The Edison 2 Very Light Car X-Prize Entry

The Edison 2 is one of only two entries remaining in the 4 passenger, 200 mile range mainstream car X-Prize class.

Its a pretty amazing car that get a hundred miles per gallon, and can go a hundred miles per hour.  The main ingredients are light weight, low drag, and an efficient (non-hybrid) internal combustion power plant.
This is nearly five times our current US fleet average mpg, and twice as good as a Prius!

The Edison website is good and brings up a number of interesting points about designing and efficient and safe car. 

More on efficient  and solar cars on our Solar Vehicles web page...

Gary

Elisolar Combines Shading and Thermal Collection in One Attractive Package

Elisolar has an interesting new line of architectural shading structures that double as solar thermal collectors to heat water.

The shading louvers are aluminum.  Water to be heated is run through each of the shading louvers to pick up solar heat.  The water is supplied by PEX tubes that are concealed by the louver support frames.  The structure simultaneously provides shading for the building and heats water.

As indicated by the red areas in the diagram above, the shading structures can be used in a number of locations on a building.

Given that the "collectors" are unglazed and open to air circulation, a high collection efficiency should not be expected -- especially in cold climates.  But, the advantage of getting both shading and water heating out of one simple device may offset the expected low efficiency.  Elisolar is in the process of getting SRCC certification, so performance data should be available soon.

Anyway, this idea of combining shading and collection seems like a good one, and might take other forms -- any ideas?

If nothing else, it should keep overzealous Home Owner Associations at bay.

The Elisolar website... 
 
See the Experimental page for more mind stretching adventures in solar energy use :)
Gary

Denver in Ohio Does a $1K System for $800!

This is a very nicely designed example of a $1K type solar water heating system by Denver who lives in Ohio.

The system has several unique new wrinkles:

The tank is a relatively small footprint but is relatively tall and holds a good deal of water.  It is the plywood box, framed with 2X4 perimeter frames at 4 levels.  The tank uses internal polyiso insulation and  the standard EPDM liner.

The pump is the Swifttech pump, which is intended for cooling PC processors, but works well as a solar pump.  Denver built his own controller, but its similar to the type of differential controller that John C. sells on his site as a kit.  The pump and controller combo are only about $100 total.

Denver used the 300 ft coil of 1 inch PEX for his heat exchanger, but took pains to recoil it for better heat transfer.

With some good design and creative scrouging, Denver managed to keep the total cost of the system to $800 -- this is about 1/10th of what equivalent commercial systems cost!

All the details on Denver's $800 DIY Solar Water Heating System ...

More examples of $1K DIY Solar Water Heating Systems here...

Thanks to Denver for sending this material in!

Gary

Two Water Savers: Todd's dual flush toilet, and a Laundry to Landscape Grey Water Recovery System

Dual Flush Toilet Install
Todd sends in a first hand report on installing and living with his family's new dual flush toilet

Its good to see a first hand report on performance in that there are still people who don't think that a one gallon flush is enough -- Todd would strongly disagree (so would I based our our dual flush toilet experience).

Details on installing and living with a dual flush toilet from Todd...

More on efficient toilets and other water conserving stuff...


A Laundry to Landscape Grey Water Recycling System
This is an account of installing the laundry water recycling system from the Homegrown Evolution blog.  The system design comes from Oasis Design, which has a lot of information on various types of simple grey water recycling systems, and some good books.

These systems allow laundry water which would otherwise just contribute to overtaxing the municipal sewer system to instead by used for landscape watering.

Links to more detail on both systems...

Gary

Realtime Reporting on Our PV System is Back

We have a 2150 self installed PV system that uses Enphase micro-inverters.  In this kind of system, each PV panel gets its own small Enphase inverter, and each inverter reports back to the Enphase internet server on a regular basis throughout the day.  Enphase then puts the data together on a website that they set up for each customer PV array -- it provides near realtime data on how your PV array is doing.

This is ours:
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/PV/EnphasePV/RealTime.htm

The main part of the report looks like this:

This shows the output for the 4th of July.
The first page shows the current output by individual PV panel, and some day, week and total life summaries.
The 2nd graph shows the power output history for the whole array for up to 7 days.

The system also emails out notes when something has gone wrong with the system and needs attention.

