Make Electric Power in Your Basement?
Updated: 2010-08-31 16:01:30
Make Electric Power in Your Basement?
Solar is great if you have a good roof. But what if you don't? Why not make kilowatt-hours in your basement? Small residential Combined Heat & Power (CH&P) boilers that run on natural gas can effectively cut the greenhouse gas emissions in ...
Flexible thin-film solar modules are designed to be glued to flat commercial rooftops or integrated directly into roofing membrane materials.
Beacon Solar Energy is the first of perhaps many such plants to be approved before federal incentives expire at end of 2010.
Aside from policy stability, it's probably one of the most widely-cited problems facing the renewable energy industry: The lack of transmission. But is the problem really as big as we're told? Or are utilities using it as an excuse to get more money for an unnecessary build-out of infrastructure and increase profits?
We are living in a time when the theory of unlimited economic growth is running into the reality of limited energy sources. To solve the problem, it is commonly thought that renewables are simply a drop-in replacement for oil, gas and coal – but many experts are warning about the faultiness of that assumption.
The military spends a lot of money and manpower getting fossil energies to combat troops. Over the last 4 years, there have been more calls to get modular wind and solar units deployed in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
The faux slate you see on the wall is a Canadian product called EasyRock which is 100% inert, non-toxic, non-gaseous and odour free. This product has an insulation value of R-5.7 and the surfact of it is fire retardant. It attaches easily to wood, brick or concrete and was very easy to install by ourselves. [...]
We salvaged some distressed pine bedroom furniture from a 5-star hotel in Whistler that was being updated. This included headboards, dressers, nightstands and hope chests which will be used in all of the bedrooms. Note the propane wall heater which can be used as back-up heating in the winter months. It is a Longvie model [...]
Click on images to enlarge.
We chose to go with reclaimed fir wood flooring supplied by TJ at www.simplymantels.ca Roman Leppert at www.ashardwood.com installed the flooring. The railings were installed by Tyler at Advanced Aluminum Railings and Design Inc. in Burnaby. Click on images to enlarge.
The Cyclone 24 volt ceiling fan (9.5 watts at full on…less when operating on lower speeds) along with a 24 volt dimmer switch was purchased form Kent at www.webstersolar.ca in Burnaby. This fan is positioned at the end of the hall in the basement suite. The Chalet 1800 free-standing wood burning stove in the great [...]
We installed a reconditioned 7.5KW Koehler propane generator supplied by Ron at www.power-west.com in Richmond, BC. The inverter and generator start in the basement mechanical room were supplied by Ralph at ralph@westcoastsolar.ca along with the photovoltaic solar panels. The Sun Frost 24 volt fridge www.sunfrost.com supplied by Lorne Bradley (Bradley Brothers) at Seymore Arm, BC. [...]