 times Less Silicon Generates Same Amount of Electricity

“So they use 100 times less silicon to generate the same amount of electricity,” said Okandan. “Since they are much smaller and have fewer mechanical deformations for a given environment than the conventional cells, they may also be more reliable over the long term.”

Another manufacturing convenience is that the cells, because they are only hundreds of micrometers in diameter, can be fabricated from commercial wafers of any size, including today’s 300-millimeter (12-inch) diameter wafers and future 450-millimeter (18-inch) wafers. Further, if one cell proves defective in manufacture, the rest still can be harvested, while if a brick-sized unit goes bad, the entire wafer may be unusable. Also, brick-sized units fabricated larger than the conventional 6-inch-by-6-inch cross section to take advantage of larger wafer size would require thicker power lines to harvest the increased power, creating more cost and possibly shading the wafer. That problem does not exist with the small-cell approach and its individualized wiring.

Other unique features are available because the cells are so small. “The shade tolerance of our units to overhead obstructions is better than conventional PV panels,” said Nielson, “because portions of our units not in shade will keep sending out electricity where a partially shaded conventional panel may turn off entirely.”

Because flexible substrates can be easily fabricated, high-efficiency PV for ubiquitous solar power becomes more feasible, said Okandan.

A commercial move to microscale PV cells would be a dramatic change from conventional silicon PV modules composed of arrays of 6-inch-by-6-inch wafers. However, by bringing in techniques normally used in MEMS, electronics and the light-emitting diode (LED) industries (for additional work involving gallium arsenide instead of silicon), the change to small cells should be relatively straightforward, Gupta said.

Each cell is formed on silicon wafers, etched and then released inexpensively in hexagonal shapes, with electrical contacts prefabricated on each piece, by borrowing techniques from integrated circuits and MEMS.

Offering a run for their money to conventional large wafers of crystalline silicon, electricity presently can be harvested from the Sandia-created cells with 14.9 percent efficiency. Off-the-shelf commercial modules range from 13 to 20 percent efficient.

A widely used commercial tool called a pick-and-place machine — the current standard for the mass assembly of electronics — can place up to 130,000 pieces of glitter per hour at electrical contact points preestablished on the substrate; the placement takes place at cooler temperatures. The cost is approximately one-tenth of a cent per piece with the number of cells per module determined by the level of optical concentration and the size of the die, likely to be in the 10,000 to 50,000 cell per square meter range. An alternate technology, still at the lab-bench stage, involves self-assembly of the parts at even lower costs.

Solar concentrators — low-cost, prefabricated, optically efficient microlens arrays — can be placed directly over each glitter-sized cell to increase the number of photons arriving to be converted via the photovoltaic effect into electrons. The small cell size means that cheaper and more efficient short focal length microlens arrays can be fabricated for this purpose.

High-voltage output is possible directly from the modules because of the large number of cells in the array. This should reduce costs associated with wiring, due to reduced resistive losses at higher voltages.

Other possible applications for the technology include satellites and remote sensing.

The project combines expertise from Sandia’s Microsystems Center; Photovoltaics and Grid Integration Group; the Materials, Devices, and Energy Technologies Group; and the National Renewable Energy Lab’s Concentrating Photovoltaics Group.

Involved in the process, in addition to Nielson, Okandan and Gupta, are Jose Luis Cruz-Campa, Paul Resnick, Tammy Pluym, Peggy Clews, Carlos Sanchez, Bill Sweatt, Tony Lentine, Anton Filatov, Mike Sinclair, Mark Overberg, Jeff Nelson, Jennifer Granata, Craig Carmignani, Rick Kemp, Connie Stewart, Jonathan Wierer,

George Wang, Jerry Simmons, Jason Strauch, Judith Lavin and Mark Wanlass (NREL).

The work is supported by DOE’s Solar Energy Technology Program and Sandia’s Laboratory Directed Research & Development program, and has been presented at four technical conferences this year.

The ability of light to produce electrons, and thus electricity, has been known for more than a hundred years.

The article was written by Neal Singer, a science writer at Sandia National Laboratories.  His freelance articles have appeared in Science, Smithsonian, Scientific American, the World and I, and other magazines.

The Bamboo Bike Studio is run by three men in their late 20s who know a lot about bamboo and a lot about bicycles. On a cool autumn morning, two of them are out on a bamboo harvest — in a dense grove near New Brunswick, N.J.

