Feldheim. The Little German Town That's Completely Off-Grid And Enjoys 100 Percent Energy Independence...

The little town of Feldheim's population of around one hundred and fifty put their hands in their own pockets and each paid three thousand Euros to build their own electrical grid.
Enterprising little Feldheim situated 90k south of Berlin with its forty seven windmills, has more windmills than houses.
Their independence allows them to set their own electrical prices which are thirty percent less than the average.
This little town is a marvellous model for many...

Greenpeace Brings Emergency Power To The People...

Greenpeace built a mobile solar array attached to a truck some years ago and gave it the very apt name of Rolling Sunlight.
The emergency unit proved its worth in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy recently.
Stationed in one of the worst hit areas, New York's Rockaway's, the truck which can store fifty kilowatt hours of power was truly a ray of sunshine for the residents who were able to charge their mobile phones and other devices. And keep in touch with family and friends.
A great idea to bring emergency power to the people in disaster situations.
Solar panels have never been so inexpensive.
Perhaps you could have your own emergency solar set-up or talk with your community about providing a similar sort of unit...

The House That Sits On The Back Of A Truck...

As Steven over at Tiny House Listings often does, he's currently featuring another very interesting New Zealand Housetruck.
This one belongs to Nelson based Alex and Hannah who in 2010, set out to build themselves a home using a 1985 Hino truck as the foundation.
You can see more about them and their wonderful housetruck here and here...

How To Get More From Your Solar Panels...

Angling your solar panels to the sun
will increase their output considerably.
This is a fairly radical manoeurvre but one way
of doing it...

How To Get The Most From Your Solar Set-Up...

I've been living with solar, getting my electricity from the sun for more than twenty one years.
This innovative, simple, robust, easy to use, adjustable solar system is the best motorhome set-up I've seen.
Tilting a panel to the sun is definitely effective. Before Brian and Marge elected to go with this tilting device on their 9 metre Isuzu motorhome, I'd shown them an 85 watt panel lying flat on the ground getting 2.3 amps, then when it was tilted, 5.1 amps. Simple stuff really, not rocket science but something that was going to easily give them more bang from their buck.
Brian and Marge have lived on their aptly named bus 'Kiwi Style' for a couple of years.
They wanted to be able to watch TV, run a laptop, a microwave, a washing machine, lights, music and anything else without worrying about power shortages and outages.
They're now free to roam and never have to plug into the 'national grid'.
Glen Croule, the genius I featured here a couple of weeks ago and a solver of problems helped Brian with the design and then went on to make this simple, it has to be simple, robust, it has to be robust, easy to use, yes it has to be... mechanical structure from Aluminium box section.
It works lying flat on the roof while travelling and is most effective when in any one of it's angled positions. Three of the 120 watt panels remain flat and as you can see, three, with good space between them so as to not create too much wind resistance are angled.
Along with the 720 watts of solar, there's two 325 amphour AGM batteries to give a great combination of power input and storage.
Then to make sure there's no voltage loss, one of the most common faults in solar installation, all the cabling is really heavy duty.
Solar is getting cheaper daily.
There's never been a better time than now to get off-grid and say goodbye to those greedy, manipulative power companies...