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How to Get Your Apartment Off the Grid
- honua 10y agoWhat is this, Hacker News or something? :) (Just nice to see this kind of thing on here)
- mschuster91 10y agoNice project, but I disagree on one point: > For lighting, it's impossible to fall back on grid power because I had to cut the power cords of all lamps to make them compatible with the 12V DC grid Why not get a cheap-ass car battery charger? He's using lead-acid batteries anyway, and a charger for these is approx. 50 €. Or bypass the battery entirely and use a 12V 200W power supply instead of the battery voltage (to avoid overloading your PSU with powering the equipment AND simultaneously charging the battery).
- abraae 10y agoIts incredibly satisfying going off-grid. We have an off-grid cabin and its awesome turning up and finding the batteries fully charged and ready to dispense free electricity. During the summer, rain water, solar power, cooking over a wood fire and walking or cycling to the beach means you can actually live at entirely carbon zero. One of the kids was fascinated by the idea that his iphone had been powered up using on energy from the sun. Kudos to OP for doing all this in a city apartment!
- dmoy 10y agoIs burning wood carbon zero? My in-law/relatives in Alaska say it can pollute quite a bit. Though I don't know how that relates to any carbon zero metric.
- pessimizer 10y agoBurning wood is ultimately carbon neutral, deforestation is the problem.
- reitanqild 10y agoAnd here we need to be careful: around here there is a major problem with trees filling up what was once farmland. No problem you may say but it means less local produce and more import, both import of meat as well as animal food.
- pjc50 10y agoWhere's that? How productive/marginal was the farmland?
- Retric 10y agoCarbon is not the only form of pollution, burning stuff generally puts a lot of nasty crap into the air.
- dmoy 10y agoWood specifically is like 50% carbon by weight, no?
- daurnimator 10y agoThat would imply 50% non-carbon.
- DougWebb 10y agoMost of that is probably water.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y agoLong-term exposure to burning wood for heating and cooking can cause heart and lung disease.[1] The main air pollutants in wood smoke are particulate matter (PM), carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and a range of other organic compounds like formaldehyde, benzene and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.[1][2] Using reverse-cycle refrigerant heating (or 'heat pumps') is probably the least worst polluting method of heating. Modern heat pumps can generate (well, move) four times more heat energy than used to drive the pump[3], with the added benefit of moving the source of pollution away from populated areas, or being carbon neutral via window, solar, hydro, geothermal. 1. http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/environment/factsheets/Pages/wood-smoke.aspx http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/environment/factsheets/Pages/wo... 2. https://www.environment.gov.au/resource/wood-heater-particle-emissions-and-operating-efficiency-standards https://www.environment.gov.au/resource/wood-heater-particle... 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump#Performance_Considerations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump#Performance_Consider...
- theoh 10y agoAarg, sorry for downvote. Finger slipped. I think you're right about the cleanness of heat pump systems. Unfortunately they do not have the libertarian freedom flavour of a wood fire.
- yardie 10y agoIt's a net zero emission as long as the trees come from a sustainable forest.
- hueving 10y agoOnly if the person actually plants a tree for every fire they burn. Even then, that does not offset the ash and other chemicals in the thick smoke ejected into the air that causes huge pollution problems at any scale.
- swsieber 10y agoI'm wondering how forest fires being a natural thing fit into your viewpoint. I don't think that fact entirely negates your point, but it does seem to dampen it at least.
- khedoros 10y agoTrees contain carbon. Burn trees, and they release carbon. New trees end up growing in the ash after it falls and re-capturing carbon. It's a natural, cyclic process. The problem isn't that humans release carbon or other pollutants (burning trees, coal, oil, etc), it's the scale we do it at, and that we don't automatically re-capture it without doing extra work like planting more trees.
- savanaly 10y ago>Only if the person actually plants a tree for every fire they burn. But wouldn't a tree be more likely to grow, and in the long run the expected number of trees in a forest be unaffected by the felling of any given tree? (the same can't necessarily be said for the felling of hundreds of trees of course).
