Shakeup on the Solar Energy Front: Solyndra

Those of us homesteaders who have been hoping the cost of solar panels would continue to fall until we can finally afford them on our houses and outbuildings have been watching with some trepidation the news that solar start-up Solyndra has filed for bankruptcy. What does it mean in terms of the push to secure truly ‘green’ jobs here in the U.S., as well as our struggle to get our nation off filthy fossil fuels like coal and gas, and to phase out ill-conceived nuclear power generation before Megalopolis ends up a ‘dead zone’ for 300+ years.

The New York Times reports that Solyndra’s bankruptcy bodes ill for the entire solar industry. But does it really? While we can be sure King Coal and Big Nukes would dearly love that to be true, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is true.

Solyndra’s collapse marked the third time in as many weeks that a solar company declared bankruptcy. Evergreen Solar Inc. of Massachusetts and SpectraWatt of New York also filed for protection.

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Homestead Innovations: Growing Power

Sunhorse 4812 All Electric Tractor

One of the biggest long-range planning issues involved in making a successful transition from a seriously inefficient and wasteful fossil fuels economy toward a more healthy renewables-based way of life is the problem of our petro-based system of agriculture. Those huge tractors and combines that dominate the endless landscapes of Big Agri-biz operations can translate into an entirely unsustainable 10:1 ratio of fossil fuel use to food on the table. Obviously as the cost of petroleum fuels keeps on rising, our society at large must come up with more efficient alternatives. Fortunately, there are a couple of alternatives that bode well for the future.

Huge swaths of the American breadbasket where staple monocrops are produced by the square mile would probably be better off going with Rudolph Diesel’s engine which he invented in 1893 to run on peanut oil. The Big machines could be run on SVO biodiesel that could be produced in a centrally located co-op type operation from oil crops cooperatively grown just for the purpose. These could then power the growing of those massive amounts of staple crops like oilseed, sugar beets, corn and other grains needed for both humans and livestock that are most efficiently produced by agribusiness concerns. Less petroleum consumption for this purpose, combined with programs aimed at lessening big ag’s dependence on petro-based chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides would help a lot.

But is biodiesel the best alternative to the small producer? Smaller, more diverse farms, organic operations and homesteads that participate in Community Supported Agriculture programs and/or agritourism offerings don’t need those huge multi-purpose machines to grow just a few acres’ worth of truck crops, culinary herbs, grains, etc. Luckily for us small-timers, there’s electric tractors.

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Teeny, Tiny Houses

A friend left a little 16-foot travel trailer in our back yard a couple of years ago when he had to sell his land and move east to tend his aging parents. The plumbing got wrecked because he forgot to unhook it before pulling it out, but the electricity’s still fine, and I’m presuming the stove, fridge and heat would work if we cared to replace the propane bottles. We’ve been using it as a combination storage shed and guest bedroom, but had to drape a tarp over the roof to stop leaks in the corners that led to a nasty accumulation of mildew.

What I’d most like to do is convert it into an actual camp-cabin style “Tiny House” that would blend in with the forest scenery better than white with turquoise trim on your basic aluminum trailer siding. Maybe build a Tiny House shed while we’re at it as well. Tiny houses are often built on wheels to get around local building codes, and of course this trailer is already on wheels. But that’s not really necessary here because there are no building codes out in the wilderness – unless you wish to obtain insurance, that is.

Of course, we could probably do better by selling it cheap just to get it hauled out of here, and then building a little camp cabin instead. By building from scratch we could get more width and height out of the space, which goes a long way in the ‘tiny house’ realm toward making the space usable and comfortable at the same time. Wish some help from our grandsons we could probably supply all the logs necessary from right here on the land, though I’d still need that mule I’ve been meaning to get in order to get them transported from where we cut to where we want to build.

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When the Electricity Goes Out

Over the past two weeks a rather spectacular one-two punch of severe weather wreaked havoc across the eastern half of the nation from Texas to Virginia. Many of us were stunned by the huge, mile-wide F4 tornado that plowed a deadly path through Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, Alabama. That monster and as many as a hundred other tornados killed more than 300 people in 5 states and injured thousands who literally had no place to hide as the winds flattened homes, apartment buildings and businesses completely, even to blasting out the concrete slabs and tearing up streets and sidewalks. It is the deadliest tornado outbreak since the Great Depression.

A friend who lives on a well-planned homestead in southern Tennessee posted on FaceBook about the damage from a tornado in his neck of the woods that downed trees and power lines wholesale, but spared him and his family and even his goats. He was feeling darned lucky even though the devastation across TVA’s service area – and the station blackout that shut down the three reactors at Browns Ferry – made it likely that his ‘stead would be without electricity for days, maybe a week or more. We who live on the land know from experience that we aren’t the first people in line to have our services restored after a nasty storm. First in line are the people in urban areas where shelters and hospitals and emergency services must be restored as quickly as possible to minimize the human cost of nature’s wrath.

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Onions, Onions Everywhere!

At right is the first rush of the bunching onion harvest, prepped for drying in my wonderful (but quite ugly) solar food dryer! These are just the whites – grown from seed – that have been seriously overrun by volunteer grape tomatoes. I decided to let the volunteers grow because the celeriac I’d put where they are all got washed away by torrential rains all spring. Unlike my Abe Lincolns up top, these actually are turning red about a month late. Rain and cool weather all the way through July has kept the Lincolns green-green for way too long, don’t know if they’ll ever ripen.

Seems that’s the story up and down the Eastern Seaboard this year. Cooler than normal, and wet enough to make swamps. I hear New Jersey and other states are having tomato issues, as are all my neighbors, so I’m not alone. Potatoes are taking a big hit as well, rotting in the wet ground or turning black with blight. Both crops may be total commercial losses this year, which means it’s even MORE important that mine come in and get preserved. That’s where my food dryer comes in!