Justin Aguinaldo and Sean Murray carry a small Japanese pull saw and a caliper to find bamboo stems that are 1 1/2 inches thick. When they find stems that are just right, they tap the bamboo to make sure it’s not too soft: “If the bamboo’s too watery, it’s not as dense and it’s not as strong,” Aguinaldo explains.

Aguinaldo makes his living as a bicycle messenger. Sean Murray is a former schoolteacher whose voice mail greeting makes note of the fact that he is now living the dream of making bikes with his friends.

Murray says he finds bamboo patches by reading online gardening forums. He says a lot of people start growing bamboo as a decorative plant — but then it gets out of hand.

“There’s a kind of urgency brought on by the protests of their neighbors,” Murray says.

The two bamboo bike makers cut the green bamboo stems in 3-foot and 5-foot lengths and fill the trunk of their small sedan before heading back to their bike studio in Brooklyn.

The bike's joints — which are wrapped in a carbon fabric that soaks up epoxy — look like they're held together with black electrical tape.

Back at the bike studio, the bamboo’s outer skin is treated with a torch, and the stems are baked in a homemade oven. The brown stems are then fastened into frames by connecting them with a sawdust and resin mixture. The joints are wrapped with a thin, ribbon-like carbon fabric that soaks up epoxy. After the epoxy dries, the bike’s joints look like they’ve been wrapped with black electrical tape.

On a recent weekend, Sari Harris — a self-described “tinkerer” — spent close to $1,000 to make her own bamboo bike. For that fee, she got the bamboo frame and all of the components she needed to make a multi-gear or single-speed bike — and a bamboo bike expert to guide her through the assembly process.

Harris is an information architect who was overdue for a bike upgrade — she’d had her old bike for more than 20 years. Harris designs interfaces for mobile phone apps — but she admits she’s a little less savvy with bike maintenance (“I can change a tire and that’s it,” she says.) Learning the mechanics and components of her bike really appealed to Harris, and she says she now plans to do her own tuneups.

Engineer Marty Odlin was supervising Harris’ work. Odlin estimates that there are now close to 80 bamboo bikes on the road that were built in his Brooklyn studio.

“Everyone who leaves the studio says, ‘Wow, my bike is my favorite object now.’ ” Odlin says. “They have such a connection to this thing that came together under their own hands. They may not come here to have that connection to their bicycle, but that’s what they leave with.”

Marty Odlin says people form a special bond with a bike they've built by hand. "They may not come here to have that connection to their bicycle, but that's what they leave with," he says.

The Bamboo Bike Studio has drawn amateur bike builders from as far away as California and England. Alexis Mills, a bicycle messenger in Ottawa, and his 61-year-old mother, a doctor, came and made bikes.

Back in Canada, Mills quickly found that people who ride around on bamboo bikes get a lot of questions about their wheels.

“The ride itself is really smooth,” Mills says. “It eats up a lot of the vibrations of the road. I wondered if it might be too flexible or too mushy, but it’s not. It’s really nice to ride.”

Interest in bamboo bikes is growing. A company in Colorado says it will start shipping bamboo bikes in the spring that cost as much as $1,300. But Marty Odlin says the bamboo bike makers here in Brooklyn believe in doing things a different way.

“There is a concern that bamboo bikes become this fad,” he explains. “And we could sell a whole bunch of them for a whole lot of money to a whole bunch of people very quickly and then nothing after that, right? It becomes a fad and dies out. We feel like we’re building something with more enduring value than that.”

The bikes themselves really last; Odlin and his two partners have all ridden thousands of miles on New York City streets on their bamboo frames. And whether it’s a fad or not, the bamboo bike-making classes are filled until April.

Article Source: NPR: Do It Yourself: Build a Bamboo Bike

Lets take a look at this “Leading Provider”.

Fat Spaniel’s product line is a little ambiguous. The four products mentioned on their website are named “Insight Views”, and “Insight Platform”, as well as “Solar Plant Vision”, and “Solar Operations Services”, which have not been released yet (see below).

The only place I could find to buy Fat Spaniel’s system was Real Goods. They were offering a complete package for $899. This product evidently includes a small “Data Acquisition Module” which gathers data from the inverter. The data is then sent to Fat Spaniel’s data monitoring server, where the data is displayed on a web page that is accessible to the owner of the system. Real Goods was offering 5 years of monitoring in the $899 package. More in-depth details about how the system works can be found here. However, I could not tell from Fat Spaniel’s website what product Real Goods was selling.

