Showing posts with label electricity from the sun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label electricity from the sun. Show all posts

Sunday, October 6, 2013

Tiny Gutsy Homes On Wheels To Take You Here There Or Anywhere. Even Back Again...

These go anywhere tiny homes on wheels will probably take you to almost any place you'd care to choose. And get you back too.
Should you want to. But really, why would you.
However, if you did, you know, get sick and tired of living pretty much a self sufficient lifestyle, getting all your electricity from the sun as well as Vitamin D for your good health.
If you found that Freedom Camping wasn't your cup of the proverbial, well, I guess you'd be able to get back to civilization.
It's a scary thought though...








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Friday, July 13, 2012

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...
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Wednesday, June 27, 2012

A Place In The Sun...

It's the middle of winter here in the Southern Hemisphere but that doesn't mean there's no beautiful fine and sunny days.
The Flying Tortoise is at a favourite place, the Department Of Conservation campground at Northland's Uretiti Beach.
The beach is as beautiful as ever with just a few nudists soaking up the Vitamin D.
TFT has the extra 'tracking' solar panel out to catch all the sun possible on these shorter days.
And summer's on the way...
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Sunday, February 12, 2012

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... 





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