Tiny Solar Solutions

By Hannah West

As we are better learning to harness the vast supply of energy that beams down on us every day, a wider range of solar powered products are becoming available. This is exciting news both for those who can’t afford a full solar power system in their home and those who already have one but are looking for additional solar solutions—basically for anyone passionate about conserving energy. As an added bonus, solar powered products are great for when you’re out and about, roadtripping, camping, or for when someone’s already claimed the last plug outlet at your favorite coffee shop. Here are a few that we at Modernize are particularly excited about:

Device Charger

Via Ubergizmo

A dead phone battery is merely inconvenient in some situations, but it can be dangerous in others. Whether you’re running errands or exploring wilderness, a solar charger is an amazing solution that almost feels too easy. That’s the beauty of solar power! There are plenty of solar chargers out there—like the Gomadic SunVolt above—that can power up a number of electronic devices, so do your research before settling on one that just charges your phone or laptop.

Oven

Via SolarTown

Solar ovens could not be more perfect for camping. Instead of hovering over food while it’s cooking on the fire, you can set it in the oven and let it sit for hours while you’re busy doing other fun activities. Solar ovens are portable and so simple that you can easily make your own.

Outdoor Lights

Via My Fancy House

Because solar lights don’t need electrical wiring, you can put them anywhere you want on your property. Just make sure they’re in an optimum spot to soak up the sunlight so they can illuminate your yard at night.

Backpack

Via Birksun

A backpack with a built-in lightweight solar panel and USB connections will prevent you from ever fearing that red battery signal again. Whether you’re a student or a world traveler, a solar powered backpack will take away the stumbling block of running out of juice in a fast-paced world.

Tent

Via Bang Bang Tents

Yet another solution to the pervasive problem of getting power into our portable devices, the solar tent will allow campers to use camping gear and devices without worrying about proximity to electrical hookups. While solar tents are not yet widely available, there’s no doubt they’ll be popular with the festival-going crowds as soon as they hit the markets!

Growing produce and protein in an urban setting

Many people are aware these days of how far their food travels, becoming less fresh and using up petroleum to get to their table. The Suncurve is a demonstration project growing produce and protein in a very small footprint. It could be integrated into the side of a multi-tenant residence in an urban center, providing fresh greens and berries and even legumes year-round in many parts of the United States.

Renewable solar and wind energy powers a pump to circulate water through the 1" thick biomat, bringing fishwastes to the roots of the plants. Some organic matter falls from the vertical bed into the fish pond, feeding the fish. A more robust system could even be imagined, processing human wastes back into food.

The engineer in me thrills at this system of massive intervention and resource allocation. The permaculturist in me recoils at the embodied energy this system represents. The urban permaculturist in me rejoices at how many "green" jobs this sort of infrastructure could create while leveraging our current relative abundance of resources into a system that ensures a steady supply of extremely local food for years and years.

Space-Based Solar Power

PG&E has agreed to buy electricity from start-up Solaren. PG&E buys electricity from many sources. What's new here, is that Solaren plans to build their facility in orbit.

When Elon Musk got into solar cells, and electric cars, and low-cost orbital access, I told everyone I knew to watch for the the first commercial space-based solar power project to be announced. It's fun to be right.

Why do we need space-based solar power? You're going to hear many environmentalists and even my friends in the green/relocalization/power down movement get all up in your face and on the airwaves about what a bad project this is. What I hope we all come to realize is that the problem isn't that humans have an insatiable appetite for energy. It's that we use it so poorly, poisoning ourselves and dirtying our nest.

Environmentalists who have traditionally been anti-nuclear power have finally seen that it's a great alternative to fossil fuels. What they will hopefully see is that space-based solar power is an even better option, cleaner, greener, and more full of job opportunities and economic growth with far less risk than nuclear. Space-based solar power is less risky than even coal-fired plants.


This chart shows that, over time, we find more energy-dense sources and drive our standard of living higher. The saddle shape of each energy source (wood, coal, oil) reflects that it starts out expensive, leads to a nice decrease in cost, which then as the resource is used up (or replaced by a superior energy technology) increases again.