I have so looked forward to not having to buy lids, boil jars, hard-prep and then water-bath this year. We don’t have AC in the cabin, since there’s no point for the perhaps 3 whole weeks of summer when it’s so hot we have to go sit under a tree instead of stay in the house, but it does get sticky and uncomfortable in the extreme when canning, even though I’ve learned to do the water-bath out on the gas grill.

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’09 Season’s Homestead Project: Solar Dryer

Post 1 of an Upcoming Series

Acknowledging that we homesteaders have been ahead of the curve for quite awhile on how to become ever more self-sufficient, the current worldwide economic crisis – which threatens to last for years – no doubt has us expanding our means of producing and preserving food crops this year. On my homestead a good deal of work is going into expanding the amount of acreage we’ve planted in truck crops, begun experimenting with staples like hard red winter wheat and grain amaranth, and doubling the actual plantings of favorites like potatoes and corn that have traditionally been so cheap to buy that we didn’t depend upon our own.

On the preservation front, I’ve embraced a project for this season that should pay for itself many times over during the years it will be in use. It’s a solar food dryer, with which I’m hoping to cut seriously into the energy usage (and expense) of regular canning and freezing as the crops come in. This will not only help keep our not air conditioned cabin cooler during the hot August tomato harvest/canning frenzy, it should also cut way down on waste of perfectly good food from the land that comes in piecemeal, is less-than-perfect, and cannot be immediately consumed. This means I can preserve much more of the apple and pear crops, can preserve the persimmon crop that just started producing last fall, can dry sweet corn, squash and even dark green leafies for long-term storage while preserving much more of their nutritional goodness as well as flavor.

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25 Alternative Energy Strategies – 4

For homestead and/or community independence

We’ve looked a bit at on-site electrical generation, transportation fuels and building technologies. In this installment we’ll look at some ways of putting things together into overall strategies for homestead independence.


Part 4: Hybrid Energy Systems

In a previous post a short video was offered about as small, 1Kw hybrid energy system using solar and wind offered by a company in Canada. Whether you’re planning to go off-grid with storage batteries or negotiate a price for your excess production with the local utility (and get a “backwards meter”), the same thing is true of energy supplies as is true of general homestead success – diversify. So Here are five hybrid systems, some good links and some cool ideas for planning your alternatives…

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25 Alternative Energy Strategies – 3

For homestead and/or community independence

A Happy Solar Homestead

When we discuss alternative energy strategies, any able homesteader is going to be concerned with building and various secondary retrofits to homes, barns and outbuildings. The more energy the homestead can gain passively – or conserve passively – the less energy will be required to supplement.

In these strategies 11-15 of the series, we’ll look at some of the ways a homesteader can use smart, green building practices and technologies to lessen their dependence on supplied energy sources.

Part 3: Building Technologies & Alternatives

11. Passive Solar Siting and Construction

Whether you’re building a new house or barn, or simply retrofitting to what’s already there, strategies for making the most of nature where you live will help to save on energy inputs.

To make the most of passive solar, consider how much direct sunlight falls on your homesite throughout the year. If you get ample sun (have a site that has an ample southerly exposure), plan accordingly. Big windows (with no significant overhang) can provide direct solar heating in the winter. Dark stain or paint on the south wall will also absorb heat from the sun. Conversely, walls that are mostly or entirely shaded during the day, plus the north wall, should have as few windows as is reasonable.

Limit heat gain in summer by planting deciduous trees (apples are good) fairly close. Also bear in mind that any south-facing roof is a good place to put solar panels or solar collectors for hot water (or both). If you do install these, you’ll want retractible awnings for your south windows because you don’t want any summer shade trees interfering.

Green Building Basics

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25 Alternative Energy Strategies

For homestead and/or community independence

This series will provide an overview of the most promising energy systems and strategies for homestead or rural community independence. Most of these are available right now, some can be put together by the handy homeowner or community action group, and some will be available in the near future. Combined with common-sense conservation practices these can contribute a great deal to the independence of individual homesteads and rural communities willing to work together.

These technologies and ideas will be divided into particular technologies and presented together – 1. Electrical production; 2. Transportation alternatives – vehicles, fuels and power to operate the kind of equipment necessary to a rural lifestyle (trucks, farm and garden equipment, remote generators, etc.); 3. Building technologies and direct alternatives for heating/cooling and their applications; 4. Hybrid systems that can even out production and tie together for constancy of supply; 5. Collective strategies for small, cooperative communities striving for self-sufficiency and willing to invest together for alternatives that benefit all.

Part 1: Electrical Generation

We use electricity to light our homes and outbuildings, refrigerate our food, wash and dry our clothes, prepare our food, provide our in-home entertainment (music, television, computers), and sometimes to heat or supplement our heat during the winter. The “average” electricity use per home in the US (this is something we can personally adjust downward by conservation and appliance/heat alternatives) is ~900 Kilowatt hours per month. Get that down to ~700 for your home/homestead, and we’re talking less than 8,500 KwH per year.

What are the best alternative sources for that much on-site electrical generation?

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Working Hybrid Wind-Solar System

Here’s a short video demonstration of a hybrid home electrical generation system developed by SEMA Technology that we’ll be exploring in more depth later. While it does depend on a storage system (battery), it would only take one of these to power my homestead. I’d still have to weigh longevity of its capacity and cost of replacement before I’d change my mind about going with the backwards meter. Which might cost me less over time and avoids the necessity to either turn off the solar cells or send the wind energy to a heat sink as waste.

Next week I’m planning a series looking at the best and most affordable technologies out there right now, and what’s on line for the future.