Home Power Powers Home Power Richard Perez We've been publishing data for years now about renewable energy use in small systems. In almost every case the system was residential- a home. Many renewable energy systems also power businesses beyond the reach of the commercial electric grid. The electrical system that powers this magazine is a good example. These systems offer back- country business users the ability to make a living in their remote homes. No commuting time & expense, fixed power cost, and far cleaner and more reliable power than can be purchased from the commercial electric grid are all advantages that renewable energy offers the rural business. Can a Business exist without the Power Company? You bet it can. Home Power Magazine is living proof. In our case, the nearest grid electricity is over eight miles away. Our choices here were few: 1) pay the Power Co. over $300,000 to run in the lines, 2) commute at least 50 miles daily (16 miles of which is over some of the nastiest, muddiest, stickiest, roughest, truck-killing roads anywhere), OR 3) make our own power. We opted for the freedom and the business edge that home-made electricity gave us. We could work in our home, which was already paid for, and also avoid the high cost of commuting. Both rent and transportation are very real expenses for any backwoods business. A byproduct of working at home is time- time saved by not commuting, time saved in vehicle maintenance, and time saved because what was needed at the moment wasn't somewhere else. Home Power Magazine is information. We deal with ideas, words, pictures and drawings, in short, information. The tools of our trade are computers. We correspond with many other backwoods businesses that produce a fantastic variety of products and services. We know personally of renewable energy powered businesses that make wood products (everything from furniture to complete houses), run resorts in remote places, make audio/video equipment, build hydroelectric or wind turbines, manufacture electronic controls/instruments, run direct mail sales, do blacksmithing, provide investment counselling, write/sell computer programs, raise herbs, make soaps, manufacture toys, and many artists, handicrafters & writers. The point is that American small business is thriving in the back country, and doing so without the pollution and expense of commercial electricity. The renewable energy systems powering these backwoods businesses have one major advantage- they put bread on the table and beans in the pot! We moved to the Oregon outback in 1970 and immediately went into economic catharsis. All our skills were city skills. Karen took odd jobs punching cows for the neighboring ranchers (she loves horses) and worked short order cookin' at the local bistro. I made/sold fancy knives, worked pimping electrons for the neighborhood CBS network television station and planted trees. We grew as garden and got by as best we could. Over the years, we learned to adapt our skills and were able to survive without leaving our beloved mountains. Our neighbors saw what we were doing for electricity, and before we knew it we were in business providing power systems for others. Our turnkey renewable energy business, Electron Connection, and Home Power Magazine now keep us in grits. We don't have to leave the mountains to join in the feeding frenzy of corporate weaseldom. Many folks making the transition to the back-country have one major question- where do you find a job? Well, this article seeks to encourage us all to follow our noses, look deep within ourselves, find out what we REALLY want to do, then DO IT! The miles of back country between ourselves and the rest of America are not an insurmountable barrier to creating our livelihoods in beautiful and natural places. Running one's own business from a remote location offers many advantages and three common problems: 1) no electricity, 2) no communications, and 3) difficult transportation. This article offers solutions to no power and no telephone, and sadly, no real solution for the difficulties of backwoods transport. Electric Tools in the Outback Our system uses computers as the primary tools. Other businesses will use other tools. And chances are that these tools will require electrical power. The differences between systems are only those of proportion, the basic approach to producing, storing and using the electrical power is the same. A wood working business will rely heavily on electric motors, and would require more energy hardware to supply the power. An electronics business would use smaller amounts of power for items like instruments, soldering irons, etc. and require less energy hardware. Using computers to illustrate what is possible in a remote business is very representative. The computer is the greatest work amplifier ever created by man. Micro computers give any small business the edge it needs to gracefully survive. In fact, it was our need to computerize that finally led us to buy our first inverter. Using Computers & Peripherals in Home Power Systems Computer equipment is usually a very moderate electrical consumer. For example, all the equipment we use (and there's a pile of it) consumes less electricity than the average American deep freezer. Computer use is most of the work that we do here at Home Power (that and screwing PV onto roofs). We use our computers for everything:, our subscriber's databases, word processing articles/letters, illustration, keeping the books, running mathematical electronic circuit simulations, specifying PV energy systems, keeping track of inventory, printing the mailing label on every copy of HP, composing/printing the page layout masters for an issue of HP, and myriad other information type tasks. INSERT TWO PHOTOS HERE To Invert or not to Invert? We have direct experience with many brands/types of computer gear, almost all powered via inverter. The sidebar gives specific data on computers that are known performers on the inverters used in renewable energy systems. Bottom line is that computer power supplies are much more rugged and carefully designed than the average piece of consumer electronics- a VCR for example. As such, computer hardware generally has no problems digesting the modified sine wave power produced by inverters. We considered modification of our equipment to direct 12 VDC operation, but this idea was too costly and offered many pitfalls in future compatibility and utility. The main problem area in 12 VDC conversion is the computer's display. In the case of our Mac SE, the display is a built-in Cathode Ray Tube (a CRT, just like the one in a TV). CRTs require high voltages (anywhere from 0.6kV. to >25kV.) for operation. A 12 Volt TV set contains a micro inverter which makes the required high voltages for the picture tube. Construction of such a micro inverter to retrofit the Mac SE is simply not practical. Some computers use external displays, and in many cases, a regular TV set. The digital electronics used in computers already run on low voltage DC and are easily adapted to 12 VDC operation. The same is true of most floppy and hard disk drives, and many printers. The downside of 12 Volt conversion is interconnection and incompatibly between the computer and peripherals like printers, modems, scanners & hard drives. While the peripheral or the computer may function fine individually on 12 Volts, they may not function together. We also considered a variety of "portable" computer hardware. In most cases, the portable equipment offers less computing power/utility at a higher price. The most cost effective and versatile path for computer application in home power systems is to use an inverter. This allows wide compatibility with all hardware, especially third-party peripherals. INSERT SIDEBAR Home Power's Computers The computer equipment we use is detailed in the chart below. This chart shows the average daily power consumption of each piece of computer gear. We are using Macintoshª computer equipment made by Apple¨. We're into desktop publishing and this equipment runs the hottest software currently available for our particular needs. Total power consumption of all this computer hardware is about 2,000 Watt-hours daily. The computers listed here run an average of ten hours daily, six days a week. The major power consumer is the large "TwoPage" display for the Mac II. This Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) monitor is Black & White with a diagonal measurement of 21 inches. According to Apple it consumes 100 watts maximum. Our instrumentation shows the monitor consuming slightly less than 80 watts (measured as 12VDC input watts into the inverter by a Fluke 87 DMM & 0.001½ shunt). Power consumption of CRT displays is directly proportional to the display's size. The bigger the picture tube, the more power it uses. We thought long and hard before getting the big screen. We balanced display cost, power consumption, and utility. Since we do alot of desktop publishing, the large display has really increased the effective speed and utility of the Big Mac. In our case, the large display is worth its additional power consumption and cost. The Mac IIcx contains an internal 80 MegaByte (MB) hard disk drive and 8 MB of Random Access Memory (RAM- electronic memory). This is our main machine and has no trouble digesting Home Power's over 20,000 record (>2.8MB) database or producing the page layouts of this magazine (>1.8MB). The Mac SE contains a 20 MB hard disk and 2.5 MB of RAM. The SE is primary used for editing/writing articles, doing illustrations, and subscriber database entry. The additional 20MB outboard hard drive is used for quickly backing up critical files from the Mac IIcx, and as a "traveling" disk. The ImageWriter I, a dot-matrix, impact printer is the stock Apple model we purchased with our original Mac computer in 1984. This printer is rugged beyond belief. In the last six years we have run over 36,000 pages and well over 100,000 mailing labels through the ImageWriter I. We've religiously performed the required printer's maintenance and it still trucks on. The Hewlett-Packard DeskWriterª is the high resolution printer (300 dpi, inkjet) we use to produce the masters for Home Power Magazine. Theses masters are then used to make lithographic plates for an enormous web press that prints the thousands of Home Power issues. The Hewlett-Packard DeskWriter is another amazing piece of computer hardware. It operates twice as fast as the ImageWriters, and at over three times the resolution, AND at about one quarter the power consumption. This printer (or its IBM compatible models) is a natural for