The data monitoring webpage is configurable for commercial systems. The owner of the solar system can create an interactive kiosk that displays the data, as displayed here on the Fat Spaniel showcase page.

The San Jose, Calif.-based solar software company [Fat Spaniel Technologies], plans to announce on Tuesday that it has developed a set of software called Lifecycle Management solutions that also interpret data from its customers’ projects, anticipating and solving problems to help make the most of those solar assets. The company says that some of its software can reduce total maintenance costs by up to 30 percent.
The first two of these products, Solar Plant Vision and Solar Operations Services, are geared toward operating and maintaining solar projects. Aside from helping keep solar plants at their most productive and cost-effective, maintenance is crucial to make sure that these projects retain their value as assets, said Tom Tansy, vice president of marketing at the company. This is especially important considering that most solar projects change ownership after about 5-7 years because of the way they are financed, and keeping track of those assets, including their service and performance histories, is important.
Solar Plant Vision, which is software as a service, is aimed at helping solar-project operators increase the performance of the projects they manage. The technology monitors plant devices, tracks system performance, helps simplify billing and reporting, and provides a portfolio status dashboard that can be used for marketing and energy-consumer education.
Meanwhile, Solar Operations Services targets project developers, and Fat Spaniel claims the services deliver increased energy production, system uptime and lower, more predictable costs. The company plans to pass information about the condition of the plants — and recommendations for the most cost-effective steps to keep them running well — to its customers’ maintenance crews or partner with outsourced maintenance companies, Tansy said.
Fat Spaniel is selling its new services on an annual subscription basis, with the prices varying depending on the amount of energy-production capacity and the number of plants included in the contract. The company already has upgraded its Insight Manager customers, numbering about 500, to Solar Plant Vision, and the new services will be available to new customers starting in October.

Article Source: Earth2Tech

by Stephen Lacey, Podcast Editor

New York, United States [RenewableEnergyWorld.com]

The renewable energy industry has suffered over the last year much worse than previously thought possible. But now the pieces are coming together to make clean energy the centerpiece of an economic recovery. That makes the moment perfect for bootstrapping entrepreneurs and early-stage businesses around the world to seize the opportunity when the financial markets get back to full health.

In this podcast, we’ll look at what entrepreneurs should be doing now to prepare for the surge in renewable energy deployment in the coming years.

Author and Entrepreneurial Consultant Sramana Mitra tells us why early stage companies shouldn’t necessarily be looking to venture capital firms for financing. She’ll also give us her thoughts on some alternative financing options available.

Serial Entrepreneur and SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive describes why he has had so much success in both the software and energy spaces. It’s all about finding and addressing the market “pain points,” he says.
Finally, Dan Reicher of Google.org talks about how his company is working to take technologies out of the “valley of death” and help early-stage companies find investors.

Any thoughts?

And then there was the time when I mistakenly put old mixed gas in our beautiful Stihl weedeater. It started, but when I shut it off, it was destined to never start again. The old mixed gas seized up in the piston, and the whole thing became as hard as rock.

Bummer.

So here is an article that gives some interesting facts about gas-powered lawn maintenance, and then goes through some of the options for gas-free lawn equipment. I have to say, electric is great. It is so quiet! I could talk on the phone and mow the lawn at the same time. In fact, my corded lawn mower is quieter than our vacuum!

A Swedish study in 2001 determined that cutting grass for one hour with an old gas powered lawn mower creates the same amount of air pollution as driving a 1992  automobile 100 miles.

Environmental Canada, the nation’s environmental regulatory agency, says that number is closer to 300 miles in a late-model car.

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Americans spill more than 17 million gallons of gasoline each year refilling lawn equipment – more oil than the Exxon Valdez spilled in Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989.

In an era when people are trying to consume less gasoline and reduce their carbon footprint, lawn maintenance is a function often overlooked  as a major contributor to carbon emissions and other greenhouse gases.

EPA says as much as 5 percent of the nation’s air pollution is caused by gas-powered lawn and garden tools.

To limit these emissions, EPA in 2008 approved regulations that require a 35-percent reduction in emissions from new lawn and garden equipment beginning in 2011.

EPA estimates these changes will conserve 190 million gallons of gasoline a year.

