grid tie invertor Useful Guideline
Received the book and discovered early into it that the minimum ground clearance was going to be too much for my property, so I quit reading further. Maybe I’ll try a dummies guide to Solar Energy, since I live in Texas
Requirement for tying into West Florida Electric with solar power?
Looking to build in the area of N. Florida that has grid tie invertor power supplied by West Florida Electric and would like to install solar panels with an invertor to tie into the grid system. Anyone with info that has done this with West Florida or any other power co.in Florida would be helpful.
A common route to take when you decide to switch over to renewable energy is a "Grid-Tie" setup. What this means is your house is tied in with your renewable energy system and tied in to the power grid. The reason this is such a popular route to take is that it allows you to move to renewable energy as you can afford it.
The beauty of a grid-tie system is that it can be configured two ways. The first way is to set up your system with solar panels and wind generators and hook them up to a battery bank. This battery bank is then hooked up to an inverter and powers some of the appliances in your home. This system costs more and is harder to install for several reasons. Firstly, you need to do some re-wiring of your home to integrate grid tie invertor you renewable energy system. This requires a licensed electrician and can be a time consuming process. Secondly, you have to buy a battery bank to store the electricity that you generate.
The second setup which is more cost effective and easier in the long run is to simply wire your system directly into the power grid. What this means is that the electricity you produce is being fed through your meter. It's really cool to watch it spin backwards. There are some things that you should know about this setup though. You will have to check local laws to see whether this type of system is allowed, and you will have to check with your energy company to see whether they will allow you to run this type of system. Lastly, you will need a licensed electrician to do the setup. This way has several advantages though. You don't need to initially spend a huge amount of money to get up and running, and expanding simply means hooking another solar panel up. You also don't have to do any re-wiring to your house.
As time goes on you can add solar panels faster because your electricity bill has gone down, and after it reaches $0 you can start buying batteries for the storage system.
For those of us who can't afford to make the switch to off grid living all at once this is the way to go. It allows you to build your system one piece at a time as you can afford it. It may take you 2-5 years to get running completely on renewable energy, but it is definitely worth it.
 | Off Grid Living Guides - 75% of $49.97! Highest quality renewable energy product with new sales page. Commission of $33.92 Excellent conversions with new conversion testing. Affiliates: www.living-off-grid.com/aff.php Avg |
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
 |
 |
 |
solar panel cell Free Interrelated Hint
A Few More Sites On solar battery charger
build your own solar panel Tip
A Web Portal For power invertor News
home made solar panel Interesting Tip
#1 diy solar panel Site
build solar panels Information Blog
Download homemade solar Reports
Learn how to build solar panel Information Here
Your Use of Sun Energy
Home Solar Panels Significant Info
Homemade Solar Panels Helpful Guide
Home Solar Power Interrelated Guide
Passive Solar Water Heaters Useful Tip
April 16, 2010
Wind Power for Dummies by Ian Woofenden is the mass-market, mainstream book on small wind turbines that the industry has long sought as a measure of respectability. Small wind has arrived when the wildly popular Dummies’ series takes up the topic. Dummies books, and this one will be no exception, are the kind that one finds shelves of when entering Barnes & Nobles, America’s big box book store. Small wind has indeed arrived.
Woofenden, a long-time editor at Home Power Magazine, fortunately doesn’t fall for the temptation posed by his entry into big-league publishing and sugar coat the technology. This is a real book by a real author who lives, breathes, and writes about the subject. He doesn’t pull any punches.
As an outspoken proponent of safety around wind turbines-of any size-I found Woofenden’s Dummy book particularly valuable because of its emphasis on safety. This is a topic that other writers often shy away from. Woofenden tackles the delicate subject head on and with good humor to boot.
Woofenden, a professional arborist, offers sage advice when he recommends that all towers have a full-time, fall-arrest system in place. He says he simply won’t climb a tower without one present. That’s about as clear a statement as a writer can make. But his statement is more significant than that. Woofenden is stepping out from the norm of his small wind brethren by calling for fall-arrest systems in an industry that has widely ignored these devices in the USA for nearly 30 years.
