Our new Photo Voltaic Solar Panels arrived this week while we were in Ft. Benning, Georgia. We were there attending our Son’s graduation from Infantry Training.
The six Panels are 195 watt Sanyo Hybrid panels. These panels have a amorphous layer over top the mono crystalline layer, and work well in cloudy and overcast weather as well as bright sunny weather. It was in the high 20’s last night, and the sun is low on the horizon, so a 1200 watt boost to our existing 550 watts will be appreciated. This will greatly reduce our propane usage and generator run times, and keep our house batteries fully charged for longer periods of time. I’ll be posting pictures and desciptions as we install them, and will be updating our DIY Solar Power Installation ebook at http://www.green-trust.org/ebooks/.
So many Americans dump thousands of gallons of water on their yards every years, and many pounds of chemical fertilizers, trying to keep the “green”. These yards are not green, they are chemical facsimiles of nature.
The Texas Commission On Environmental Quality offers the following points (and associated solutions) in their “Green Guide to Yard Care“:
Every year more than 5 million tons of yard trimmings and other organic materials end up in Texas landfills instead of building up the soil.
Millions of gallons of city treated water are used to irrigate landscapes where native vegetation once grew in naturally mulched soil, sustained by rainfall.
Much of that water runs off the land, eroding depleted and unprotected soils that are unable to absorb it. The excess sediment from your lawn and many other yards can smother aquatic life in the receiving bodies of water. Excess sediment can also increase the cost of operating water supply reservoirs.
Costly synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are applied to compensate for the loss of nutrients and protection once provided by organic debris and rich soil life. Surprising as it may seem, residential users apply more pounds per acre of these chemicals than farmers do—often to the point of disrupting beneficial soil life.
As your soil loses its organic matter, it allows more of these chemicals to run off and wash through it—contributing to the pollution of lakes, streams, and underground water. In excess, these pollutants can harm aquatic life or contaminate the food chain.
Cob is an ancient and simple building material. Made of soil, sand, straw and water, it can last for decades, sometimes centuries, and is an inexpensive, local, green building material.
“The three most common forms of earth buildings are adobe, rammed earth and cob. In the southwestern United States, the five hundred year old Taos Pueblo, as well as many homes and churches, are made of adobe. Adobe is a form of building using unfired earth. Dirt, straw and water - the same ingredients as in cob - are made into bricks which are then sun dried and built into walls with a “cob-like” mortar. Some very old Native American structures like the Casa Grande ruin in Arizona are made out of cob. These are described locally as being built of “puddled or coursed adobe”.”
This spring, Green-Trust will be building a generator and wood boiler shed with cob, in preparation for building a few homes as well.
The 13th annual North Country Sustainable Energy Fair, upstate New York’s largest and longest running community energy fair, is April 25-27, 2008 at the SUNY Canton Campus Center, Canton, NY. Last year thousands of people attended the Fair from as far away as Rochester, Ithaca, Buffalo, Canada and New England.
This year, by popular request, the Fair will expand to both Saturday and Sunday, and will be our most varied and in depth so far.
Steve Spence and Jim Juczak will be presenting a workshop on Building your own Wind Turbine, and Steve will be presenting on Installing your own Solar Power System.
A reader on our 12v group brought up this topic, and it started the idea engine. There were a few models available in the past, of lawn and garden tractors, that used electric motors instead of fuel driven engines. Quieter, easier on the environment and your lungs, and arguably, on your wallet, it’s apparent that they are attempting a comeback. Appropriate on a off-grid homestead like ours, we are researching the availability, and possibility of converting our Sears mower to electric. See the following resources:
We have a new feature on our website. A series of environmentally focused videos can be found on the lower right side of this post and other articles on this website. Also check out the discussion topics to the right of this post. Hope you enjoy.
Covering Sizing, siting, installation, and battery maintenance, it’s a good guide to putting together your own inexpensive system. Includes private discussion group and free updates.
So, the trip to Anguilla wasn’t all work. We had a week of swimming, hiking, exploring the rocky coast and beaches, meeting new people, music festivals and sailing races. The pics show what a wonderful place Anguilla is.
We just got back from our trip to Anguilla. We helped Francoise set up her new solar power system. Two Kyocera 130 watt PV panels, a Xantrex C35 charge controller, a Trimetric Battery Meter, a Morningstar Microsine 300 sine wave inverter, and a 70 ah AGM battery, power up 3 Compact Fluorescent Lights, A LG WP-680N Washing Machine (260 Watts) and a Shurflo 12v pump. Two weeks of testing, and we were never able to pull the battery below 12.4 volts. The system consistently output 1.5 kWh’s daily. More pics at http://www.green-trust.org/Anguilla Solar/.
Recycline’s New Preserve® Razor Triple is made from Recycled Materials and is Recyclable
My son really likes this one. His is red, looks racy, and keeps his teenage chin whisker free. They grow up so fast.
Waltham, MA (October 17, 2006) – Recycline is proving once again that high-performance consumer products used every day can be designed with an environmental edge. The Preserve Razor Triple is the latest addition to the Preserve brand, which already includes the top-selling toothbrush, razor and plastic tableware in the natural product marketplace. This new razor is the first environment-friendly alternative for high-performance shaving products. “The razor category in the natural channel has been void of a high performance offering and consumers and retailers have been asking for an environment-friendly and high-performance alternative,” says Recycline President and founder Eric Hudson.
Professionally, I'm an IT Engineer (Executive Level) and Electronics Tech. Philosophically, I'm a Green Conservative, and probably would have been a hippie in the 60's if I had been old enough. I live off grid, with Solar (PV), Wind, and veggie oil fueled diesel generator power, and have been teaching and living sustainable technology for over 10 years.
Our new Photo Voltaic Solar Panels arrived this week while we were in Ft. Benning, Georgia. We were there attending our Son’s graduation from Infantry Training. 
Professionally, I'm an IT Engineer (Executive Level) and Electronics Tech. Philosophically, I'm a Green Conservative, and probably would have been a hippie in the 60's if I had been old enough. I live off grid, with Solar (PV), Wind, and veggie oil fueled diesel generator power, and have been teaching and living sustainable technology for over 10 years.
