How do Fuel Cells Work? Fuel Cells create electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen to make water. Batteries work by chemical combinations as well to create electricity. The difference is a battery has all the chemicals stored inside and eventually lose their charge. With a fuel cell, as long as hydrogen and oxygen are flowing into the cell, electricity is produced. The electricity is produced with the only bi-product of water.

How Fuel Cells Work

Why the big fuss about fuel cells? Most electricity produced today is done by burning fossil fuels. Fossil fuel supplies are not renewable, and because they will eventually run out, the price of fossil fuels is very unstable which creates power structures that cause adverse political and economic consequences for people who don’t own fossil fuel reserves. Additionally, the burning of fossil fuels to produce electricity and power our transportation, is implicated in the majority of global pollution woes and increasing global temperatures. Perpetually created solar and wind power can create most of our needs for electricity, but you need transportable power to run vehicles. Transportation is where fuel cells offer the most promise to solve many political, economic, and global pollution problems caused from over reliance on non-renewable fossil fuels.

The website - www.fuelcellworks.com provides an excellent summary of how fuel cells work.

What can we as individuals do? Electricity generated from solar and wind power can be used to separate hydrogen from water. This hydrogen can be used to power fuel cells in cars. When creating your own power generation systems, if you create a system that produces more electricity than you need to power your home, you can set up a system to create your own hydrogen to power fuel cells. On my property that is on a south facing hill in Northern Nevada, I can create about ten times more electricity than I need between solar and wind power. Stay tuned as I figure out just how to make this a reality.

I’m evaluating solar energy options for a property in Connecticut. The challenge is that it needs a new roof. My friend Peter brought up this challenge last night on his home as well. He wants to consider putting up solar panels, but he is worried about having to take them off the roof when he needs to replace the roof within in five years.

I had researched solar shingles about six months ago for this property when I was considering reroofing the house. But I didn’t find a lot of options on the net for solar shingles. Now I know why - I was not looking under the correct term! The correct term I recently discovered is “Building Integrated Photovoltaics.” However, many companies that use this term are selling solar panels that are pretty similar to standard solar panels.   A conventional solar panel weighs about 35 pounds, produces between 180 W and 210 W and is a little bigger than 3 feet x 5 feet and are mounted on metal racks.   This equates to about 2 lbs/sqf.    The companies selling “BIPV” are selling adhesive solar panels, shingles, solar tents, and what looks like fairly conventional solar panels.   Besides the solar tents, they are not more efficient or lower in weight than current conventional panels.    And these systems are typically more expensive but many have unique architectural applications and can be more integrated into designs.   

Popular manufacturers for BIPV in the US include:

Atlantis Energy Systems, Inc - http://www.atlantisenergy.org/index.html

BP Solar- http://www.bp.com/modularhome.do?categoryId=8050

Evergreen Solar- http://www.evergreensolar.com

GE Energy Home- http://www.gepower.com/prod_serv/products/solar/en/index.htm

GreenBrilliance LLC- http://www.greenbrilliance.com

Micro Energy Group/MEG Int’l. Inc- http://microenergy-group.com

Open Energy Corp - http://www.openenergycorp.com

Solar Integrated- http://www.solarintegrated.com/bipv.htm

SunPower Corporation- http://www.sunpowercorp.com

Uni-Solar/United Solar Ovonic- http://www.uni-solar.com

Power Power Power - 360 Panels of Power Producing Mania

That solar awning post stimulated this contribution by photographer Jody Kasch - a solar carport.  This is at the Patagonia Company in Ventura, California.  On Renewable Energy.com, it says the carport uses 360 Sharp Panels each producing 185 watts of power and produces 66.6 kw of power.  However, that did not adjust for panel or inverter efficiency.   Adjusting for panel and inverter efficiencies, this provides about 55 KW of power.   This is enough to power about 55 homes.

What does that mean?   Lets say you turn on a 40 watt light bulb.   This means it takes 40 watts of electricity to make that light bulb light up.   If you had one solar panel on your house that was rated at 185 Watts - you would lose about 30 watts because most solar panels are 88% efficient and most power invertors (so you convert the DC power from the panel to AC power to run your home lights and appliances) are 95% efficient.   This leaves you with 155 watts of power you can use to turn on those light bulbs.  That is three 40 watt bulbs and one 15 watt bulb.

And It Shades the Cars To Boot

Now you need to be continuously providing those light bulbs with the 155 watts of power to keep them running.   This happens as long as the sun is shining on the solar panels.  When the sun goes down, the solar panels stop producing electricity.

So what is Patagonia doing with their 55KW of power?   How are they storing any excess they create?   What are they doing at night?  These are all things you need to consider when creating your own solar energy electrical system.

Geothermal heat pump application will reduce heating costs and reduce risks of monopolistic pricing practices by the only diesel supplier in town.

I’m evaluating using a geothermal heat pump to heat a property I manage in Southeast Alaska. The drivers for considering this application are:

1. Presently the property is heated using a diesel oil powered furnace for radiant in floor heating. The price of diesel oil is controlled by one monopolistic company in town and the prices go up but not down.

2. The property is vacant about 30% of the time - primarily during the coldest winter months. The heat pump will keep the house warm enough to prevent damage from freezing if no one is on site. The property has a large central chimney with a large wood stove that would suffice as the heating back up on days where the heat pump system may not provide sufficient heat when people are present.

3. There are numerous options for the geothermal heat source of water - the property is on a large body of water that never freezes.

The best site I have found so far that succinctly defines how geothermal heat pumps work is by the California Energy Commission - http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/home/heating_cooling/geothermal.html

This old fridge costs a pretty penny to keep alive.

Well yes it is - to the utility company. My friend Jean was telling me she had this old fridge in her garage that she used for storing the over capacity groceries she purchased from those large warehouse club stores, beer, and other party incidentals. She got the old fridge from a rental house they were renovating. We had an interesting discussion on how much that old fridge was really costing to maintain. If she replaced the old fridge with a new, more energy efficient fridge, she would save $238 per year. For a garage fridge, she really doesn’t need anything fancy, and can pick up a more energy efficient fridge for under $500. The payback on this fridge is a little over two years. If Jean gets an extra $500, say as a bonus from work, or from her husband selling a couple loads of firewood, it would make sense to apply it toward a new garage fridge.

If you want to see what those old refrigerators are really costing you - check out http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=refrig.calculator&screen=1

Access easily understandable daily and monthly information that shows you how to become energy self-sufficient. Click here to learn about how you can:

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