So you want some do-it-yourself climate solutions. Popular Science is the place to go.
The magazine details how, for $300, you can build a vertical wind turbine (pictured below) for your home in about three days. It will generate 50 kilowatt-hours per month, which might be about 10 percent of your electricity use, depending on the size of your house and how efficient you are. You can also download plans at windstuffnow.
Or maybe you want something a tad bit easier to make, something to "keep your gadgets powered even when the grid fails you." Follow these instructions, and for a mere three hours in work and $150 in parts, you'll have your very own solar charger (pictured below).
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
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Comments View as Flat
WWAGD?! Posted 10:44 am
24 Aug 2007
With Global Heating, Make That 110%
Why are these metrics presented in temperate zone numbers?
In the tropics, this would be excess electricity that could be used, say, to power an OLPC (XO) laptop.
Global Heating changes the game...we'll all need less energy just to live and work.
So yes, 10% of what we need today, maybe 110% of what we need tomorrow!
John Bailo
Sutext:
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Gary Gifford Posted 3:57 pm
24 Aug 2007
use hybrid vehicles
A much more reliable backup power system would be to run a DC/AC inverter on a Toyota Prius with its large 300 volt battery and allowing the engine to charge it as needed. Yes, its fossil fueled, but how often are you really going to need it?
Cheers, Gary Gifford
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IfOnly Posted 12:14 am
25 Aug 2007
Make money on these too
The wind project can even make more money than the stock market.
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sindark Posted 12:18 am
27 Aug 2007
Not worth the money or bother
In Ontario, 50 kWh is worth $2.65. Even if you don't take into account labour, maintenance, of the cost of capital, that vertical turbine will take about ten years to recoup its cost.
I suspect the $300 could be better spent, if energy efficiency or reduced GHG emissions are the aim.
a sibilant intake of breath
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amazingdrx Posted 1:02 am
27 Aug 2007
$5.50 here for 50kwh
And 11 bucks if it were incentivized like solar power is for our neighbors that get 23 cents per kwh from Wisconsin Electric.
But what if conservation reduced home power needs to 100kwh per month? 50 from that small wind machine and 50 from a solar panel?
That changes the whole equation.
Using LED lights, LCD computer/TV moniter, geothermal heating/cooling. It is possible with available technology to affordably get to that level of conservation.
If this whole change over had a payback period of 10 years, would it be worthwhile to divert the 10s of billions in corporate welfare to fossil and nuclear and oil and gas corporations in order to subsidize that payback period down to 7 years?
I think it would. The benefit to our whole society would justify shifting those subsidies and tax breaks from multinational corporations (who are experiencing record profits and growth, due in large part to bribery and kleptocracy)to individual home, farm, and small business owners.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 1:13 am
27 Aug 2007
Great quote!
"A creative economy is the fuel of magnificence." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Make it magnificent! Check out the payback on these wind machines built by cooperative friends and neighbors. It's an amish-like collective approach without the religion and using time proven, simple technology.
http://www.otherpower.com/otherpower_wind.html
This is a creative economy, mixing collective action with capitalist small business.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Nucbuddy Posted 1:25 am
27 Aug 2007
The world's largest solar panel
Amazingdrx wrote: But what if conservation reduced home power needs to 100kwh per month? 50 from that small wind machine and 50 from a solar panel?
Is there is a solar panel that can produce 50kWh in December?
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sunflower Posted 1:37 am
27 Aug 2007
3 m2 pv @ 12% in Colorado = 50 kWh/month Dec.
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Nucbuddy Posted 2:40 am
27 Aug 2007
A 30-meter^2 solar panel might work for this
Sunflower,
If the sunshine in Colorado has an average power of 100 watts for the sunniest five hours of the typical December day, 3 square-meters of 12%-efficient solar-panels would produce 180 watt-hours in a day, and 5.4 kWh for the month.
How did you come up with 50 kWh?
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sunflower Posted 3:24 am
27 Aug 2007
NREL solar data
http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/redbook/atlas/ ...
Dual axis tracking flat plate insolation is 5.5 kWh/m2/day December Colorado * 0.12 * 3 m2 * 31 days = 61 kWh / December
Flat Plate Tilted South at Latitude - 15 Degrees is 4.5 kWh/m2/day December Colorado * 0.12 * 3 m2 * 31 days = 50 kWh / December
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akbeancounter Posted 4:45 am
27 Aug 2007
A Little Uglier, Please?
As much as I love the concept of home wind turbines, I don't know a homeowners' association on the planet that would allow something that awkward on the roof.
Of course, these are the same people who freak out at the concept of line-drying clothes (how crass!), while also paying for "spring breeze" fabric softener to mimic the experience. So maybe it's their priorities that need to change. Still, they have the power to veto a project like this, so could we design something a bit more visually pleasing?
-- A.
Taking accounting to the extreme since 2004.
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amazingdrx Posted 3:36 pm
27 Aug 2007
Just saw one
On Ed Begley's home on an HGTV program. It wasn't ugly. A small vertical axis wind turbine.
To many of us there is nothing quite so ugly as a hummer and a mcmansion. unless it is the owner of those monstrosities that are killing the natural world we revel in.
I guess it is hard for the anti-natural to understand exactly how ugly they seem. An idiot limboob spraying round up on the weeds by his mail box? Hideous.
A dumbass cutting brush on his "ranch". Revolting.
Huge wind machines out on the prairie. Beautiful.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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