renewable energy systems. It functions happily on inverters-- at 1/4 the cost (both initial and operating) and 1/30 the power consumption of a laser printer. We've run over 2,000 pages through the DeskWriter in the last six months- no problems. The Hayes 1200 SmartModemª is powered via a 120 vac "wall cube" power supply and keeps our Macs in touch with other computers. The lighting is marked with a different pattern on the graph because it is powered by 12 VDC directly from the battery and not via the inverter as is all the computer gear and tools. This light (made by Solar Retrofit Consortium in New York City) is a single 40 Watt fluorescent that lights our entire work area. It spends five hours operating every day and consumes 29 Watts of DC input (2.3 Amperes at 12.3VDC). The shop tools on the graph are soldering irons, an electric drill, and a variety of digital multimeters, pulse generators, and an oscilloscope. And we are not done yet. In our future lies a FAX machine, a photocopier, and a digital scanner to capture graphics for our Macs. Whatever the business type, be sure to leave room in the system for growth- keep both the business hardware and the power system open-ended. INSERT CONSUMPTION CHART Start Small, Work Hard, & Grow Strong! The computer equipment we now use reflects our extensive and long-term involvement with information. When we started Home Power, we published and mailed our first five issues (HP#1 through HP#5) on a single, 0.5 MB RAM, NO hard drive at all, Macintosh we bought in 1984. It was time consuming, breaking down the various files until they would fit on the small capacity floppy disks (0.4 MB). I could only layout four pages of the issue's master at a time. We had to breakdown our subscriber's database into tiny bite sized chunks (California alone occupied three disks). Now the Big Mac handles the page layouts for an entire 64 page issue in a single file, and our subscriber's database is also used as a single, gigantic file. The point is: you don't need a high powered (and expensive) computer system to start and/or run your home business. But, regardless of your business, you do need a computer of some sort, without it you are wasting time. As time passes and your business grows, there will be money for a faster and more extensive computer system. Choose a system than grows with you- don't get trapped into dead-end, close- out, hardware. Choose your computers using their software as prime criteria. The computer hardware available now is about ten years ahead of the software needed to effectively use that hardware. Look for the software that most suits your needs, and then buy the hardware that best runs that particular software. Our picks for some effective software are: Microsoft Excel Version 2.2 (the best spreadsheet and charting program ever), Ready, Set, Go! Version 4.5 (fast and intuitive page layout), SuperPaint Version 2.0 (great for both bit mapped and object graphics). Selecting computer software and hardware is difficult enough for any business. Add the additional requirements of operation from a battery based, inverter powered system and you have a real puzzle. The information here will help with general decisions. If you have more specific questions, call me, Richard Perez, at 916-475-3179, or call our resident computer pinhead, Stan Krute at 916-475-3428. We stand ready to do what we can. What powers all these high-tech computers? Sunshine powers all the computer hardware we use to make Home Power Magazine. We use eight Kyocera 48 Watt photovoltaic modules to produce the electrical power. This power is regulated by a Heliotrope CC60 controller, and fed to a pack of four Trojan L-16W batteries for storage. The power is converted from 12 VDC into 120 vac by a Heliotrope PSTT, 2.3kW. inverter. The Power Sources The eight Kyocera PV panels produce slightly more than 2,000 Watt-hours on our average sunny day. According to the Thomson & Howe recording Ampere-hour meter we have measuring this array, we average about 160 Ampere- hours daily. This means that as long as the sun shines daily, we produce as much power as we consume (actually about 5% more than we consume). Under full sun, the array produces 360 Watts (Å24 Amperes at 15 VDC). The highest amperage peak we've ever seen from this array is 34 Amperes on a very cold, clear Winter day with deep snow everywhere. The array is ground mounted and connected to the charge controller via 85 feet of 00 aluminum cable. We are testing this aluminum cable as an experiment. Since soldering to aluminum is not possible, all connections must be made mechanically. I am highly suspicious about the longevity of mechanical connections involving aluminum which is easily oxidized. We took all the textbook steps to insure a good connection: thoroughly cleaning the wire to make it bright and shiny, applying the antioxidizing compound (No-Ox, in this case) and using the special aluminum connectors which we torqued to the max. We'll let you know how this experiment turns out by this Summer, after the connections age a while. We provided a water tight box at the array for the mechanical connection between the 10 gauge copper wire used on the PVs and the 00 aluminum cable delivering the current to the controller. The PV controller is the CC60 model made by Heliotrope. It features