- maxerickson 10y agoA healthy forest plants trees all on its own.
- digler999 10y ago
- kileywm 10y agoBurning wood is not carbon zero. It is the reverse of carbon sequestration in the sense that atmospheric CO2 was once converted to wood by the tree, and now the wood is being burned and the captured carbon release back into the atmosphere. That could be nearly carbon zero (I don't know the contributions from soil and what mass remains as ashes, etc..), except when you consider the opportunity cost. That burned tree, presumably healthy just prior, loses the ability to sequester any more carbon. A burned tree puts carbon in the atmosphere AND removes a carbon sequesterer simultaneously. That act is removing X amount of future sequestration until the tree would have naturally died and turned to soil. At that point most of that carbon would still be in solid form and not in the atmosphere. I'm nitpicking at this point, but I lean toward burning wood as not carbon zero for the sake of opportunity cost.
- lucaspiller 10y agoBiochar is a potential solution, although the technology isn't there yet (at an industrial scale). If wood is heated in an oxygen free environment it will turn into a form of charcoal. At the same time it will release gases (like methane) that can be captured and used as a fuel separately. Rather than burning the charcoal, it is put back into the soil which effectively traps the CO2. This also improves the condition of the soil and reduces the need for fertilisers.
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoDoesn't that exactly describe a carbon-neutral lifecycle?
- kileywm 10y agoGood point, I really didn't complete my thought. Updating my comment to explain.
- maxerickson 10y agoIt really only makes sense to measure the carbon capture at the level of the forest. When a tree is cut down or dies, it makes room for other trees to grow. Removing mature trees that are no longer growing very much can increase the rate of capture. Removing trees that are growing quickly and replacing them with smaller trees could reduce the rate of capture. Either way, there is a limit to how much carbon a given forest will capture (rot releases it just as well as fire) and it will only do it for the life of the forest, which is usually not a geologic time scale.
- soundsop 10y agoElectricity derived from solar panels and stored in batteries is neither free from cost nor free from carbon emissions. The monetary cost and emission of carbon coincides with the manufacture of the solar panels and batteries rather than the generation and storage of the energy unlike many other technologies. The costs and emissions of solar-derived electricity may be lower than alternatives but they are most certainly not free.
- abraae 10y agoYes, I should have said "ignoring the embodied energy of the panels & associated equipment". This is somewhat justifiable for the panels since they have a 25+ year life. Less so for the batteries, which have maybe an 8 year life with good care. We try to burn power as much as possible (e.g. running the water pump) when the sun's up, so it doesn't have to pass through the batteries.
- jcoffland 10y agoA lot of carbon goes it to making solar panels. http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-always-as-green-as-you-think http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-...
- hueving 10y ago>means you can actually live at entirely carbon zero That's not enough. You need to also do something to offset the carbon dioxide that went into manufacturing everything and the transportation for it. Make sure you plant a few hundred trees if you want to be at carbon zero. You also need to plant trees to replace the wood you burn. And you need to offset the CO2 from process of making any food you bring in as well. Otherwise it's an unjustified feel-good exercise to claim you are living at carbon zero.
- abraae 10y agoYes, we have a few hundred trees. Good point about the food though.
- unethical_ban 10y agoActually, one needs to kill oneself (not with fire). Living takes up carbon. Come on. Acting as if any "carbon positive" living is immoral, is insanity.
- duaneb 10y agoWhy would planting trees not work?
- amorphid 10y agoTrees die. Decomposing, or burning, gives off all the carbon they soaked up.
- reitanqild 10y agoThis can however take a decades or a few hundres years if not more. Around here they have found logs thousand of years old in the swamps.
- digler999 10y ago> in the swamps probably because theres not much O2 in the water compared to the atmosphere.
- sandworm101 10y ago>> at entirely carbon zero. Not even close. You're still eating something. Unless that came from a magic farm, fuel was used to generate/transport that food. And to complete the picture, you still have all the external resources provided by a very carbon-hungry society. That includes everything from health and education to military infrastructures ... all of which burn carbon in epic amounts. Carbon zero is an idea, not something that any one person can every accomplish.
