Monthly Archives: July 2012

My Modest Solar Setup

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I have made repeated references in past posts to the modest off-grid photovoltaic (PV) system I built to cover a large share of our—again modest—electricity usage.  By popular demand, I’ll take you on a tour of the system: it’s history, its composition, and adaptation to my house.

In 2007, I acquired a single, second-hand solar panel—intent on doing something useful with it. Confronted with a variety of options, and eager to explore multiple paths, I purchased a second panel and proceeded to set up a dual system: two stand-alone off-grid PV systems mounted side by side. It was really cool. I was able to power my television console and living room lights off of the two systems, while experimenting with different components and learning to live (part of) my life on natural power. I wrote a comprehensive article about how to size and design such a system, which may be worth reading first. Since that initial success, I have incrementally expanded my system so that I now get more than half of my electrical power from eight panels sitting in the sun. This is their story.

I have enough to say about my solar setup (and PV systems in general) that I must break this topic into multiple posts. In this, the first, I will describe the components, functions, and evolution of the system. In a future post, I will present system performance data and an assessment of efficiency of the various components. Perhaps even later I can explore the impacts of panel orientation, tracking, horizon obstructions, and geographic location.

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Do the Math Turns One: Place Your Orders

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One year ago today, Do the Math was born with a post on the absurdity of continued growth—in this case illustrating a Galaxy-consuming civilization in a mere 2500 years. Within a month, the site was getting thousands of pageviews per day, as I cranked out a backlog of thoughts and analysis surrounding the energy challenges we face.

In the process, adhering to a weekly schedule forced me to perform many new calculations on topics I had not previously explored very deeply. So besides being a cathartic experience, I gained new understanding, finding the exercise of constructing the alternative energy matrix to be particularly clarifying. One of the major lessons for me has been that while the physical scale of any alternative energy resource is important—and sometimes a showstopper—more often it’s the practical limitations that form the biggest barriers.

Finding the time and (mental) energy to keep the blog rolling has been challenging, but it’s you folks who inspired me to keep trucking. Knowing that each post would be read by thousands, and knowing that I could look forward to some excellent and thought-provoking (although sometimes just provoking) comments made the enterprise worthwhile.

At this point, I have dropped the cadence to bi-weekly, and my list of future topic ideas is slowly being whittled down. Many comments in the past have requested that I write a post about issue or another. I invite you to submit requests (even if repeated) in the comment forum below. Note that I might not have the background, interest, or time to invest if serious analysis is required. But there is some chance I’ll take the bait—and the idea may already even be on my list! Please refer to the Guide to Posts for a refresher of what’s been covered already.

Also, I think it fitting on this first anniversary to extend a note of gratitude to Asher Miller of the Post Carbon Institute for inspiring me to start writing, and for putting me in touch with the fine folks at the Energy Bulletin. The EB editors: Bart Anderson, Kristin Sponsler, and Simone Osborn offered early guidance and good advice (plus instant readership) that was vital to getting Do the Math off the ground. So a hearty thanks to these folks! 1.5 million pageviews later, their contributions have clearly had an impact.

And thanks to you, the readers, for your role in making this a successful and rewarding endeavor.

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TED-Stravaganza

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My wife calls it spying. I call it data. To-may-to, To-mah-to. It’s true that I know what she’s been up to (electrically) while I’m away. And it’s true that I can access this information anywhere in the world that has an internet connection. But domestic surveillance is not my aim (cameras and microphones would be far more informative in that regard). I just care about the energy angle.

In this post, I will present example results from monitoring and recording my home electricity use, demonstrating the marvelous secret world it reveals. My interest lies in putting numbers on my own behaviors, and in characterizing the appliances in my house. Some of this rubs off on my wife, and some of it rubs her the wrong way. But as I explained in an earlier post, I kept a note she once wrote that said: “Okay, TED’s pretty cool.”

Who is TED? TED is The Energy Detective. That same earlier post told the story of TED’s tortured journey to our home—a tale of excitement, rejection, and ultimate acceptance.

This post is not meant to convey anything deep and meaningful about the energy challenges we face, except for the fact that those challenges provided a background motivation for me to explore and monitor energy data in my home (it should be obvious by now that I’m a data-holic). Rather, I will simply showcase a number of data captures from TED so you can see for yourself the interesting hidden behaviors of appliances, and develop some intuition about how much of a toll various devices take.

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