Solar Power Thread

Sinbad said:
Even if electricity hits R3/kwh it will still cost less to use eskom than Diesel.
Your batteries will cost you at least R500 per month in maintenance.
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I forgot about that.
Solar is the only way to go IMO and from my calculations will become viable when the tariffs hit the R2.50 to R3.00 per kWh mark.
Or when a cheaper alternative storage technology becomes available.
 
I read a lot about guys that went off grid in the USA for various reasons and universally they say start by replacing energy consuming devices with their more efficient counterparts.

So get a solar geyser, led light bulbs, more efficient PC or go laptop only, replace fridge with A+++ rated one, get appropriately sized LED LCD TV, replace slower head with low flow variant, weather proof / insulate the house.

See what your consumption is then and then build the off grid system. I have done most of these except the geyser and the fridge and my household of 2 people now uses around 320 kilowatts a month. I got a plug energy monitor to measure the fridge and other appliances and I can easily save another 60 to 80 kw by upgrading my htpc to a newer one and replacing my fridge.

Both will be replaced soon as they are both old and near end of life.

I am a big believer in using less power without negatively affecting my lifestyle and all these improvements have allowed me to continue living without running around turning things off or going without anything.
 
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320 per month... that's awesome! Well done :)
 
Sinbad said:
320 per month... that's awesome! Well done :)
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Thanks bud. Took a lot of research into different products. It amazes me how few Sales people know the power consumption of their products. I sense a huge business opportunity for energy efficiency professionals in this country.
 
Shayd said:
Thanks bud. Took a lot of research into different products. It amazes me how few Sales people know the power consumption of their products. I sense a huge business opportunity for energy efficiency professionals in this country.
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I got mine down to 780 last month, from around 1200 average. Pool is a fairly big chunk of that - 180 or so - but I think I'm gonna go buy an efergy measuring plug so I can identify other big users.
 
Sinbad said:
I got mine down to 780 last month, from around 1200 average. Pool is a fairly big chunk of that - 180 or so - but I think I'm gonna go buy an efergy measuring plug so I can identify other big users.
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Not a bad drop bud. Well done. The monitor really opens your eyes to how much juice things suck down.
 
spiderz said:
I'm running HP Microservers at home now. Used to have a huge Dell server. Next step is to replace my current power supplies with get DC ATX power supplies for them. :D
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I looked at the HP Microservers but they're too power hungry for a home media and file server device.

I picked up one of these http://www.bdsolutions.co.za/ebox/ebox4852.php second hand for R100 and plugged in a 1TB 2.5" USB drive.
Total power consumption is below 10W at full load so even if it runs at full load 24/7 it will never consume more than R9 per month in electricity usage (7.44kWh).
 
I want quite as aggressive with my htpc as you guys.

I have a core i3 with a gtx 650 in it as I use it for steam in big picture mode.

The PC only goes on when I jam or want to download something .
 
So plugged the efergy in. My UPS, which powers home lan, PC, cctv system and home entertainment system pulls 400W with the PC on. Haven't checked with it off yet.... That's a fair whack - 288kwh/month!
 
Paul_S said:
I looked at the HP Microservers but they're too power hungry for a home media and file server device.

I picked up one of these http://www.bdsolutions.co.za/ebox/ebox4852.php second hand for R100 and plugged in a 1TB 2.5" USB drive.
Total power consumption is below 10W at full load so even if it runs at full load 24/7 it will never consume more than R9 per month in electricity usage (7.44kWh).
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No, the HP Microservers are for NAS. My home media is a AC Ryan Media thingy. Can plug usb, SD cards straight into it.
UPS's is also something I need to look at. 200v-12/36v-200v-5/12v just seems so ineffective.

Maybe replace the psu with this:
http://www.mini-box.com/picoPSU-160-XT
and the UPS with this:
http://www.mini-box.com/picoUPS-120-12V-DC-micro-UPS-battery-backup?sc=8&category=981

DC devices just use less power.
 
Shayd said:
Not a bad drop bud. Well done. The monitor really opens your eyes to how much juice things suck down.
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Which monitor are you using?

Do you have a global one? At your board, and then one that you can monitor an individual appliance?

I would i guess like both but the individual plug one would be of more use!
 
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spiderz said:
No, the HP Microservers are for NAS.
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Ummm ... file server ... NAS ... pretty much the same thing IMO.
I run a CIFS server on it but if I want I can run NFS, iSCSI, etc. since it's Linux.
The HP Microservers consume too much power even at idle and other than the performance and extra features like hardware RAID don't offer anything that a standard Linux distro can't provide. 10Watts was my limit for both the processing device and storage.
I'll maybe look at some of the ARM based devices in future which are even more power efficient.
 
Freaksta said:
Which monitor are you using?

Do you have a global one? At your board, and then one that you can monitor an individual appliance?

I would i guess like both but the individual plug one would be of more use!
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Nope just got a cheap little efergy monitor from builders warehouse and ran individual appliances for a period of days.
 
I have an efergy e2 monitoring overall use and I have the plug one as well for checking individual appliances.

The new stuff efergy is coming out with looks lekker - much more online kind of thing.
 
spiderz said:
DC devices just use less power.
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But just about all computer hardware is DC. The difference is internal or external transformer...? The PSU in your PC is just a transformer at the end of the day. You'll need a DC power source anyway.
 
spiderz said:
What would be the best way to cool the house? Inverter aircon?

or maybe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_air_conditioning
http://www.ailr.com/solar_cooling.htm
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Make sure you have adequate insulation and use an efficient air conditioner like an inverter that can be used as an efficient heater in winter.

Also please don't waste your time air conditioning an area with a heat source. My mother in law uses am air conditioner in the kitchen instead of using a fan and open windows.

A general rule of thumb is that air conditioning will use 50% of the energy that a heat source consumes to cool the air back down.

Rather use adequate ventilation and fans where you can. If you use an air conditioner please ensure that the "outside box" where the compressor is is in the coolest environment possible, as the power consumed is proportional to the variance in the targeted temperature and the temperature of the outside compressor.

In a nutshell the air conditioner would use less power to cool the air to 20C from 30C in winter than in summer assuming the room was an airtight box like a server room.
 
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