- grecy 10y agoUp in the Yukon and Alaska plenty of people live in off-grid houses/cabins year round. It's amazing to never get a bill for your house - no water, no electricity, no garbage collections, etc. etc. Friends have a 10kW system which in summer provides plenty of power for a sump pump for water, a big TV, espresso machine, etc. etc. In the winter they have to watch what they use, and they usually run the generator for a couple of hours a week to keep the batteries at a healthy level.
- ChemicalWarfare 10y agoupvoted but also agree with others pointing out that you're far from being 'carbon zero', not that there's anything wrong with it :)
- taneem 10y agoWhy is it a good idea to get off the grid? Genuinely curious. I would think that a networked connection of energy input/output nodes that is globally optimized would be a good thing. Not sure why it's better for anyone to have every node (home) operate independently.
- yardie 10y ago1 reason is you don't have to deal with the red tape of the ILEC. I've read a few stories of people installing solar onto their house. Then, when it's time to tie into the grid the electric company won't certify the install or drags their feet for months. Even if you do get it tied in any new changes require recertification. I can understand the position of the ILEC. The homeowner just wants to get up and running quickly. The electric company wants to ensure the stability of the grid.
- sokoloff 10y agoIn places with net metering, the electric company often seems more interested in the profitability of the grid, which tends to delay approvals.
- honua 10y agoThat's an interesting question and something I hadn't thought about. I think the biggest motivation for going off-grid is the relatively cleaner outcome. I.e. the control over the source/production (e.g. solar vs coal). So overall my guess is that the intent isn't to operate independent nodes but moreover to have control over the way the electricity is produced.
- snowwindwaves 10y agoThe article says 2/3 of the power bill was network connection cost.
- wtetzner 10y agoTransporting power isn't cheap. If you can generate the power where you need it, then you eliminate the need to transport it.
- tardo99 10y agoCould people with houses use legacy PSTN wiring to distribute 12V throughout the house?
- walrus01 10y agoincredibly inefficiently, and only for loads of 5-10W max... phone wiring is not thick enough in gauge and 12V has very high voltage drop over distance for any appreciable amperage. there is a good reason why we use 110-240VAC to distribute power in houses.
- tardo99 10y agohttp://www.britishtelephones.com/howtele.htm http://www.britishtelephones.com/howtele.htm Is 16 ohms per thousand feet really that high?
- imgabe 10y agoYes. Typically devices can tolerate a voltage drop of about 3%. With that resistance, a 1A load can only go 22.5 ft from the source. Considering you might have to run up a wall, across the ceiling and down another wall, you might not even get to the opposite side of a room.
- Johnythree 10y agoThe phone line is essentially "constant current". There's 48V before you draw current, but that quickly drops to zero when you lift the handset, because there's an exchange relay in series which senses when the phone is "off-hook"
- yardie 10y agoNo. In fact most newer solar installations are using microinverters to convert to AC at the source. 20-30amps of DC requires quite a bit of copper to go even a few meters.
- dreamcompiler 10y ago
- ZanyProgrammer 10y agoNice, but a lot of apartment managers would freak out over those kinds of installations being visible, at least for any halfway decent apartments.
- whamlastxmas 10y agoAgreed, I've lived at probably 8 different complexes in my life and none of them would have allowed this. I've had managers bitch at me for taking down vertical blinds and only having curtains.
- tirant 10y agoActually most modern cities forbid any modification to a building's facade.
- frgewut 10y agoGrid actually is good (easier to balance etc). "Utility grid" is what causes most inconveniences.
