Renewable Energy Projects at Starlight Cascade

Starlight Cascade in Eastern Ontario Canada outside of Yarker near Kingston
Page Created 2003 May 06
Page last updated: 2004 June 21

We've always been interested in renewable energy, solar heating, solar electric and solar energy in general. In the last house we had a simple 5w solar panel charging a deep cycle 12vdc battery which ran emergency lights, a radio and a small TV during power outages.

The first ongoing project was conservation, replacing most incandescent bulbs with Compact Fluroescent (CF) bulbs.

Project one was a solar water heater for the pool, installed in 2003 May

Project two is a 7 watt solar electric system, installed in 2004 May

Future Projects include: solar ventilation for the observatory, a small wind generator, more solar panels, more solar garden lighting replacing 4w noma wired lighting, solar hot water for the house, a second solar hot water panel for the pool.

Solar Panel Project

2004 May

7 Watts mounted
Price of gasoline: $0.919/litre, electricity 4.7/5.5 cents kwh with a total billable cost of around $0.12/kwh

Having two 1 watt solar panels (Canadian Tire $20) ($20/watt) left over and getting a 5 watt panel on sale (ICP Global from Canadian Tire $80) ($80/5=$16/watt), it was time to put them up and start charging some house batteries (used to power fluorescent lighting and 12vdc Televisions, radios and a VHF radio during power outages). At some point in the future it will also power some patio lighting using superbright LED's. 7 watts is pretty puny but it will be a good learning experiencing for building adjustable racks, power management and snow cover issues before the first 100 watt panel comes along (about $800) later.
The south facing shed roof has a 12 degree slope. I wanted an adjustable frame that I would have to move only twice a year. Some calculations showed that moving the frame on the equinoxes (March and September) would provide the most power. So a small wooden frame of pine (1"x2" and 2"x2") was built to mount the panels on, connected to a larger outer frame via a piano hinge. The frame had two coats of exterior grade varathane and the panels were mounted.

The whole assembly will be screwed into the shed roof (with silicon caulking on the screws) and the power cables run inside the shed to a power distribution/cutoff box. We wanted to leave room under the pool solar heater for a second one in the future, so that meant the solar electric would have to go above it on the roof. From there a single heavier power cable would run to the battery bank with a voltmeter and another cutoff switch.
From there another power cable runs to a fuse then to a distribution panel with cutoffs.
One power circuit will run to the back patio deck to power the lighting.
Another will run into the house to the radio room (vhf radio and lighting), one to the computer UPS's for additional runtime.

Solar Heater Project

2003 May
In the new house, the first priority has gone to a solar water heating system for the pool. In this case it is not saving any money as we have no other heating system in place (eg gas or electric), but it will extend the use of the existing resource by several weeks each side of the summer.

It is a Fafco Sunsaver economy, was purchased from Shelin Pools in Napanee Ontario for approx $380. It measures 4'x20' and comes with an inadequate tiedown system for our area, which features high afternoon winds (30-50 kph).
It is rated at over 80000 BTUs, raises temperature up to 10 degrees F and comes with a ten year decreasing warranty.

Step 1: put the panel in the sun to allow it to heat up and soften so it can be unrolled

Step 2: Inspect the location, in this case a south facing shed roof

Step 3: Position the flat panel correct side up!, and in this case, with the outer edge hanging over the roofline to allow for easier hose connection and access to the valve (we will drill holes in the handle and run cords down to ground level to control the flow through the panel
Step 4: Make sure your roof is long enough! In this case we had a little room to spare. We also left room on top to walk around for installation.

Step 5: The basic kit comes with three inadequate nylon cord restraints. Since our prevailing winds are from the west, we thought the panel would go flying off the first day. The included mounts were siliconed and attached with #8 by 2" screws into the roof sheating.
Step 6: So we added three more restraints, consisting of a permanently mounted 1"x2" screwed and caulked onto the shingles with #8 by 2" screws. Mounted from underneath is a 1/4x20 x3" carriage bolt. The hold down wood is 2"x2" x4'4", giving a two inch overhang on each end in which a 1/4" hole was drilled. All wood components were varathaned, then loosely assembled as shown, then mounted to the roof.
Step 7: The complete panel mounted. We put the 2"x2" hold-downs at either end and in the middle, two of the nylon tie-downs on the windward side and the third nylon tie down on the downwind side.
Step 8: Went through several iterations of plumbing connections until finally they stopped leaking. Used teflon tape and two clamps on each connection.
It worked well. We added ropes to the bypass valve so the unit could be operated from the ground and with the pump on a mechanical timer so that it did not run at night, we mainly left the solar heater in the 90% full on position and we did find that it raised the average temperature by at least 1 or 2 degrees C on an average day.