user adjustable voltage limit, which we have set to 15.2 VDC. Since our system is constantly in use, this high voltage setpoint is fine. If we were to ever be able to take a vacation, then I would set the CC60 at about 14.3 VDC to prevent overcharging the batteries. The CC60 is capable is handling 60 Amperes, so we've plenty of room to expand the array without replacing the controller. The CC60 doesn't use electromechanical devices like relays, but instead uses power field effect transistors (FETs) as switches. The exclusive use of semiconductors rather than relays greatly increases the reliability of the controller. The Heliotrope CC60 PV controller was written up as "Things that Work!" in Home Power #8, page 31. When it is cloudy for more than three days in a row, we fall back on our home-made Mark VI engine/generator. This powerplant uses a single cylinder Honda 5 hp. gasoline engine driving a 100 Ampere Chrysler automotive alternator. We're using one of the first prototypes of the Mark VI regulator , built in 1981, as the control. For a complete description of this engine/generator, with schematic for the Mark VI control, please see Home Power #2, page 23. We wind up using our Mark VI system about 400 hours a year. Almost all of this generator operating time is during the Winter. During the Summer, we go for four or five months without running the generator at all. The Honda engine has been in service since 1984 accumulating over 10,000 hours, mostly before we installed the larger PV array in 1988. Power Conversion The Heliotrope PSTT inverter converts the PV produced, battery stored, DC power into 120 vac for all the computer equipment and other tools. We choose the Heliotrope inverter because of its two transformer design. After testing many inverters, we found that the Heliotrope powered inductive loads (like computers and electric motors) very well. This inverter will produce 2,300 watts, with surge power over 6,000 watts. It functions so well that it has totally replaced our 120 vac engine/generator, we haven't started it once in the last 18 months. We use the Heliotrope inverter for everything: computers, printers, bench grinder, drills, a wormdrive Skil saw, and all our nonbusiness appliances (like the coffee grinder and microwave). For a complete review of the Heliotrope inverter see Home Power #3, page 29. The inverter we use is large (Heliotrope also makes bigger models that produce 5kW., 7.5kW. and 10kW.). In fact, a smaller inverter would run all our computer gear. For example, the Trace 612, with 600 watts output, would be able suitable for powering up a computer system like ours. We, however, also run large motors in our bench grinder, vacuum cleaner, and saws from the PV produced power. We like being able to use PV power for the big jobs and hence, a big inverter. Power Storage We use a venerable pack of four Trojan L-16W batteries. Each battery contains three lead-acid cells, in series, each with a capacity of 350 Ampere-hours. Our battery pack is configured as 700 Ampere-hours at 12 VDC. These batteries have been in service since 1980 and have seen many deep cycles during the years before we could afford a substantial PV array. Our battery now stores enough power to run our system for about 3.5 days of continuously cloudy weather. We are planning on replacing these aged lead-acid cells with a pocket-plate, NiCad pack within the next year. We will size this nicad pack at about 1,200 Ampere-hours, giving us the ability to store seven days worth of power. Since we rarely see more than five cloudy days in a row, this will store more PV produced power and reduce our engine/generator operation. Our battery pack is equipped with two extras that should really be standard equipment on any system. The first is the Hydrocap battery caps. Hydrocaps take the hydrogen and oxygen gas produced by the cells under charge and recombine these gasses into pure water which is returned to the cell. Hydrocaps decrease the water consumption of our cells by over six times and keep the cells cleaner (see HP#11, page 37). The second accessory is the Cruising Equipment digital Ampere-hour meter. This meter is a "gas gauge" for all types of batteries and is the prime instrument we use to operate our system. This Ampere-hour meter is detailed in a "Things that Work!" article in this issue, see page XXXXXXXXXX. Power System Cost Our entire power system can be bought for less money than a good used car (and it's certainly much cheaper to run). Over the years, we've invested slightly more than $7,000 in power system hardware. We done all the installation and fabrication ourselves. Our bottom line power cost is around $1.20 per kiloWatt-hour, some 20 times what the local electrical grid charges. But then the grid wants over $300,000 to plug us in. In our experience, PV based, renewable energy systems cost less than 1/2 mile of commercial power line installation, and have no or miniscule monthly bills. Since we are digital nerds, the advantages of uninterruptable and very stable power are icing on our computerized cake. The advantage of waking in the morning, drinking coffee while watching 14,360 foot Mount Shasta "smoke its pipe", and then go to work without having to deal with either the roads or the truck, is utterly priceless. INSERT COST TABLE AND PIE Home