- gexla 10y ago>Some important challenges remain, most notably the washing machine, the bathroom and the laser printer. The problem with washing machine and bathroom is that they're on the north side of the building, far from the solar panels. We could go to a laundromat but there are none in town. A pedal powered washing machine requires space that we don't have. You could try washing your laundry by hand. It isn't as much work as it might seem if you have never tried it. There must be something magical in the detergent because I can get clothes cleaner than I ever had with a washer back home with little work. For example, to wash a shirt I just put the water / detergent mix in a basin and agitate the shirt with my hands for a couple minutes. Leave the shirt in the basin for 15 minutes for the detergent to do it's work. Agitate for another few minutes and then hang. First hang in the bathroom or outside for 20 for the shirt to quit dripping and then I put in front of a fan. The shirt is dry within a couple of hours. Pants can be a bit more work depending on the material. Denim is heavy and eats up the dirt. I do the same as with the shirt but I use a tide bar to spot soap areas which get more dirt (bottoms of the pant legs) and brush those areas. This does take longer than using a washing machine. But the clothes last longer and get cleaner. You aren't using electricity, buying an appliance and birthing a hung of metal and plastic that you may one day have to dispose of. One weird effect that doing laundry by hand has for me is that it sort of puts me closer to my stuff. It's too easy to get something dirty, throw it in the washer and forget about it. Hand washing makes me more aware of how what I own also owns me and the energy it takes to maintain and carry this stuff around with me.
- skc 10y agoYep, and washing clothes by hand is oddly therapeutic as well. You end up looking for other items to wash, like bedsheets and towels and what not. But it does do a number on your hands.
- pbhjpbhj 10y agoUse a bucket and a washing stool (wooden agitator)?
- pjc50 10y agoSadly, giving up on the washing machine is giving up one on of the great labour saving inventions, and going back towards the time when washing took at least one woman-day per week. http://johnquiggin.com/2012/05/03/housework-in-utopia/ http://johnquiggin.com/2012/05/03/housework-in-utopia/ http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_...
- franciscop 10y agoA bit of context: In Spain, one of the European countries with better sunlight for solar production, some laws were passed recently that make it basically impossible for individuals to resell excess energy to the grid, so selling/buying from the grid on demand instead of using batteries is not really an option. That's why when we see countries like Germany (not so much sun) going strong for solar Spanish people complain and try to change a corrupt government that passes laws that strongly favors utility companies. Not to say that some of this government relatives work in these utilities.
- frgewut 10y agoWouldn't it be possible to create micro grids? E.g. tenants of one house or small town. They could sell electricity to each other then.
- hyperpallium 10y agoThe problem is demand will vary the same for all those in the same locality with time of day. Now, if you could somehow form a grid with people on the opposite side of the globe... BTW I like the idea of hydrobatteries: hydroelectric power stations sometimes pump water back up into the resevoir. One could do this with local water towers; perhaps even dual-purpose existing rain tanks, per house. Maybe not large enough; haven't done the math.
- MrsPeaches 10y agoHere you go: E = mgh 1000l tank = 1000kg 7m high roof (~2 stories) E = 1000kg * 9.81ms^-2 * 7m =~ 70 000j 1Wh = 3600j So a 1000l tank on your two story high roof would be able to store ~19Wh Not including mechanical losses For comparison a single decent sized SLA battery will be able to store 1000 Wh
- hyperpallium 10y agoThanks! Not as good aa I'd hoped...
- dharma1 10y agoI recently built a flat roof 35m2 home office/gym at the back of my garden. I'm currently using an electrical convection heater and a 9kw instant water heater for shower/basin. What would be the most cost effective way to use solar instead for heating/shower? I was thinking about putting a 100-200 litre insulated tank either inside or outside, and heat that with solar to about 70c, to use for both heating in the winter, and showers. I don't need cooling in the summer. Has anyone done this?
- pjc50 10y agoNice use of an in house microgrid. To me the striking thing was how the LED bulbs designed to be plugged into 220VAC 'just work' when plugged into 12VDC; I know this is because of their switchmode power supplies, it's still surprising. You could consider doing this with "19.5V" (popular with laptops), although many will work just fine from 12V, or power-over-ethernet's 48V.
- kozak 10y agoSad that we don't have a 12V power socket standard that is better than the lighter socket.
- bryanlarsen 10y agoUSB C PD (power delivery) delivers up to 5W at 20V. Used for charging laptops now, we'll be using it for light bulbs in a few years time, I'm sure.