For the past few months we have been on a cell phone based internet service that was incompatible with the Enphase system and had to forgo the realtime reporting.  We are now back on a regular internet service, and the realtime reporting is back :)
I have to say that while I thought the online reporting was mostly fluff, I've come around to thinking that this is a good way to do it -- its nice to know that someone else in monitoring the system and will let you know when something breaks.


A very detailed how-to on our PV system, which was surprisingly painless to install...

Details on the realtime reporting feature....

Gary

Root Cellar Using Earthbag Construction

This is an article from Mother Earth News giving a good and detailed account of constructing a root cellar using the earth bag construction technique.

The building could also be used as a storage or garden shed -- or whatever.

 Link to the MEN earth bag root cellar, and other root cellar plans...

Gary

DIY Electric Car -- good site for EV conversions

DIY is a good site for people interested in doing an conversion of a regular gas powered car (or other vehicle) into an electric vehicle.

Lots of good, hands-on information and lots of real projects.

Link to DIY Electric Car (and other electric car conversion sites)...

Gary

Two Year Update on Gordon's Deep Energy Retrofit of Schoolhouse to Home

Gordon sent in the results for his 2nd full winter of operation on his schoolhouse retrofitted to a VERY energy efficient home.
The results continue to be just amazing -- these are the total wintertime space heating energy used:

• $199 of firewood
• $13 LPG
• $7 for electricity

Pretty impressive for a home in a tough Canada climate.

Gordon and Sue's house is a retrofit of an old schoolhouse that had no insulation, poor windows, ....
They did a very carefully designed retrofit that includes adding an R40 Larsen Truss for wall insulation, very efficient passive gain windows, a masonry heater, and a new solarium (shown in the picture) that provides solar space heating for the house.  The house is beautiful inside and out.

The home comes close to meeting Passive House Institute standards , and uses about 6% of of the energy of a similar size typical home in their area -- all in a retrofit!

Details on Gordon's deep energy retrofit of a schoolhouse into a home....

Performance update after two full winters ...

Gary

Sizing the Pump and Plumbing for a Solar Water or Space Heating System

I go through a fairly simple procedure that will allow you to pick the right size pump and the right diameter plumbing for your solar water or space heating system.

I use my Solar Shed space heating system as an example, and go through sizing it in detail. 

The Solar Shed is a fairly large 240 sqft of collectors system, but the procedure can be used for any size system.

The procedure covers:

1. Estimating the flow rate that a set of collectors will need
2. Estimating the pressure drop in the pipes due to pipe friction
3. Using pump curves to pick the right size pump for the system

 All the details on picking pump n' pipes for solar heating ...

Gary

NEW STUFF: Solar pump, Portable solar jar cooker, Mist cooler, Strawbale home site

New Taco Pump for Solar Hot Water Systems Integrates Controller

This new series of pumps from Taco combines one of their regular circulator pumps with an integrated differential controller.  This makes for a bit less wiring and a more compact system.  The pump is also variable speed, and the controller takes advantage of this to use lower flow rates at low sun levels -- this (presumably) saves some pump power and allows the collector to operate in lower sun levels where short cycling would result with non variable flow controllers.

I've also separated out tanks, pumps, and heat exchangers on their own page and expanded the number of items and explanations.
(thanks to Jan and Sean for pointing this item out)

Details on the new solar pump with integrated controller...

Compact, Simple Portable Solar Cooker

This is a neat little solar cooker sent in by Tony.  Just the thing for a hot beverage or a hot dog at the job site, camping, ...

Its made from cardboard with aluminum foil glued to it and a couple of jars that nest inside each other with the inner absorber jar painted black.

Details on the Solar Jar Cooker...


Mist Cooler Kit

This is an inexpensive mist cooling kit from DripWorks.com.

If you've not experienced outdoor mist coolers on a hot day, you might be surprised by how effective they are -- they cool well without feeling wet.

Each mister head uses about 0.75 gallons per hour, so there some water use.
The kit costs $25 and is said to cool 25 lineal feet of space.
I've ordered one to evaluate it.

Details on the Mist Cooler Kit...


Strawbale Home Site

This is a nice site for potential owner builders of strawbale homes.

Workshops, videos, articles, ...  looks like good stuff from people who really build strawbale homes.


Strawbale home site details...


Gary