Disclosure: Woofenden applauds my work in the acknowledgements section of the book–for which I am grateful. A pat on the back is always welcome.
As in other Dummies books and certainly as found in the pages of Home Power Magazine, Woofenden uses homespun aphorism to drive home his point. One such example is his advice about “thinking before you act”.
“Wearing a hard had doesn’t mean a lot if you don’t have much to protect in the first place. Your number one piece of safety gear is on your shoulders. You need brains, determination, knowledge, and experience to be safe.”
More sound advice in his recommendation to use “baby talk” when working on a tower. “Before I do something, I say what I’m going to do: ‘I’m going to move my lanyard up above these rungs next; I’ll need you to lift your right foot’,” he explains in another passage.
“Ten Wind-Energy Mistakes,” like safety, is another valuable Woofenden contribution to the literature on small wind. Harking back to his mentor Mick Sagrillo, one of Woofenden’s top ten mistakes is “Using too Short a Tower”.
Woofenden will not endear himself to “inventors,” crackpots, and hustlers when he warns readers against using “creative” wind turbine designs. These are the wacky ideas that appear regularly on the Internet and no doubt drive serious editors, such as Woofenden, batty answering each new wave of queries from the true believers.
Wind Power was constrained by the format of the successful Dummies’ series. The books, which became famous for deciphering the usage of computer software, use few graphics. Wind energy is a very visible technology and there are a myriad designs and as many different applications that call out for photos or illustrations. The illustrations used are simple, clear, and straightforward-the hallmark of Home Power Magazine. The graphic illustrating the “basic parts of a turbine” is particularly good.
And it’s hard to beat the humorous comics that were part of the Dummies’ books recipe for success. If anything, the book could have used more of them.
A minor quibble is Wind Power For Dummies’ reliance on the English system of measurements-a system that the English themselves don’t use. It’s understandable in the context. The Dummies books are targeted toward the mass market in the US and that leaves out the Canadians and anyone else who uses the metric system.
With the Dummies’ marketing prowess at his back, Woofenden stands a good chance of taking his message of caution and thoroughness in developing a safe, productive, and profitable small wind turbine installation to a bigger market than other small wind books have done before.
For only $22, the book is not only a steal but a welcome addition to the wind power library.
Wind Power for Dummies by Ian Woofenden, John Wiley & Sons, 2009, paper, 384 pages, US $21.99, ISBN: 978-0-470-49637-4.
-End-
I have purchased a DUMMIES book for almost all my projects, and they are superb tools.
If you’re looking for a resource that covers most everything about residential size wind generators, this book is as good as anything you’ll find. It has chapters on how to figure how much wind you have at your site, wind generator types, towers and how to erect them, legal issues, costs and how long it will take for your generator to pay for itself. The use of wind for off-grid and grid tied applications are compared. Maintenance and safety are covered in great detail. In fact, after you read the safety chapter you may decide that wind is not for you. If that’s the case, you’re in luck, there’s a whole chapter on alternatives to wind: photovoltaics, hydro and solar thermal. A chapter on home energy conservation is also included. The amount of information can be overwhelming, but the author does a good job of tying it all together.
The author, Ian Woofendan, has been writing articles on wind and renewable energy for Home Power magazine for many years, and has wind and solar power at his own home. He has a lot of practical, hands-on knowledge that is evident in WPFD.
I’ve lived with small scale wind over ten years, and I know of only two other books this comprehensive that are oriented towards home-sized systems:
1) Power From the Wind (incidentally co-authored by the author of Wind Power For Dummies), Dan Chiras. This book is excellent, and in many ways equal in scope to WPFD. It runs about 250 pages.
2) Wind Power (Paul Gipe). Very good, but really technical, and includes a lot of information about very large commercial sized generators. 500 pages long!
If I had to get a single book on small scale wind power, Wind Power For Dummies would be my first choice, followed by #1 and then #2.
It also happens to be the cheapest of the three.