- ytjohn 10y agoIn the US at least, and other countries have adopted it, the Anderson power pole is becoming the standard. Anderson power poles are genderless and keyed. In other words, you can connect any similar amp connector to any other, and you can't plug them in wrong (almost). You can put power pole pigtails on all your 12V sources, and power pole pigtails on all your 12V devices, then make any (reasonable) length of extension cable with power poles at either end. The most common amperages (15, 30, 45) use the same plastic housing, so you can connect a 15A device into a 45A rated power source. The higher amp rated power poles are are 75A, 120A, 175A, and 350A. These are more commonly seen on trucks and commony used to attach things like a winch. I have a set of 175A power poles attached to my Prius to run an inverter, and I have a long set of heavy duty jumper cables that I split near one end put a 175A powerpole set inline (so I can connect my inverter (or my prius) to almost any external source. https://powerwerx.com/anderson-powerpole-connectors-15amp-bonded https://powerwerx.com/anderson-powerpole-connectors-15amp-bo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anderson_Powerpole#De_facto_standards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anderson_Powerpole#De_facto_st... It takes a bit of money to get into using them (you need a set of crimpers, and the insertion/extraction tool is a lifesaver here as well). Unless you buy in a lot of bulk, you can expect $1/end you make. If you're in an a club (amateur radio/model trains/rc), someone might be able to lend you a crimp tool or make up some adapters for you. But once you start replacing ends and seeing the usefulness of it, you'll probably want to put ends on everything 12V. I've got pretty much everything 12V of mine switched over, and a handful of adapters to go from power to: alligator clips, ring terminal, bare wire, car DC socket (cigarette lighter), bananna clips, trailer connector.
- rfeather 10y agoIt's great that the author wrote up their approach, but one thing I don't see is how this was managed with the landlord. There is some clue in that the landlord installed the solar water heater. My interest comes from my belief that my landlord (or more likely the condo association that our apartment is in) would never allow this sort of installation. Aside from "aesthetic concerns", solar panels can potentially cause insurance rates to go up (firefighters don't like to douse electricity generators with water).
- makecheck 10y agoIt is great to be knowledgeable about energy consumption and conservation methods and to try to spread that knowledge. Realistically however, any action is negligible unless it is done by industries that will have a huge effect on the environment (airlines, for instance). If you want to achieve X, it is ultimately best to spend your time convincing a certain number of local businesses to do X, or petitioning governments, etc.
- mattlutze 10y agoLobbying private or public interests is definitely important if you want to have an impact. The other half of that is that people have to actually do the things you're lobbying for. Implementing these ideas personally is more than just collecting knowledge -- it's contributing to the desired effect. To boot, in a conversation where you'll subsequently advocate for energy consumption, one of the easiest ways to build trust will be to speak from a position of experience -- to know what probing questions to ask about your audience's life experiences that will help them build a future story in which they're enjoying conserving energy.
- imaginenore 10y agoAll that work to get 150Wh per day? That's what, 20 cents worth of grid electricity?
- franzpeterfolz 10y agoLaser printers need much power for heating. Would it be possible to switch to a ink printer? They should work fine on 10 to 20 Watts. They even have external Poweradapters like a Laptop. It depends on the usagepattern. Not printing enough would dry up the ink. Printing to much could be to expensive or to slow. But heating dust up with a laser to melt it down on paper seems to be very inefficient in terms of energyefficiency.
- Kliment 10y agoThis is veering offtopic but laser printers don't actually use the laser for heating the toner, they use it to create charges on an image drum which picks up the toner electrostatically. The fuser assembly is a very simple resistive heater.
- ilaksh 10y agoWhy not place two 250 watt solar panels vertically in the windows. They are big enough.
- gravypod 10y agoYou might also want to check the batteries you are using for your system. Due to the nature of the small space and high use, I remember from my armature radio license exam that some batteries vent gas when under operation. If I remember correctly, one such battery is NiMH. You should really read into your batteries and your charge controller specifications before doing anything like this. Other than that, this looks great!