The only technology we've got that continues this trend is moving power generation off-planet.

The reason it's important to continue this trend, is there isn't a viable method to "conserve" our way out of the mess we're in. We've exported consumption idealism to the world. We didn't invent consumption; it's a ramped up version of celebrating abundance, which Life itself invented.

We can scale back, but the imperative of Life to grow and change become more complex and grander is unstoppable. As conscious beings, we get to choose how we focus on this imperative. We've done a poor(ish) job so far. We're realizing our choices have far-reaching consequences. So we need to find solutions that reduce the impact on the planet, on people, on the ability of future generations to care for themselves. The best solutions will be enabling technologies, creating the foundation for future abundance.

To reach these goals, our best choice is space-based solar power.

Green From the Ground Up

The new Brower Center just down the road from me is an amazing new development with an astonishing percentage of salvaged and recycled parts. We've been biking and driving past it for a while now. It's exciting that it's about to be open for business! 

(Thank you, Anneli for the tip!)

My new job is... newer.

The folks who come out to your house and install solar panels are called "solar integrators." We design custom systems from modular components, to give rate-payers the best bang for their buck as they secure their energy future. 

Unfortunately for solar integrators, it's a real slim margin industry. It's tough to make ends meet as a small company where a single job's parts costs as much as the next four job's profit. The solution? Integrators are themselves integrating.

Light Energy Systems has just been acquired by publicly traded Lonestar, and combined with another integrator as Acro Energy. We'll be learning each other's strengths, and teaching better practices as we discover each other's weaknesses. The end result will be better pricing and service for our clients.

I'm pretty glad about this, because now there's a learning curve for me again. And that's when I'm happiest.

California Urban Lumber

A huge volume of our nation's green waste is from trees, taken from populated areas, felled and shredded. Some quick searching led me to believe it could be as much as one-third. And yet, we log along stream-beds and in environmentally sensitive areas, shipping logs and lumber great distances, burning up more fuel.

Companies such as California Urban Lumber remove logs from municipalities and incorporated areas (Never a log from the Rainforest! is one of their mottoes) and mill them into lumber. The wood is used locally for furniture manufacture and for construction. The lumber is air-dried rather than kiln-dried (because it is more sustainable). To become even more "green," they might be getting solar-electric panels soon, further helping to make urban forestry a 21st century solution.

As we move into a future where energy costs more, I really admire people who are learning how to make cities more self-sustaining. Cities are already pretty efficient at distributing resources, but there is room for improvement. I hope urban planners are becoming more savvy to ways we can close resource cycles. They could look to urban forestry for an example.

If It Gets Easier, Am I Still Doing It Right?

When I wonder if I'm still following my calling (as it becomes easier, and familiar, I have to find a compass other than "is this the most uncomfortable, growth-filled thing I can be doing right now?"), I'll catalog activities over a couple of days and assess them.

Karl made an amazing barbecue over the fire pit for dinner. Much of the food was local. Then we had our weekly community meeting, but outside, around the fire. Hank took notes on his laptop, and we had illumination from fire, solar-power lights and regular electric-grid tied lights. Urban permaculture rating: people care, earth care, fair share, stacked functions, integrate, small slow solutions, use edges and margins, observe and interact, produce no waste... yeah, that one ranked pretty high.

At work I tried to explain PG&E's TOU (Time of Use) E7 rate to a client, and I measured how much sun shine falls on his roof. I quoted a 4kW system to another client. As much as Right Livelihood fits into urban permaculture, this activity fits: especially as I consider fair share, observing and interacting, planning to obtain a yield, catch and store energy, design from pattern to details, use edges (specifically, the "edge" of a roof and the sky, a place currently barren on most dwellings).

I helped Ingrid Severson install a rain catchment system at her cute cottage. She gave me coconut oil from the barrels we were converting and fed me. Earth care, people care, fair share, catch and store energy, apply self-regulation and accept feedback, small slow solutions, obtain a yield, use edges and value the marginal, creatively adapt to change... another multi-point score!

