Report: 1st Annual International Member RE Tour (Warning: Many pictures!)

[Rob Beckers]

Last Saturday a number of forum members got together in Prince Edward County, Ontario, as announced in another thread of the same title (http://www.greenpowertalk.org/showthread.php?t=2205). For those that couldn't make it: Below is my attempt to show you a little of what we saw. I'm bad in remembering names, so apologies in advance for those that I miss or mutilate. I will split this in a few posts, because there's a limit to the number of pictures per post.

The weather gods were smiling upon us that day, it was gorgeous! Prince Edward County is somewhat of an RE anomaly in Ontario. There are a great many people that have embraced renewable energy, some grid-connected, some completely off-grid, all this in a very small area. We met at Mario's in the morning. Kudos for Stew, who left somewhere around 4am to make it on time! Here is a picture of the motley crew (All but Mario and me).

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First stop was a brand new solar installation that was going to be using the equally new Standard Offer Contract to get Ontario's 42 cents per kWh for solar. The panels were up, but the second meter to measure production for Ontario Hydro had not been installed yet. The owner's, Don Ross, couldn't be there in person unfortunately. Of course that didn't stop us. Notice there's a bit of wind energy being utilized too! :D

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I believe the panels are around 200 Watt each, making for about a 1.7kW system. Here's the inverter and charge controller (yes, for reasons not entirely clear to me this SOC install has batteries, a bit unusual). Batteries are not in the picture, they're off to the left.

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Maybe Don or Mario can give us an update when the system has been grid connected. I'm sure I am not the only one that would like to hear more about the practical details of the SOC; how much the electricity company charges to get hooked up, the amount of red-tape etc. The Standard Offer Contract is still brand new here in Ontario, and even installers are still a bit in the dark about those details.

On to the next stop...

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

After a stop at a local cheese factory, it was time for lunch. We went back to Mario's to have a bite in style: Mario has a beautiful place right next to the water. Stew provided hot-dogs that were expertly cremated on Mario's grill. As you can see it was quite a feast (That's Stew on the left).

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A few shots of lunch. This one has Mario on the left side.

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Lively discussion pursued. Mark's on the right, with Stew in the middle and Jerry Ball on the left. Jerry is an interesting character; He's been making wind turbines for many decades and what he makes is old school. More about Jerry later.

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The final shot is of Jerry and a gentleman who's name I unfortunately don't remember.

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That brings us to the after-lunch program, in the next post...

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

Mario's backyard provided the after-lunch entertainment. There was the traditional who-has-the-biggest (blade) contest. :rolleyes:

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Actually, this was a display of some remarkable craftsmanship. Stew had a cutting profile made for his shaper, so he can crank out blades up to a foot wide and just about any length. The blade in the front of the picture is Stew's, he had made a set for Mark (Yes, this meeting saw trade too!). Second blade from the front is another creation of Stew. Next is a very beautiful, complex curved, CNC-made small blade from Jerry. As you can see it has twist and taper in its profile. Quite amazing! The last one is one of Jerry's production blades that he uses on a number of wind turbines.

From blades we went to alternators. As in cranking them. Jerry had worked a very large (was it 75hp originally?) induction motor over to a permanent magnet alternator. It uses ceramic magnets. A large crank made it possible to go one-on-one with this brute, using a set of light bulbs as a load. Renewable energy took on a whole new meaning. Stew was determined to show us the great shape he is in.

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Notice how the bulbs light are glowing. Also notice Stew's face. Just to make things more interesting, Jerry also had an angle-grinder in case cranking the bulbs was too easy. Switching on the grinder really put the brakes on the alternator!

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Here's a shot of the inside. Those magnets are huge!! One can only imagine what this contraption would do with neos instead of ceramics, unfortunately one can also imagine the cost of doing so. Neos are expensive!

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Next on the tour was Laura's off-grid house...

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

Laura's house was at the end of a seemingly endless gravel driveway. Someone mentioned just how large the property was, not sure about the the exact number but if memory serves me it was around 200 acres. Beautifully located at the water's edge, and completely off-grid.

