Trunk or Treat

Trunk or Treat was last night at our Ward.  We had a great time.  Go check out our pictures. www.juarezfamilyjournal.blogspot.com

I tried to put a photo but it didn't work.  I'll try again later.

Solar Panel Energy

Part 2!

You learned from the last blog post about how much electricity you are using.  This post is about generating that electricity yourself rather than relying on the power system.  There are two ways to go about doing this:

Grid-Tied System

In a grid tied system, you only need to buy solar panels and a grid tie inverter.  The solar panels connect to the grid tie inverter, which then connects to your house.  Any excess energy that you generate actually gets sent back into the electric system, and you can potentially be paid by the electric company instead of the other way around.

This is not as interesting to me though because you need a professional electrician to connect the grid tie inverter to your house.  Also, if the electric company's power goes out, your house goes dark, even if your solar panels are generating electricity.  You need to add batteries if you want to use it as a backup solution as well.

Off Grid System

In an off grid system, you are generating your own electricity and storing it in batteries.  This is good for a cabin in the woods.  It was also good for me in my case to just learn what solar stuff is all about.

Parts to the Off Grid System

Solar Panels:  These will be rated by how many watts they'll generate with direct sunlight shining on them.  There are 3 types of solar panels:

• Polycrystalline: Your basic panel
• Monocrystalline: Your basic panel, but more efficient (and more expensive).  So a 100W monocrystalline panel will most likely be smaller than a 100W polycrystalline panel.
• Amorphous: Whereas the two types above are rigid, this is more pliable.  I believe some companies pretty much just print this stuff out.  It is less efficient (so a 100W amorphous panel is comparatively HUGE), but it also does better in indirect sunlight (like a cloudy day) than the other two do.

Most brick and mortar stores don't seem to have these in stock, but you can buy them online, particularly from Amazon and Home Depot.  You can also simply buy some off some guy on Craigslist.  The panels last ~20-25 years with 80% of their original power.

Charge controller:  Depending on the amount of sun on your solar panels, they'll either generate a whole lot of electricity, just a trickle, or even none at all.  In fact, when it is dark, the solar panels will actually try to take electricity rather than give it.  A charge controller will regulate that electricity going to the battery, and also make sure the solar panels don't suck electricity away at night time.  It will let the battery be charged at the right levels when it is empty, and stop the charging when it is full.  There are 2 types of charge controllers:

• PWM (Pulse Width Modulation): Your basic charge controller.  Any voltage over the limit is simply dropped.  Unfortunately this can be inefficient (say 80% efficient).
• MPPT (Maximum Power Point Tracking): Newer, fancier charge controllers (also far more expensive).  Instead of simply dropping any voltage, it'll convert the extra volts to amps instead (I'll talk about the math of this later), radically increasing the efficiency of your system (like 97%).

Batteries: You pretty much want to charge your basic 12V car battery.  Except apparently 12V marine batteries (specifically deep cycle batteries) and 6V golf cart batteries are actually better suited for the task.  Car batteries are meant to have a big pull right at the beginning (starting your car), and then not much else.  Apparently boats and golf carts are more likely to drain a battery all the way down, and then charge it all the way up again, just like a solar panel system would.

How much the battery can store will be measured in amp hours.  However, a battery should never go below 50% charge (or it'll damage the battery), so you'll really only get half that number.

Power Inverter:  Solar panels and batteries give you DC (Direct Current) power, while your house electric plugs give AC (Alternate Current) power.  So a power inverter connects to your battery, converting your 12V battery DC power to 120V house AC power.  This is the same exact device that you'd use in your car to be able to plug your laptop or whatever in.  There are also 2 types of power inverters:

• Modified Sine Wave Inverter: Your basic DC/AC inverter.  It'll give a bit of a choppy AC signal, which will work fine for most of your appliances, but not all.  For example, laser printers won't work, fans and fluorescent lights may buzz, and generators/motors may run hot.
• Pure Sine Wave Inverter: This gives you the same type of signal at your wall outlet.  Much more expensive.

How to Hook it all Up

Connect the solar panels to your charge controller.  Then connect your charge controller to your batteries.  Connect the power inverter also to your batteries.  Then plug whatever you want into the power inverter.

I recommend getting a Kill a Watt meter (from my last post) so you can see exactly how much power you're drawing from your batteries.

Also, you may want a 12V system, a 24V system, or a 48V system.  I'll show you why in the next section, but you'll want to hook everything up a little differently depending on what kind of system you have.  Say you have 4 12V batteries.  If you just want a 12V system, then hook them all up in parallel (connect the positives parts all together and the negative parts all together).  If you want a 24V system, then hook up two sets of two batteries each in series (connect the positive on one battery to the negative of another).  Then hook up your two sets in parallel.  Or for a 48V system, just connect all the batteries in series.