In no particular order: I also had a sauerkraut party. Not as much fun as the last, but it was spread over both Saturday and Sunday as people dropped in and out. I got invited to two presentations, but I already had plans. I also played, with family and housemates, a version of Sorry!® in which you hold 5 cards and plan your strategy. I comforted a child who was feeling hurt, chauffeured parents to collect their child from the YMCA, and shared our one car back and forth with my wife.

I courageously called a friend when I was feeling down and shared my sorrow, and she listened and I felt better and no longer stewed in my juices.

Well, how about that. So many delicious, delightful activities in my life in the last few days, and all of them supporting and supported by the dense interconnected web that is urban permaculture.

I suppose I'm still on the right path.

Using the Tax Credit for Renewables

Here's a tidbit of information that could make a difference of a couple of hundred dollars or more, courtesy of the best solar installers in the Bay Area.* When should you apply your 30% tax credit? Before, or after you subtract your rebate from the full price of your system?

The options:

"Rebate First:" subtract the rebate first, then take 30% ITC on the difference.

"ITC First:" take the 30% ITC on the full purchase price, subtract the rebate, and treat the rebate as ordinary income, paying federal and state taxes on it.

Which is better? If my client's marginal tax rate is less than 30%, I'll ask them to consider "Rebate First." If it is greater than 30% they should consider "ITC First."

*Yes, I know our website is terrible. I'm working on it. Buy solar power from us so I can work on it faster. Thank you.

Showing People the Light

In using the tools of a trade that require the photographer's head to be aligned with the earth's rotational axis, perhaps we see that even if the Universe appears to revolve around oneself, there is still the opportunity to be in service to others and the planet.

There, Caitlan, an absurd example of Not Art. Coming up with an Artist Statement does not transform this image into art.

This is, however, a picture of me... and the sky, showing how the sun moves through it over the course of a year. It's taken with a Suneye, a device made by Solmetric. I'll take a half-dozen or so of these and use the data to help my clients see where to place their panels. I've been to jobsites where at 2 in the afternoon we are standing in the shade of a giant tree and the client will say to me with a perfectly straight face, "This is the part of the yard we don't use, so I want to put the array here," or "That corner of my roof gets late afternoon sun, can we put a panel there?"

Even before I took this job, I knew that solar panels ran on sunshine. Not shadeshine.

If I try just using my words to explain that buying solar panels to put in the shade is not a good expenditure, a typical response is "I want your engineer to figure it out anyway." So the Suneye is invaluable. I'll take a picture, it'll show how the trees shade the spot, and also how much sun really does land there. The client will often be disappointed ("But I can see so much sky over my head, I am amazed that the sun doesn't shine right here!") but then we get to move forward and see if they really do have any good space for an array. I wish I could pass along a lesson of permaculture, in which people slow down and spend time observing a place for at least a year before making any changes. I mean really observing, too: shifting with the seasons and all.

In the pic above, the software automatically shades green over places that block the sun. I told it to ignore the tree that blocks this spot after about 3pm for 8 months of the year. I over-painted that tree yellow to show the client that he can get all the way up to an annual insolation of 72% if he takes that tree out.

The Suneye is to shade measurements as CAD software is to a drafting board. I can spend about 15 minutes taking readings and 15 minutes interpreting them and give my client a fairly accurate idea about how to place an array so the money they spend on their solar panels generates the most amount of power.

Testimonial

I just received this testimonial from a client who is an accountant:

While I am proud that I am doing my part to help the environment by producing my own energy, as an accountant the purchase had to make financial sense as well. I was able to finance my [solar power] system and I now my monthly loan repayment is lower than what my PG&E bill was. In addition to saving money each month, I now have protected myself from future PG&E rate increases. But perhaps the biggest factor for me was is that several car manufacturers are racing to start selling plug-in hybrid vehicles.  In the next few years I expect to be able to use the electricity I produce to power not only my home, but my car as well. The potential for significant gas savings are the icing on the cake. And since I am on the time of use schedule, my rates are low at night, when I would charge my car, and high during the day, when I am not home and the sun is spinning my meter backwards at the higher rate. When I put all of that together, it just didn't make sense not to get the system.