For people who are moving away from gas-powered equipment, many options are available, from old-fashioned reel mowers – which consumes only human energy – to the pricey Automower by Husqvarna, which is available in rechargeable electric and solar models.

The $3,000 suggested retail price on the new solar Automower will keep it from motoring around most people’s lawns, but the machine incorporates two mainstream technologies that not long ago were considered the parlance of science fiction: solar energy and robotics.

Wire placed around the yard is identified by the Automower’s sensors, keeping it within a predetermined area.

Several companies make robotic mowers. Even more companies make standard electric mowers in corded and cordless models.

Besides using no gasoline, electric mowers are quieter to operate than gas models, reducing both air and noise pollution. Cordless mowers cost more than their corded and gas-powered counterparts.

One company that makes a large selection of electric lawn maintenance equipment is Black and Decker. Its Single Source series of cordless yard tools uses an 18-volt rechargeable battery to power hedgers, trimmers, a chain saw, leaf blower, garden cultivator and pole pruner.

Black and Decker Single Source Lawn Mower

The emissions free tools are sold separately and retail from about $70 to $150, depending on the tool. They come with a two-year warranty.

According to the company, this series of tools is the first in its class to qualify for energy star approval for the battery charger. On average, Energy Star qualified battery chargers use 35 percent less energy than conventional models.

Energy Star is the federal system for  rating efficiency in electronic devices. According to Energy Star, more efficient battery chargers in the United States could prevent the release of greenhouse gasses equal to the annual emissions of 150,000 cars.

Learn more about information in this story at: www.epa.gov, www.ec.gc.ca, www.automower.com, and www.blackanddecker.com.

[Source: Ruralite Magazine, August 2009, page 7]

The money to fund an extended Cash for Clunkers program could come at the expense of renewable energy companies.The House on Friday overwhelmingly passed a bill to extend the program which gives consumers up to $4,500 for trading in old cars for new, fuel-efficient ones with an additional $2 billion. The initial $1 billion set aside is said to be already or nearly exhausted.The program has been popular with consumers as well as politicians who see it as a way to revive bleak auto sales. However, the House proposed paying for the extension by using $2 billion approved in the stimulus package for loan guarantees for renewable energy, which may not sit well with energy project developers.Altogether $6 billion was provided for Department of Energy loan guarantees. Those loan guarantees would be made available to finance construction of large solar or biofuels projects. Project financing has become particularly difficult because of the credit crunch.The Renewable Fuels Association, the main lobbying organization for the ethanol industry, put out a statement on Friday to indicate it is “concerned to see the program paid for by depleting the renewable energy loan guarantee program.”Senate Energy Committee chairman Jeff Bingaman said on Friday that he opposed using the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program to fund the Cash for Clunkers program. The Senate is expected to take up the measure next week.”If Congress decides to extend this initiative, I believe we must not rob from the loan guarantees we provided through the recovery package that, in the long term, will shift our country to home-grown, renewable energy while creating good ‘green collar’ jobs,” Bingaman said, according to a Reuters report.Speaking on the House floor, Speaker Nancy Pelosi also voiced her concern and said that she hoped those renewable energy loan guarantee funds would be restored.At a press conference, President Obama on Friday said that the he expects Congress and the White House to work to return funding the loan guarantee program “down the road.”

via Cash for Clunkers could raid renewable-energy loans | Green Tech – CNET News.

So what are your thoughts? Is it right to fund Cash for Clunkers from the DOE energy loan guarantees? Or is Cash for Clunkers closely related enough to renewable energy that they ought to use the money without objection?

The Kill-a-Watt P3 (Image courtesy P3 International)

They’re only $23 at Amazon.

Here is a video review by a very helpful guy who walks you through everything there is to know about the Kill-a-Watt.

And here is a great review of the Kill-a-Watt by Greener Trends:

One of the features we’ve meant to start adding to the site was reviews of green products.  Today’s product might not be as cool as an electric roadster, and probably wasn’t made with the ultra-green purity of an organic lip balm, but it is an essential tool for anyone looking at cutting a few bucks from their electric bill.

I got the Kill-A-Watt to diagnose and compare computer power supplies, but I’ve found it has helped me stay a lot greener than I thought.  The Kill-A-Watt is a little beige box with a plug on the back and a socket on the front.  Plug something in and it will tell you all about your Watts.  What does that mean?  Find out after the jump.

A Watt is how we measure power; but before we talk about power, let’s talk about energy for a second.