Remember to have the right equipment.  For a 24V system, make sure you wire the batteries correctly, and purchase a 24V charge controller and 24V power inverter.  Otherwise you may explode something :)  One tip is many MPPT charge controllers can easily switch between a 12V or 24V battery bank.  An MPPT charge controller also means you can have 24V panels, but a bank of 12V batteries without losses.  A PWM charge controller would drop half your volts in the same system, effectively losing 50% of your power.

Also, one thing that's great about this is nearly everything is expandable.  Want more solar panels?  Just hook them up in parallel or in series as necessary.  Too much power for your charge controller?  Just add another and hook them up in parallel on the battery side (not verified, but I've read that a couple times).  Need more battery storage?  Just add more batteries in series or parallel as necessary.  The only thing that isn't expandable is the power inverter.  If you get a 200W power inverter, but you need 500W, then you'll need to buy a new one.

Important Math

Volts * Amps = Watts (Power)

So if you plug a 100W light bulb in the wall, you know you're getting 120V from the wall, and the total power draw is 100 watts.  A little math (100 Watts / 120 V) means you're pulling 0.83 amps.  This is important because the higher the amps are in your system, the thicker your copper cable runs will need to be.

Say you have 1000W of solar panels connected to 12V batteries.  The same math tells me you'll have 83 amps running on the cable between your solar panels and your batteries.  To keep the power loss to an acceptable level, you'll need a cable the size of your arm.  However, the same 1000W on a 48V system is only 20.8 amps, which is a much better cable size.

This also comes in use for determining battery size.  If your battery is a 12V battery, and it is rated at 100 amp hours, that means it can run (12 volts * 100 amp hours) 1200 watt hours before being completely drained.  Remember you can only drain it 50% of the way though, so you really only get 600 watt hours from full to empty.  The power inverter should automatically detect when the battery bank is too low and turn off.

Hybrid System

Eventually when you have your off-grid system working how you want it to, you may want to get a grid-tie inverter and have a professional electrician connect it to your house.  That way you can get the benefit of powering your own house (perhaps sending extra back onto the grid for credit), and still staying on in the event of a city power outage because of your batteries.

Do remember that each component you introduce also makes the entire system slightly less efficient though, so a normal grid tied system will be slightly better.  As mentioned before, however, a normal grid tied system does not give you any advantage during a power outage.

Is it Worth It?

The short answer is it will take 5-10 years to be worth it (but the panels last 20-25).  You'll want to be your panels at around $1.50 or below per Watt.  For example:

A 250W panel costing $350 is $1.40 per watt.  Assuming a price of $0.12 per kWh from your utility company, that panel will take 11,666.67 hours (or about 1.33 years) to make up its value.  However, there isn't direct sunlight for 24 hours/day, so assuming you get full power from the panel at an average of only 5 hours each day, it'll more realistically take 6.39 years to make up its value.  Of course this does not take into account the cost of batteries, etc. (if that's the route you choose to go), but that gives you a good ballpark figure.

My Test System

• Solar panel: I bought a small 5W panel to test with for $25.  I'm looking to get some cheaper, larger panels off craigslist now that I have a better idea of what I'm doing.  I'd like to stick them on my shed in the backyard, and they'll provide power for parties out back.
• Charge controller: I got a small 3 amp / 12 V charge controller to test with for $11.
• Battery: I got a deep cycle marine battery from Walmart with 100 amp hours for $75.
• Power Inverter: I got a 200W Whistler power inverter years and years ago for Christmas that I just kept in my car.
• Misc
• $6 for some 14 gauge copper wire at home depot
• $10 for an add-on cable to connect my power inverter directly to the battery ($10 was a huge rip-off, like everything else at radio shack)
• A battery trickle charger, wire strippers, and a multimeter all came in handy at different points that I already owned as well.

Total: $127 for science

How much is that light bulb costing you?

I decided I wanted to learn about electricity.  Electricity in general, but especially as it pertains to solar energy.  So I went out and bought some solar panels to try and figure it all out.  This will be a 2 part blog posting.  One about the cost of electricity to you, and a second specifically on solar energy.

You pay your electric bill based on Watts.  Or more specifically, kWh (kilowatt hours), which means how many 1000 Watts you use in an hour.  If you look at your actual bill, it's confusing, but you can simply divide your bill total by how many kWh you used.  I pay about $0.12 per kWh.