Proposition 7

I'm a bit suspicious that PG&E and other utilities are urging a "No" vote on Prop 7, while "three Nobel prize winning scientists" support it. So I read the thing. Opponents to Prop 7 insist that it's poorly written.

In the voter guide you can read that supporters claim the law says one thing and opponents claim it says exactly the opposite. So I decided to take one little piece of the proposed legislation and figure out who is telling the truth, figuring that exposing one lie reveals the liars. I worked on the "Facilities under 30 megawatts will be excluded" assertion. Who is right? Are these smaller plants helped or hurt by this law? Here are the pertinent excerpts. I put key phrases in bold letters:

Section 399.11(a) In order to attain the targets of generating 20 percent of total retail sales of electricity in California from eligible renewable energy resources by December 31, 2010 [and all the other targets-- I'm snipping out about 100 words here], it is the intent of the people... to implement the... Program described in this article.

Section 399.12(c) “Eligible renewable energy resource” means a solar and clean energy facility.

Then about 4 pages later comes this:

Section 25110. "Facility" means any electric transmission line, thermal power plant, or solar and clean energy plant.

And finally the truth:

Section 25137. “Solar and clean energy plant” means any electrical generating facility using wind, solar photovoltaic, solar thermal, biomass, biogas, geothermal, fuel cells using renewable fuels, digester gas, municipal solid waste conversion, landfill gas, ocean wave, ocean thermal, or tidal current technologies, with a generating capacity of 30 megawatts or more or small hydroelectric generation of 30 megawatts or less, and any facilities appurtenant thereto.

Final analysis? Proposition 7 is written to mandate utilities to hit their energy targets from renewable energy facilities having greater than 30 megawatt generating capacity. The opponents have it right: facilities under 30 megawatts don't help the utility meet their targets. My review showed me that it's brilliantly written to gut the emerging renewable energy industry.

I guess this shows that three top scientists can't parse a legal document. I urge everyone to vote No on Prop 7.

Is Solar Electricity Cost Effective?

Wow, thanks for all the great comments! Let's see if I can wrangle some of them.

Tim Prosser's numbers are pessimistic. Generally the systems we are installing are about half the price per watt that he's noted. I realize a big part of this is that the new solar incentives are huge. Electricity from the sun at the residential scale here in California costs about $4.10 per watt. Payback times are 5 to 10 years, which is an amazing rate of return for something that is going to last at least 40 years. Every year you wait for new technology, you're losing money; our clients are saving thousands of dollars each year right now.

Steve's great question about lending your rooftop to the utility makes sense except for all the legislation and regulation and policies that have developed over the years. If we could throw all that stuff out and start fresh, distributed, commonwealth-ish power generation is very sensible. The fly in the ointment is that utilities make their money on distribution. This explains why they'll site a generation facility far away from where the load is; they get to have longer transmission lines and higher charges. It's part of how the regulations are written.

So SCE and PG&E aren't interested in your rooftop. Photovoltaic technology is mature and stable, but the economics and the regulations favor the little guy, you, the residential consumer. PG&E could certainly build distributed generation across all the warehouse roofs through the central valley and power all those HVAC systems without the use of coal, oil, or gas... except no one has come up with a pricing structure that makes it economically feasible for them to do so.

Most of our clients aren't "green." They buy a rooftop solar panel system specifically because they have perceived the financial benefit of controlling their own electricity costs

This sort of leads into timmer's query about having power when the power goes out. Short answer? Yes, you can have a battery system to store your electricity. Long answer? 20 years ago they were relatively cheap. A grid-intertied, battery back-up system that could power your house all night long when the utility shuts down pretty much starts at $100,000. You're better off with a back-up generator for a few thousand bucks. Size it to what you really need to keep running (the refrigerator, a TV, a couple of lights, and perhaps the wine cellar) and just be ready to plug it in.