We all know from science class that energy is the “stuff” that makes things go, but when we want a little detail we want a better picture of things.  Basically energy (which we’ll measure in Joules… for now) is what comes packed inside a battery.  You know, aside from all those chemicals and heavy metals.  You know batteries, they come out of the charger all nice and warm and ready to serve but then they get used up.  They’re out of energy because they’ve been providing power.  Energy is how much it’s done over it’s life and power is the ammount it’s doing this second.  In fact, a Watt is 1 Joule spent or earned in 1 second.

Now you too can smugly smile and raise an eyebrow when people misuse those terms.  Just like a first-year physics major.

Now, a kilowatt is 1000 Watts and, a kilowatt-hour is all the kilowatts your friendly power company has sent you multiplied by all the hours they’ve been doing it.  So the kilowatt-hours that show up on your bill are just a measure of your total energy usage.  You can translate this into number of batteries if you like, but that’s extra credit.

Enough Sceince, Get on with the Gadget!

The Kill-A-Watt measures more than just power.  It will show you the Voltage of your wires (call an electrician if it’s too far from 120v), the Current you’re drawing (this is the thing that actually changes and draws in energized electrons), but mainly you’re interested in the Wattage Power.

Even though 1 Volt x 1 Amp (the measure of current) is 1 Watt, it also gives you the power in either Watts or Volt-Amps.  What’s the difference?  Well it all has to do with the fact that we get our power from the Teslan miracle of Alternating Current.  That is to say that the electric fields swing back and forth between 120V more than what the ground is producing, all the way down to -120V.  This swinging means that the actual average voltage on your lines is 0, so some smart fellow decided to average it with some fancier statistics and came up with the Root Mean Square (RMS, though some Ivory Tower dwellers use the term Standard Deviation).  The maximum Current and Voltage gives you VA, but if you use RMS, you get Watts.

That AC business leads to another interesting artifact that the K-A-W measures: Power Factor.  I won’t get into what Power Factor actually is, but it is worth mentioning. Essentially, it’s a measure of how out of skew the timing of your electrons are from where they should be.  This causes a loss of what’s called Reactive Power.   And that’s what those tv scams sell a fix for.  Lucky for you, unless you’re a factory you don’t get charged for Reactive Power.  You can read more about PF Correction scams from Dan, and his Data.

There’s another cool little feature that I like a lot.  Its button is even pink to set it apart from the industrial gray of the others.  Remember those Killowatt-Hours we talked about earlier?  This feature is all about that.  Plug in your home theater, make sure everything is “off” and hit this button.  Come back in a couple of hours and be amazed.  This is the number that gets translated into a dollars… or tons of coal… or birds whacked by turbines… you get the picture.

This feature is like your carbon bathroom scale.  It won’t actually lose weight for you, but it’s important to know where you’re at and it just might shock you into losing a few Joules.

I absolutely think you should get a Kill-A-Watt for yourself.  They’re only $23 at Amazon.  The plug on the back is really the only bad thing I can think of, but nothing a cheap (but UL rated) extension cord can’t fix.

This is a GreenerTrends Must Buy.

via Green Product Review: Kill-A-Watt | Greener Trends.

Ever since we assembled a 1.6 MW solar panel installation at our headquarters in Mountain View in 2007, we’ve been wondering, “Does cleaning the solar panels make them more effective?” We thought it might, but we needed to be sure. So we analyzed the mountains of data that we collect about the energy that these panels produce — after rain, after cleaning and at different times of the year.

We have two different sets of solar panels on our campus — completely flat ones installed on carports, and rooftop ones that are tilted.

Since the carport solar panels have no tilt, rain doesn’t do a good job of rinsing off the dirt they collect. (Also, our carports are situated across from a sand field, which doesn’t help the situation.) We cleaned these panels for the first time after they had been in operation for 15 months, and their energy output doubled overnight. When we cleaned them again eight months later, their output instantly increased by 36 percent. In fact, we found that cleaning these panels is the #1 way to maximize the energy they produce. As a result, we’ve added the carport solar panels to our spring cleaning checklist.

The rooftop solar panels are a different story. Our data indicates that rain does a sufficient job of cleaning the tilted solar panels. Some dirt does accumulate in the corners, but the resulting reduction in energy output is fairly small — and cleaning tilted panels does not significantly increase their energy production. So for now, we’ll let Mother Nature take care of cleaning our rooftop panels.