So just how much electricity do your devices use?  I purchased something called a Kill A Watt meter that measures for you right at the wall.  It's very easy to use.  I recommend getting one.  I went all around the house, checking different appliances and how much power they use.

So how much does it cost to run your device?  Well take a lamp with a 65W light bulb.  Not surprisingly, that uses 65 watts.  So the formula to calculate usage cost is wattage * hours used / 1000 * price per kWh.  So the formula for running my 65W light a full day is 65 watts * 24 hours / 1000 * 0.12 price per kWh = $0.1872 or about 19 cents.

Here is a spreadsheet I made of a bunch of stuff I measured:

Item	Watts	Per Day	Per Month	Per Year
Home Laptop	18	$         0.05	$         1.56	$         18.92
Work Laptop	18	$         0.05	$         1.56	$         18.92
Hannspree Monitor	23	$         0.07	$         1.99	$         24.18
Acer Monitor	41	$         0.12	$         3.54	$         43.10
Speakers	2.2	$         0.01	$         0.19	$           2.31
Network switch	5.8	$         0.02	$         0.50	$           6.10
Wireless Phone	1.4	$         0.00	$         0.12	$           1.47
printer	5	$         0.01	$         0.43	$           5.26
desktop computer	77	$         0.22	$         6.65	$         80.94
box fan	81	$         0.23	$         7.00	$         85.15
piano keyboard	2.5	$         0.01	$         0.22	$           2.63
cell phone charging	5	$         0.01	$         0.43	$           5.26
shredder	1	$         0.00	$         0.09	$           1.05
50" LCD TV	350	$         1.01	$       30.24	$      367.92
Playstation	74	$         0.21	$         6.39	$         77.79
DVR	26	$         0.07	$         2.25	$         27.33
Toaster	785	$         2.26	$       67.82	$      825.19
Microwave	1422	$         4.10	$     122.86	$   1,494.81
Fridge	195	$         0.56	$       16.85	$      204.98
Light bulb	65	$         0.19	$         5.62	$         68.33

Some other interesting notes:

• Do devices still suck power even when they are off?  Some do, but for most devices no.  The shredder used 1W on or off.  The Hannspree monitor used 0W off, and 0.8W when the computer was asleep.  The Acer monitor used 0.4W off.  The microwave used 2W off.  The biggest culprit was the DVR that used 19W off, presumably because it was still trying to record even when it was "off".  Most everything else didn't use anything when off (TV, playstation, toaster, cell phone charger, etc.)
• Depending on what you are doing, you'll use a different amount of wattage: For example, my laptop would go up to 22 watts when watching a movie.  I actually made my desktop computer spike up to 350 watts doing something I knew was super intensive.
• Lights in devices: The microwave used 30 watts when the door was open, and 2 watts when the door was closed (but not running).  The fridge/freezer similarly used 2 watts with the door closed, 87 watts with the door open, and 195 watts with the door closed, but the motor running.  It took me a little detective work to figure it out, but it was the wattage the light bulb was using.
• Fans:  My box fan used 126 watts at the 3 setting, 103 watts at the 2 setting, and 81 watts at the 1 setting.
• My keyboard used 2.5 watts at rest, and 4-7 watts while I was playing it.

Received Monday, April 15, 2013

Somehow - I guess through not paying enough attention, I posted this on the wrong blog...OOPS

I was going to take it off and repost where it belongs, on Zak's Mission blog, elderzak.blogspot.com

but maybe people might read it here and enjoy it; if you don't then just don't and 

please accept my apologies!

QUESTIONS:

Have you heard the First Presidency letter about testimony meeting?

yup, our bishop read it a few weeks ago. I will comment further below

I sent you mail this week with some pictures; got it yet?

yes I did! I will comment further below

Don’t your Pres. Packard interviews go along with transfer weeks? Does that mean transfers are coming again soon??

we have interviews about every 3 transfers. Our next transfer is a week from this Thursday

How did your Mormon.org appt go this week?? How old is he?

we went and...... he was not there. Unfortunately that is not an uncommon happening with this sort of thing. We haven't gone back yet, but we certainly will soon. We do have a home phone number too. We don't know who it was that requested the missionaries sent to that house. It was not stephon, probably a friend from out of town or something that thought he would listen too/they knew he was an open thinker.

note on mormon.org referrals: we get them every once and a while and this is close to the best one i've gotten. often times it is exactly like tracking; you knock and they just say all set (or some derivative. people in CT don't use it as much). If you want to share the gospel with a friend it's usually not the best to do it in secret and silently send missionaries while hoping your friend never realizes it was you who sent them. You ought to ask them yourself if they're interested; they are way more likely to respond well to you, a friend, than two goons in suits who knock on their door while they're in the middle of something. If you care about/believe in the gospel and you care about your friends it only makes sense you want to connect the two. done with the right way with the right intentions, friends will feel more cared about and loved as a result, whether they say yes or no. (not that there is specifically a "right way" or silver bullet answer, but I think you know what I mean). 