I really like Steve's whole-circle thinking around energy use that includes the car. A PV system sized to provide power for a car should still be tied to the grid, though, and here's why: the car charges at night, when the grid has tons of unused capacity. The solar panels put power into the grid during peak day usage, when the demand is high. This makes it a win-win situation for everyone. In the future when legislation about load-balancing gets enacted, early adopters could see good rewards.

I know there's a huge pent-up desire to stick it to the utilities and take back our energy independence. But if we can simmer down a bit from there, we can see that real freedom isn't cutting off our nose to spite our face. It's letting the utlitity do some of the job, while taking back some of the job ourselves. This includes making some changes at the policy level, but it also includes getting control of your own energy costs through conservation and generation.

My Brain is Full

Whew!

I've been getting large amounts of information pressed into my gray matter as I learn how to do my new job. I have a couple of roles to play; I'm helping re-direct the marketing effort and I'm selling solar electric (photovoltaic) systems.

"Sales" in this realm includes a fair amount of estimating and design/layout. Each solar panel system, although made of rather standardized components, is unique, and I haven't yet learned enough to cover every situation that I might face. Our engineer is teaching me some things to watch for, and I'm glad anything I work on passes across her desk.

People are responding to the new federal tax credit structure, and the phones are starting to ring. Along with the increases in PG&E rates, even people who are rather modest consumers can begin to see some financial incentives to switch to solar. For instance, any residence using more than 22kWh per day and subsequently paying over $1500 per year for electricity, should consider generating their own electricity using solar panels. An optimized system would pay for itself in five years.

On the marketing side, I'm realizing that the PV industry as a whole doesn't seem to know how to sell PV. It's "green?" Well, yes, but at tens of thousands of dollars, it better do something for me. If I spend $38k on a car, it makes me feel good and all the ladies want a ride to the club, right? Can I take my solar panels for a spin around the block? No? You mean, they just sit there?

See, it's just not sexy. It's not exciting.

In fact, it's sort of the opposite of exciting. Getting a $300 or $600 electric bill, now that's exciting-- but in the wrong way. It's the stressful kind of exciting, to get a big electric bill. Your own PV system frees you from that stress. Solar panels give you the warm fuzzy feeling that you are in control of your energy costs, the security that you are free from the tyranny of the large energy players. While that's not sexy, it is certainly reassuring.

Solar Power Rebates

I'm cautiously optimistic as I learn a bit about the Federal PV rebates that were extended and expanded as part of the $700B bailout. I'll do some more research, but it appears that solar panel systems that come on-line after January 2nd will be eligible for a 30% tax credit. The old $2000 cap has been removed. A $50k investment will get about $8k in state rebates here in California and then another $12k in tax credits from the Feds!

I'm really excited to be working with Light Energy Systems now. Up until this year, the US PV market has been second fiddle, or even third or fourth fiddle, to the Asian and European markets. With this new legislation, residential PV will really take off here in the US. We could become the big dog of solar power and renewable energy generation. Can true energy independence be far behind?

PG&E just raised its rates for the higher tiers, too. Highest-consumption users will now pay over 40 cents per kWh. We used to tell homeowners that their new photovoltaic system will pay for itself in about 10 years. "Is that if PG&E rates go up, or remain constant?" we get asked, and while of course historically prices only go up in the higher tiers, we have to be somewhat conservative when making forward, speculative comments.

And, and... with the new rebate structure and the higher electricity rates, a $50k PV system could reach breakeven in as few as 5 years. It's a great time to buy a residential solar panel system right now.

Which makes it a great time to be in the business of selling PV.

The 100 mpg Prius

Suppose you bought your Prius a few years ago, after running the numbers and projecting that if gasoline did in fact ever cost more than $4 a gallon, a Prius was a good fit for your commute. How smart do you feel now, you clever dog? Okay, Prognosticator, suppose it was possible to do most of your driving for the equivalent of $1 a gallon? Well, if you upgrade your Prius, it is. Even more exciting, you can even drive mostly for free, if you decide to install a solar photovoltaic (PV) system and drive on solar energy.