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From what I heard, it was simply cheaper to be off-grid, vs. having a grid connection installed along that very long driveway.

It's a combination of solar and wind. The solar panels are mounted on a polar tracker, a DIY job that started out from a C-band satellite dish mount I believe. It certainly looks solid enough to withstand anything nature can throw at it.

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Then there's a very large battery bank.

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The wind turbine is a Whisper 200. It could have been mounted on a tower that is just a bit higher, now it has to do its work in the turbulence of the tree tops. Then again, maybe there's plenty of power with the current setup and the extra output is just not needed.

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A full Xantrex panel turns solar and wind into house power.

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A little slice of heaven at water's edge.

Next stop was the most interesting for me. A beautifully executed off-grid house belonging to Gwen and Les...

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

Gwen and Les live in a brand-new house that is off-grid. In fact, there is not even a generator, just solar PV, solar hot water, and wind. This house was designed from the ground up to be off-grid, with meticulous attention to detail. Even the grass around the house is a special species that is slow and low growing, and drought resistant (called Eco-Lawn (http://www.wildflowerfarm.ca/)). This house was featured in a CBC television program not long ago.

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By the looks of the windows and their placement there should be a good amount of passive solar heating going on in winter as well. Notice how the solar panels and solar water tubes form an awning that shades the windows in summer, keeping day-time heat gain low. The floor inside the house is a concrete slab, making a large thermal mass.

The roof of this house is special too. Though fairly common in Europe it is a rarity over here to see a living roof. It has soil and plants on it (Sedum in this case). The roof had been planted recently, eventually it will be completely green (or red in this case, because of the type of Sedum planted).

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The roof will also provide drinking water for the house, by storing rain water run-off in a cistern (currently there is too much sediment in the water because of the new roof, but that is expected to get better soon). This was done after finding out that the well water in the area is not potable due to its sulfur content.

Hot water is provided by a large bank of evacuated tubes (These are Schott (http://www.schott.com/solarthermal/german/products/collector/index.html) tubes, from Germany).

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On the roof is a 1.3kW Lakota wind turbine. While technically "on" the house, it's not mounted directly against the house wall. Instead it is mounted on a steel framework that is placed about a meter away from the house, with attachments running from it to the house. This gives some isolation from noise and vibration. Here too, quite a bit of though had gone into its placement; The turbine is mounted on a tilt-up tower that lowers it to the roof terrasse for maintenance. Les commented he doesn't mind the sound coming from the wind turbine, it just signaled to him it was making energy!

Before readers get the wrong idea I should note that mounting a wind turbine on one's roof, even a small one, is very much frowned upon by wind professionals. That also goes for the wind turbines for which their manufacturer claims they are suitable for roof mounting. Those manufacturers are seen as out for a quick buck, and more interested in marketing than the quality of their product or welfare of their customers. Despite manufacturer's claims, all wind turbines produce a certain amount of noise and vibration, and mounting them on a house will directly conduct it into the living space. Besides that, the wind flow around a house is turbulent and not very suitable for producing wind energy (a vertical-axis turbine doesn't do any better with turbulent air either, in case you were thinking about that). The constantly changing wind intensity and direction also makes short work of bearings, causing premature wear and failure. Mounting a windmill in turbulent air is the same as putting solar panels in the shade. To get into 'clean' air, the 'fuel', a turbine would have to be mounted at least 30 feet above any obstacle in a 300 feet radius, and even those numbers are the bare minimum. In short, while a wind turbine may be working out very well in this particular case, please think twice about duplicating it.

Inside there's a custom-made masonry stove. Common in Germany, Austria and Switzerland they are uncommon (and expensive to make!) on this side of the pond. A masonry stove is made of stone, for large thermal mass, and has a chimney that winds back and forth, extracting more heat that way before the gases are vented. They have a relatively small firebox, where a small fire heats up the large stone mass and keeps it warm for many hours. This stove was special, in that it has a window, like a fireplace. I've seen many masonry stoves, but one with a window is a first for me.

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By the way, notice those thick walls next to the stove? Those are straw-bale walls. Straw-bale combines excellent thermal insulation with good thermal mass and sound dampening. From what I saw it looks like the south wall is regular stick-frame, while the north wall (where you need the most insulation) is straw-bale.