Accumulated dirt in the corners of a rooftop solar panel

We’ve also been crunching numbers on dollars-and-cents; the more energy our panels produce, the sooner we’ll be paid back by our solar investment. Our analysis now predicts that Google’s system will pay for itself in about six and a half years, which is even better than we initially expected.

If you want to learn more about our solar study, check out these slides showing the effects that seasonality, tilt, dirt, particulate matter, rain and cleaning have on Google’s solar energy output. We hope you solar panel owners out there can tailor our analysis to the specifics of your own installation to produce some extra energy of your own!

Posted by Winnie Lam, Senior Product Manager

via Official Google Blog: Should you spring clean your solar panels?.

Here is a great video produced by Renewable Energy World. A company called SOLARtec is making a shipping container that is a self-contained power grid that supports 1500 people with it’s solar array of 60KW.

The Simple Pump pumps 3 to 5 gallons per minute from up to 250′ static water level. Your static water level is the level that the water in the well rests at normally. Usually it only rises and falls by a few feet on an annual basis, but severe drought or a neighbouring well drawing thousands of gallons could affect your static level. Your well could be drilled to 300ft, (a relatively deep well), and the static water level could be only 70ft. So there is hope for very deep wells to use a pump like this.

The Simple Pump works on an old well pumping method, the sucker rod. There is a page here that has lots of FAQ’s about the Simple Pump, and you can read a lot more on their site.

There are only two seals on the Simple Pump that wear out over time, and as the entire sealing kit only costs $5, and the seals last for about five years, go figure!

The Pump Head has two stainless steel balls that alternately open and close the flow of water, pulling the water up the shaft.

You can see some installation videos here on our Simple Pump page.

Here is a review by some folks who used it to charge their pressure tank:

“Last summer, we were told that our well was getting up there in years and would soon need to be replaced. So we started a New Well Fund, and by this spring, we’d saved up enough to have the new well drilled.

Out here in the boonies (only 5 miles from “civilization” like cable, natural gas, city water, and Meijer’s), we are plagued by power outages. It’s better than it was a couple years ago, when every heavy rain would kill our power for hours at a time, but we still lose power for 8 – 72 hours about once or twice a year. And as you probably know, when you’re on a well, no power means no water. We keep jugs of water in the house, but we decided that an even better solution would be to have a hand pump on the well.

We opted for a Simple Pump. The beauties of this pump are many. It needs no priming. (Older-style pumps require you to pour water into the pump before it will start to draw water, so you’re out of luck if you’re completely out of water, or your priming water is frozen). The pump won’t freeze in the winter – you can use it all year with no modifications. It installs alongside your existing electric pump, so there’s no switchover between electric and manual. In fact, both can be running at the same time. And supposedly, you can run a hose from the Simple Pump to the pressure tank in your basement, charge the pressure tank, and continue to get water flowing out of your faucets. I need a male/male hose adapter, and then I’ll try this out and report on how it goes. [Update: here's the review. The verdict? Possible but maybe not preferable.]

For pumping into a bucket or hose, the Simple Pump is very easy to use. I can operate it with one hand, though I prefer the balance of using two hands. Our well is about 100’ deep, and it takes 5 strokes to get the water going, then an additional 10 strokes to pump a gallon of water. There are two handle settings; the other setting makes pumping easier, but you get less water per stroke. I actually found that setting too easy at our depth, like riding a bike in first gear downhill. A child could definitely pump water, and because of the hose attachment, you could use the pump action to move the water rather than relying on hauling buckets.

The cost of having the Simple Pump installed during new well installation was $1300 (parts and labor). That was a bit steep, especially on top of the $4300-5000 for a typical well installation, but we think it’s worth it. Cribley Well Drilling did the installation; they said this is the 6th or 7th they’ve done this year – so apparently, lots of folks are thinking this is a good idea. It might be something that a group of neighbors could pitch in for, or perhaps a church or Grange.

I also have to say, the quality of water from the new well just floors me. Our old well was at least 40 years old, we think, and the steel casing was starting to disintegrate. We used a whole-house sediment filter and a Britta pitcher filter, and the water tasted like iron and stained everything. Bathwater was gray from suspended manganese sediment. From time to time, I would switch to store-filtered water for drinking, and it tasted so…clean. (Although even the old well water tasted cleaner than chlorinated city water.)