First things first: how do you get your Prius converted into a plug-in hybrid? I met with Paul Guzyk and Carol Lipof of 3Prong Power to find out what they are up to. Carol takes me to the work bay.


"Most people don't really want to know about the workings inside their car," Paul tells me. "But, here's where we've put 20 lead acid batteries into the wheel well. It adds 300 pounds but not much of a change to the car's handling. We install some stiffer springs and that takes care of the weight.

"You still have the same trunk space. And the whole battery rack is on hydraulics so you can easily access the spare tire if you need to.

"Want to go for a drive?"

Um, yes.

Out on the road, Paul turns to me. "We're going to go into 'Stealth' mode."

"This is my favorite part," says Carol.

Paul touches the Prius' in-dash screen and accesses the new mode. "The Prius is a closed architecture system, but all the subsystems communicate via Bluetooth. So we can 'spoof' the computer and introduce a new operating mode. We've left all the original Prius systems in place. We don't take anything out, we just add to it."

That and some legislation is why the Toyota warranty is not voided by the mods that 3Prong installs.

"So this sort of DOS looking screen shows that we are running entirely on batteries. Our lead-acids are used to keep the Prius' NiMH batteries topped off, and the gasoline engine doesn't start. We can go up to 52 miles per hour and about 10 miles in all electric mode. We can sit in traffic, running the air conditioning, the brakes, the power steering, all without gas. The Prius is just bulletproof. It has a great reputation. We just leverage off that, and you get a fully crash-tested, modern car with all the highway safety features right now, instead of waiting for a Toyota or Chevy concept car."

Ten miles is really about as far as most people drive when doing their around-town errands. I imagine parents who might be nervous about strapping a child safety seat into a neighborhood EV would be quite happy driving their children around in an all-electric Prius. The gasoline back-up is still there, of course, for those longer trips. How easy is it to charge?

"We install a plug through the rear bumper. You just plug it in to a normal wall socket," Carol explains.

"This isn't 'the' answer," says Carol. "There are many solutions, rather than a single magic bullet. What this does is gives us more choices. There are lots of sources to generate electricity and power an electric car, rather than being reliant on one source, petroleum, that causes politcal strife. Instead of being at the mercy of others, we get more options."

One of those options is solar power. "This Prius is owned by a customer who already has solar panels on his house. He's generating so much extra energy... and he wants to use it, since PG&E doesn't actually pay you for generating more than you use. So he'll be driving his first 10 miles each day essentially for free," says Paul.

I got a two-fer! On-site is a hydrogen fuel cell! We peeked inside it. Six large tanks deliver hydrogen through a platinum-laced proton-exchange-membrane, generating (wait for it...!) electricity!

Uh..., don't we get electricity a lot easier from the grid? How much cost and effort is it going to be to build the infrastructure for a hydrogen economy?

"Fuel cells are cool," Pauls tells me. "But they are expensive. How do you generate, distribute and store the hydrogen? It's cool, but not very cost effective.

"The existing infrastructure of the electric grid has so much over-capacity at night, that it could support charging 100 million plug-in cars. Balanced power load is important to power companies. It's hard on the equipment to power it down and power it back up again each night and day. They'd much rather just leave it running. Plug-in hybrids are the solution for the next five to ten years. The energy infrastructure is in place now."

Sounds good to me. I'm a much bigger fan of electrons than protons, for energy and power. Protons are heavy. We aren't very good at moving them. CERN just started operating a giant machine built solely for the task of transporting hydrogen nuclei in a 17-mile circle at a cost of billions. Well, ok, the LHC will also detect the Higgs boson and could also create a world-eating mini-black hole, but the point is that electrons are far easier to generate and store. You can do it at home, with a solar-powered battery charger.

3Prong Power is currently taking orders to make your Prius into a plug-in. The procedure is fairly priced at under $7000. For comparison, a non-crash-rated NEV costs between $3000 and $10,000. 3Prong Power shares a showroom with Berkeley's Green Motors, at 1500 San Pablo Avenue. If you drive a Prius, or can buy one as it comes off a rental fleet, I strongly suggest you consider getting this upgrade.