Power's RadioTelephone System Our telephone is our business's lifeline. We do the vast majority of our business via telephone. The nearest telephone landline is over six miles away. Over the years we've used a number of communication stop gaps like, CB radio, RCC simplex radiotelephone, and IMTS duplex radiotelephone from the Phone Company. All the radiotelephone services came with severe warts attached. The simplex RCC service was unsuitable for business purposes because our customers couldn't understand that only one of us could talk at a time (simplex). At about a buck a minute (for both incoming and outgoing calls, not including long-distance, monthly charges, local message units, and federal surtaxes), the IMTS phone co. service was soooo expensive that we couldn't afford to do business via phone. It's easy to run up over $800 monthly bills on IMTS with very minimal usage. We finally settled upon buying and running our own radiotelephone (R/T) system. Our system works as follows. The phone company wired us up as a business line at our associate's, Stan Krute's, house. Here we are billed by the phone company as any other business telephone. At Stan's place, Carlson Communications installed one end of our VHF, R/T system. This end rebroadcasts the telephone signal to us, located on Agate Flat some six miles away (and with two large hills in the way- no line of sight here). The "base" end located at Stan's place is an electrical parasite by his 3,000+ Watt-hour per day PV system. Stan's mega- system uses 12 Kyocera 48 Watt PV modules and 8 Trojan L-16Ws to store the power. Stan's power system doesn't even notice the some 200 Watt-hours of electricity that our R/T system consumes daily. The radiotelephone system uses two Uniden ARH 351 commercial VHF repeaters, especially modified by Carlson Communications for telephone service. At Agate Flat, we have the second Uniden ARH351, connected to a four element beam antenna up about 36 feet on a steel antenna mast. This "remote" end of the R/T system is powered by a single Kyocera 59 Watt PV module and a battery of 10 Edison ED-160 nicad cells. The battery contains over ten days of storage and the single PV panel produces about 70 Watt-hours a day more than the R/T consumes. Net result is a stand alone PV system powering the remote end of the R/T system. We isolated the R/T on its own separate electrical power system because communications is very important to us. We wanted to be sure of power for the phone regardless of the state-of- charge of the main system's batteries. The remote end of the R/T system provides power for the telephones. This system will run virtually any standard telephone equipment: speakerphones, cordless phones, demon dialers, answering machines, mickey mouse phones, computer modems and FAX machines. We have run 2400 BAUD modem traffic on the R/T system with NO errors and NO sending of any block of information twice. Cost of the radiotelephone hardware was just about $6,000 including both modified Uniden R/T units, two telephones, masts, feedlines and antennas. Since we use Stan's power at the base end, we spent nothing for power at the hardline end. At Agate Flat, the stand alone PV power system for the R/T, nicads and PV panel, cost $860. We want to thank Jim Carlson and Jim Longnecker at Carlson Communications for solving our phone problems. I recommend that anyone considering a radiotelephone consult someone in the business. The technology is changing very rapidly, as is the vast quantity of redtape required by the FCC to operate a R/T system. If the system is done right, then you'll have as trouble free communications. Our phone system allows us to run our business many miles from the regular telephone lines. We consider it a bargain. Compared with the phone company's IMTS bills, it completely paid for itself in less than a year. Some suggestions for Backwoods Business operationÉ We've been operating Electron Connection since 1982. In 1987, we started Home Power Magazine. When we started out, I visited the Small Business Administration folks. They told me that we need about $200,000 startup capital to begin business. Obviously they were wrong, since we started out with less than $6,000 in 1982 and are still alive and growing. Here are a few backwoods business lessons we've learned over the years. ¥ Use your heart for guidance. If you do what you know is right, then you will prosper. ¥ Create a product or service that you yourself would be proud to use. ¥ Plan on working at least 70 hours a week, every week. ¥ Plan on eating many beans in the beginning. ¥ Don't call it quits for at least two years. Anything worth having takes time. ¥ Don't listen to business consultants/experts. If they knew what they were talking about then they would doing it. ¥ Get a computer and learn how to use it for your business. It's your best business buddy. ¥ Keep overhead expenses to a bare minimum. It's those monthly bills that eat a small business alive. We get by with a little help for our friendsÉ Home Power has been the loving work of many. Friends, relatives, neighbors, and folks we'd never even met have all contributed their energies to make this magazine work. We are indebted to all of you. If we can help any of you starting your own backwoods businesses, we stand ready to do whatever we can.