Total time involved so far, about 2 hours.

The saga will continue with more information on the maunfacturer, model information and more. The plumbing connections should normally not take more than a few minutes but in our case we have to cut through a wall. Also, two digital thermometers need to be added, one downstream and one upstream from the collector to get an idea of when to bypass the collector when it starts to cool the water.

We didn't get thermometers yet, that will have to wait until next year. At some point in time a second panel could be added for more heat. We left room on the roof for a second unit and it would make more of a difference for sure!

Image gallery

Conservation

Any general purpose incandescent light bulb has been replaced over the last two years (2002-2004) with Compact Fluorescent (CF) bulbs. The last and most significant was a 300w bulb in the shed with a 14w CF bulb. this happened immediately after discovering I had left the light on overnight (300w*10hours = 3kwh!). In general 60w were replaced with 10-12w and todate about 18 have been replaced (7 in the office, 3 in the spare room, 3 in the living room. 1 in the shed, 2 in the laundry room. 1 in the basement, 1 on the back yard).

Step 2 was putting the pool pump onto a timer. A 1 HP pump motor uses 11amps * 120volts = 1.32kwh * 24 hours = 31.7kwh/day! All by itself! Shutting it off entirely would be one solution but we use it as a substitute for air conditioning (don't have any of that) plus it beats floating around in the hot summer over being stuck inside with cold clammy air blowing in at you! A little research on the net revealed that 8 to 12 hours/day is sufficient in most cases for pool circulation and filtering, plus we had the solar hot water heater to think about. So we added a $5 mechnical timer to drop the 24 duty cycle down to 12 hours, running for an hour in the middle of the night, starting up in the midmorning and running through the peak solar heating times, shutting down for a few hours later afternoon and running for a couple more hours in the early evening. We have had a couple of green algae blooming scares in the past and don't really want to push this as hard as we could.

So we have reduced our pool pump load alone by 16 kwh/day and from an estimated cost of $4/day down to about $2/day. If and when the pump requires replacing, we've been looking at the newer two speed pumps, lo (5 amps or 0.6kwh) and hi (11 amps or 1.2kwh). The $100US difference in price between them and the older full-on pumps will pay for itself in 3 or 4 months!

Step 3 - Cooling in the summer - make it a daily task of closing blinds on the east, south and western windows during the daytime and opening them up along with the windows to get airflow through to cool the house down at night.

Step 4 - turned off the electric heat in the garage - even though the thermostats were set for about 5deg C in an insulated two car garage, we did not realize how much power this ate up over a cold winter. Now it stays unheated and all liquids get moved into the house.

	Step 1: put the panel in the sun to allow it to heat up and soften so it can be unrolled
	Step 2: Inspect the location, in this case a south facing shed roof
	Step 3: Position the flat panel correct side up!, and in this case, with the outer edge hanging over the roofline to allow for easier hose connection and access to the valve (we will drill holes in the handle and run cords down to ground level to control the flow through the panel
	Step 4: Make sure your roof is long enough! In this case we had a little room to spare. We also left room on top to walk around for installation.
	Step 5: The basic kit comes with three inadequate nylon cord restraints. Since our prevailing winds are from the west, we thought the panel would go flying off the first day. The included mounts were siliconed and attached with #8 by 2" screws into the roof sheating.
	Step 6: So we added three more restraints, consisting of a permanently mounted 1"x2" screwed and caulked onto the shingles with #8 by 2" screws. Mounted from underneath is a 1/4x20 x3" carriage bolt. The hold down wood is 2"x2" x4'4", giving a two inch overhang on each end in which a 1/4" hole was drilled. All wood components were varathaned, then loosely assembled as shown, then mounted to the roof.
	Step 7: The complete panel mounted. We put the 2"x2" hold-downs at either end and in the middle, two of the nylon tie-downs on the windward side and the third nylon tie down on the downwind side.
	Step 8: Went through several iterations of plumbing connections until finally they stopped leaking. Used teflon tape and two clamps on each connection.
	It worked well. We added ropes to the bypass valve so the unit could be operated from the ground and with the pump on a mechanical timer so that it did not run at night, we mainly left the solar heater in the 90% full on position and we did find that it raised the average temperature by at least 1 or 2 degrees C on an average day.