One interesting analogy I found when I first came to the area: We asked a couple (they have 2 kids, both priest age, everyone very strong in the gospel and good at missionary work) to come with us to a lesson. it went well and afterwards they took us out to lunch (at Arbys!). while there they told us a funny story about how the neighbors/friends in the area, about the same age, also with kids etc, would invite them to keggers/wild drinking party's. they thought it was kind of gross parents were having such parties and kind of funny that they kept getting invited even though everyone knew they were Mormon. they would say stuff like "hey I know you're not coming but, there's a party this Saturday if you want!". I asked how they (the couple) felt when they were invited to such things. they said honestly, it was neighborly and friendly! the invite is oozing with irresponsibility and not-smart-ness, but because it was done out of true care it still made them closer friends. how come the beer-party people have figured this aspect of missionary work out, but we struggle when we are sharing something to helpful, meaningful (which people already learned once before they were born! all we have to do is remind them about it) also clearly a lot of people would be offended by that invite no matter how it was given, so we do need to think about what we invite people to as well as how we do it.

Did you have Hot and Cold weather this week? Did you wear short sleeves this week?

a little bit. I think coming from California and just enduring a NE winter I'm confused about what is hot and what is cold. Most every day this week I went out in long sleeve shirts, no sweater. we did have a colder rainy day too. And we did turn the AC on in the car a number of times which was exciting

What are your plans today?

just regular P-Day things. I mentioned we're speaking at church about general conference soon, it's this sunday (the 21st. I may have accidentally said a different date last time) so we'll spend some time printing out a few conference talks to use and quote from. Then dinner at the Phillips and then a lesson with an investigator

What good food have you eaten recently?

our fast sunday meal yesterday was Sooo good. it was grilled chicken (and he "grilled" a few pieces of wood, I think cedar, along with the chicken to give it flavor). and Risotto and salad and broccoli (they said they have broccoli almost every day!) and some of the best rolls ever. Also there were cookies and ice cream for dessert.

Hear any news on any of your old companions...how they are doing? Just wondering.

my trainer Elder Woodruff is home. I heard from another missionary that he was made ward mission leader there. I called Elder Beck once, he was doing fine. He has since been transferred somewhere else

Did you ask the Elwells if they knew the Coles from Duarte?

no, I forgot to ask about the connection there. another person in the ward, brother Purser said we may be somehow related because he has some sort of Cole relatives in Idaho, but I can't remember exactly. Also did I mention there is a Cole family here in the ward? I'm not good at keeping up with all the past and old genealogical connections; I would not have made a good Jaradite prophet.

About the letter you sent, It was fun to read. I can't believe you guys didn't immediately see the joking'ness about watching conference in our apartment! us missionary types have basically no access to technology; if we had a math problem to solve we'd probably have to ask around for an abacus because we've forgotten how to use anything more advanced

and good drawing you put in the end

this week was pretty good. we had a ward party on Friday which was very well done. It had a decades theme (50's through 90's). A lot of people dressed up pretty well, and we had an investigator come! she and her daughter who came both really liked it and a member or two did a great job reaching out to talk to her.

sunday we were really excited because that same investigator was going to come to church for the first time. we even went to the house in the morning to make sure and everyone was getting ready. then, they never showed up! (we found out later a friends had to go to the ER, and she dashed over to watch the kids. understandable). but initially we were disappointed while at sacrament meeting. Also none of the youth invites pulled through, most people were already out of town for spring break and stuff, so we'll continue thinking about them. but the cool thing was that still all the priests got up and bore their testimony. everyone really liked it. Most of them spoke about missionary work which was cool too. Another person also got up and talked about a great missionary experience. very good meeting, made us feel a lot better. Afterwards bishop got up and talked about how he thought it was a great meeting, and beforehand he was thinking about whether or not to re-read the first presidency message, but was glad he didn't because it went well. also he said something like "the reason this was a great meeting was because we did exactly what it said, which surprised me!). it was funny.

exciting news for quinn, he often gets to spice up the emails. I hope Christopher enjoys his long muddy run. I hope Kobe doesn't retire. Good luck to everyone on all their different things

-until next week,

Me

Running with Tanner

Tanner and I ran this morning in Agoura.  

If you want to read more click HERE