In the bedroom is the panel, it uses a Xantrex inverter, with the Lakota controller to the right, and a remarkably small battery bank next to it. Keep in mind that there is no fossil fuel generator to recharge batteries in a pinch. All the electrical energy has to be provided by sun and wind.

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What an absolutely gorgeous house! Very well designed and built, incorporating just about all current best practises in renewable energy and sustainable living. beautiful as well as practical!

On with the tour, to Ralph's house...

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

I'll admit I'm a bit jealous of Ralph's place. He has 175 acres, on a ridge, lots of forest, lots of space. Then there's this huge workshop for all those projects. Did I mention the giant green John Deere tractor? :eek:

The house is completely off-grid, using a combination of solar and wind for electricity, and solar for hot water. There is a propane on-demand Takagi water heater for additional water heating.

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Lucky for us the previously mentioned mutant deer flies were absent that day. My hat-less head did not loose what little beauty that's left. I just think Ralph was trying to scare us away. But why hide such a gorgeous place?!:confused:

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Wind power is provide by a Whisper 200. There must be some deal going on at Prince Edward County with so many Whispers around... This one is mounted a great distant from the house, on top of a little bit of a hill, with good clearance in all directions. I am sure this turbine is doing a good job making energy.

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Just in case the sun and wind stay away too long, there is Ralph's giant diesel generator. It would not be out of place in the machine room of a good sized vessel. Yeah, that's Ralph next to it.

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Descending into the basement is where the balance-of-systems is found. Xantrex dominates, next to a battery bank suitable to run a submarine. In case this wasn't clear yet, Ralph does not believe in half-measures.

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More...

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

We thankfully cooled off a bit in Ralph's basement, pretending to discuss the finer points of RE.

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After narrowly avoiding heat-stroke we hit the road again...

The final stop on the tour was a trip to Jerry Ball's place. Jerry is quite a character. He used to run a machine shop, and though retired now he still builds 'stuff'. Lucky for us that includes some very fancy wind turbines. Here's a shot of his 'hobby' shop next to his house (Yeah, imagine what the other shop looks like!). :eek:

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To get an idea of what Jerry makes, here is a shot of him and a pitch-controlled wind turbine with active yaw (minus the blades). I believe this is a 10kW turbine. To the right in the picture is Mark.

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The little paddle-wheel in the back of the turbine is what makes the turbine yaw into the wind without a tail vane. Whenever it has an angle to the wind the paddles turn, cranking the head back into the wind, through a 200:1 reduction with that chain at the bottom.

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On the lighter side, here is another Jerry creation. All those red things are reflectors, and there are a few lights shining on it from a tree. According to Jerry it's quite spectacular when it is turning at night!

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On we went, back to Mario's...

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

For some reason I don't have many pictures of Mario's RE setup. He has a number of PV panels mounted on a solar tracker, and two wind turbines (Yes, both Whisper 200's). Here's a somewhat artistic picture of it, another way of saying it didn't quite come out the way I intended it to.

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From there we proceeded to dinner at a little local restaurant. Good food! A worthy conclusion of the First Annual International Member RE Tour. It would be great if we can do something similar every year!

I would like to thank first of all Mario and his wife for graciously hosting us. Thank you very much! Also a big Thank You to all those that opened their houses for us to take a look at them. Finally, thanks to everyone that came and made it a memorable day!

It was great to meet a few of you in person!
Keep posting...

-RoB-

[Joe Blake]

I'm a greenie - with jealousy.

Thanks for the excellent report and piccies.

Joe

[Rob Beckers]

Yeah, Joe, where were you?
I was certain you'd join us. Surely you have built some contraption to take you over the big pond... :D

-RoB-

[Joe Blake]

I'm never quite sure whether to turn left BEFORE or AFTER Cape Horn. I usually get it wrong and wind up ... well, somewhere.

Joe

[Wilco Vercoelen]

I looks like it was big fun. I didn't see it posted, si I have to watch for next years meeting. Great job guys!