The water from the new well tastes decent right out of the tap. I’ll be curious to see if that lasts; the well was just bleached, after all. And I know that the plastic (PVC?) lining is not the best thing to be in contact with drinking water, but well water is 55 degrees, and plastic leaches the least when it’s cold. And honestly, after drinking rust flakes and fine particle sediment, I think I’ll risk it. The well driller said we should be able to quit filtering the water completely, too.

So all in all, I’m really pleased. The service from Cribley was fantastic (they even ran a PVC conduit through the basement wall for the hose to charge the pressure tank), the water is great, and the hand pump is everything I’d hoped for. I’m also wondering if the country curse of “iron in the water” is a misnomer, if the iron is actually your disintegrating well casing.

And update on the Simple Pump installation: yes, you can use it to fill the pressure tank. It was actually quite easy to fill the tank up to 40psi. This gives decent water pressure in the house for one or two toilet flushes or quite a bit of handwashing, drinking water, and dish-rinsing. The system of putting a 1-1/4″ PVC pipe though the wall of the basement as a “hose conduit” works really well. The hose threads through very easily, and when I pull the hose out, I just pop a PVC cap on each end, and it keeps air and critters out.

Caveats:

• The fittings on both ends are male, so I had to modify the (special drinking-water-certified) hose to have female adapters at both end.
• I wasn’t able to get it to fill over 40psi, no matter how long I pumped. It’s possible they didn’t install the correct check valve, but I think this is just the limitation of the pump.
• 40psi gives good water pressure for about 4 gallons of water, then you have to pump it up again. It may or may not be very useful, ultimately – though I do find that it’s much easier to rinse with the sink sprayer than with a pitcher, and cleaner than using a tub of water (especially for one-off washes of hands or single dishes).
• You can’t unhook the hose from the pump to the tank when the system is pressurized, so it’s not terribly convenient to switch between tank-pressurization and pumping-into-a-bucket. Hmm, maybe if I used one of those Y adapters that let you attach two hoses to one spigot?
• The hose would freeze pretty quickly in the winter if it were just lying on the ground.

Final verdict: Yes, it is possible to charge the pressure tank using the Simple Pump, but it may or may not be worth the effort. A longer test is in order, I think; if we get around to doing a non-electric weekend this summer, that will be a much more realistic test.”

via New well and Simple Pump review « Eat Close To Home.

We have these pumps available on our store, so you can get lots more information here.

Neuton Mower with Trimmer Blade attached

These mowers definently have the “wow” factor. They don’t look at all like they belong out cutting grass.

The nice thing about these mowers is that they can very easily be set up to charge off of solar, making it perfect for lawn care businesses that choose to use electric lawn maintenance equiptment. And because it is cordless, there aren’t any of those issues with cords getting stuck on things, and you can go a long ways from any power outlet.

I am working on getting a kit together so that you can charge these mowers with solar. I hope to also include the supplies for creating a mobile charging setup, so that lawn maintanace businesses could charge an extra set of batteries while they were in the field, as long as they parked their truck in the sun.

Fox 44 did a review on the battery mower here. Be sure to watch it.

You can get the Neuton for a phenomenal price here at Amazon: Neuton CE 5.2 14-Inch 24-Volt Cordless Lawn Mower With Removable Battery

Here is a review from Groovy Green:

“Before I start this review, you should know that I have a love/hate relationship with lawns. Living in the Northeast, they’re a necessary evil when one has not yet shifted an entire backyard to something built on permaculture. On the other hand, a recently cut lawn does look beautiful and sharp — something drilled into my head from summers of mowing other lawns to make cash in High School.

When my lawn turns colors from a lack of rain, I do not get out the sprinkler. I consider it a vacation from the weekly chore of mowing. If weeds or other variants of grass make their presence known, I consider them compliments to the scenery. It amuses/depresses me to no end the amount of resources Americans spend on the upkeep of lawns across the US — especially in places where grass has no business growing in the first place.

I know many people who use manual mowers to keep their lawns tidy, but I’ve never been one of them. The grass I encounter (due to my unwillingness to mow more often) is often too high — or I don’t like the lack of mulching offered. I absolutely hate raking grass up (another stupid practice) and have embraced the auto-mulching, non-pickup feature found often on today’s modern gas-powered mowers.

Of course, gas-mowers come with their own issues; the least of which is that they run on gasoline. They also require oil maintenance, are loud, and a bit of a pain in the ass to move around due to their heft. These are some of the many reasons why I’ve been intrigued with all of the electric mowers that have been hitting the market. When Neuton contacted me to give their latest a shot, I’m jumped at the opportunity.

Courtesy GroovyGreen.com

Everything arrived in a tighly packed box worthy of green points right away — mostly due to the inclusion of recycle cardboard protecting the contents. Putting the mower together was a snap and I had everything ready to rock in about 15 minutes. Of course, the battery needed an overnight charge, so my initial grass cutting was delayed by a day. Fine by me.

The extra time gave me an opportunity to check out the Neuton — which definitely embraces a modern styling. In fact, when I later took it out on the grass, I actually had some people walking their dog come over and ask what it was. How often does that happen with a gas mower? This thing will certainly start conversations.

In addition to its looks, I was pleased to see that a large majority of the Neuton is made from plastic; making this an easy product to recycle once the end comes. As expected, that means it’s also fairly light and nimble — coming in at a manageable 48lbs with the battery.

After the 12-hour initial charge, I easily popped the battery in and got to work on my roughly .6 acres of lawn.

Courtesy GroovyGreen.com

Before I even started the blade spinning, I was immediately impressed with the safety features of the unit. First, you need a key to start the mower — which is easily inserted into the body. Next, you must move a panel on the handle and squeeze down to engage the blade. All of this is incredibly easy — and a nice touch to prevent kids from fooling around. Of course, there is absolutely no string to pull to get this thing going — HOORAY! — and you’ll potentially love that feature the most.

Another awesome selling point: This mower is quiet. It’s not Tesla Sportscar quiet — since you’re still having this metal blade underneath the plastic body spinning quite rapidly and displacing air — but I definitely did not need the hearing protection that I use with my other gas mower. In fact, according to a study conducted by the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse, the Neuton is the quietest rotary mower available. It rather sounds like a room window fan on high.

But the real question is: Can it with compete with a regular gas mower? After using the product twice to cut my entire lawn (without an additional charge), I can definitely say yes. Of course, I have a fairly small lawn and don’t expect much from my machines. I just want them to cut the grass so I can get on with life. Your demands or situation might be different. Here’s what I liked/disliked:

LIKED

1. Cutting power was comparable if not even better than my two-year old gas-powered mower. On some patches of high grass where my gas mower would have issues, the Nueton cut right through.

2. Cleaning after cutting is much easier. I can simply tip the mower over and scrap out any excess grass without worying about oil or gasoline running all over the place.

3. I don’t have to worry about filling the mower up with gasoline, changing the oil, or getting it ready for winter storage with additional fluids. AWESOME. Also, no more “I flooded the engine.” moments.

4. Easy to move around — which is good, because it ties into one of my complaints.

5. No fumes and much quieter than my other mower.

6. Easy to integrate into a closed clean-energy loop with solar or wind charging the battery.

DISLIKED

1. Mulching didn’t seem as efficient as my gas mower. That being said, it wasn’t noticeable enough to cause me to pull out a rake.

2. No “self-propel” mode — so it’s all push. Regardless, it was fairly easy to move around without any straining issues or out-of-breath moments. I’d love to see that added as a feature in future models.

3. No charge indicator means you’ll be guessing how long you’ve got left in between mows.

4. Still a lead-acid battery — which takes more time to charge and is heavier than the lithium-ion models.

The need for a charged battery could be seen as cumbersome, but if you’re used to charging your cell phone at night, you can probably get away with remembering to charge your mower as well. I’d recommend picking up an additional battery just have on hand — which at $99 is pricey, but worth it.

At the end of the day, this is still just a lawn mower we’re talking about — but it gets the job done. Of course, it’s up to you to decide if not having to deal with gasoline, emissions, or noise is worth the extra dough you’ll throw at this mower over a conventional one. For the environment, you can’t go wrong — but that’s doesn’t always translate well when it comes to the wallet.

Over time, these mowers will become much more common — and come down in price. I look forward to seeing what Neuton has planned for the future, especially when it comes time to transition to Lithium-Ion. For now, though, if you’re looking for something quiet, powerful, and virtually maintenance-free, I can highly recommend this mower for anyone eager to add even more green to their outside chores.

Official site: Neuton Power“

I can’t wait to get ahold of one of these to check it out further. For a cordless, battery powered lawn mower, I can’t find a better solution. I’ll let you know what my further thoughts are when I see one in person.