Heat with solar/wind power?

[Diamon_Girl]

Ok, let's just say hypothetically I was able to convert my house to solar and or wind power and no longer had to use electric from the grid, could I also heat my home this way? Or would I have to rely on natural gas or propane for heat? I live in Michigan and brrrrr, it gets mighty cold!
I'm going to assume unless you are Rockefeller you couldn't afford enough solar panels to run an electric furnace, if they have such a beast. Wood heat won't really work under my current circumstances, at least not as far as I know.
Really, I'm just curious to see what ideas others have!
Hope I don't sound stupid, lol...
DG

[kawalekm]

I think that using a generator to supply electrical heat is obsurd! *Especially in a climate where a single mistake could mean broken pipes and extensive water damage. *The least cost way to heat the house would be burning a primary fuel like wood, heating oil, or propane. *Since wood is not a good choice for DG and heating oil is in shorter supply than gas, I think propane is the most logical choice. *You can have a 250 gallon tank installed outside the house and have a propane fired furnace inside. *You have more than one option for propane heat. *You can go with totally non-electrical operation that lights with a pilot light, or you can get a central furnace that needs some electrical power to run the fan and ignite the gas. *But, that is a relatively small load that an alternative system might handle.

What about other energy users inside the home like hot water and cooking. *Is that all electric right now? *Electricity is usually the most expensive fuel, so switching your other appliances to gas also might help save additional money. *

Another thought is to have sources of spot heat where you can raise the temperature of a single room you are occupying. *You could get a propane fired heater that runs off a 5 gallon tank. *They sell for about 50$ in hunting/fishing catalogs. *You could stick the tank under a table, cover it with a tablecloth (Uh, but not the burner), and no-one would know it was there. *There's also kerosene heaters like Corona. *If you can buy kerosene cheap at the pump, that is also a viable source of spot heat.

Diamon Girl, why won't wood heat work for you? *Are you forbidden from installing a chimney through the roof? *Is no firewood availble?*What's the rational for dismissing wood? *I am strongly in favor of wood myself because it is the one fuel I can guarranty I can produce myself.
Michael

[wy0mn]

Passive solar & solar collectors- forget about using PV & wind to supply electricity to heating elements. Wood heat with these would probably handle most circumstances.

http://www.dulley.com/docs/f940.htm

http://store.altenergystore.com/Solar-Air-Heating/Your-Solar-Home-Solarsheat-Products/Solarsheat-Recirculating-Air-Heating-Sys/Solarsheat1500G-Pak-w-1500GS-Mount-Duct/p3913/

Some folks use a water/gravel reservoir to store heat to be released back into the home. A google will give loads of results.

Insulate, insulate, insulate, as a previous poster stated.

[Diamon_Girl]

Sorry, I dorked out and wasn't very clear. I'm not off the grid yet, still in the city and hooked up to natural gas. We have a small house and are toying with the idea of slowing going solar and maybe wind (not sure what the guberment regulations are...). We were thinking how cool it would be to be free of our gas and electric company, especially if TSHTF and what would our options be, if any, to heat our home other than natural gas and propane.
We have no problems with wood, we plan to use it almost exclusively if we can once off the grid, but it doesn't seem very feasible at this point.
Mostly, I'm just trying to get ideas and figured if anyone could give them to me, it'd be the people here! :D
Gas prices just keep going up and up and up, and right now with oil being around $100 a barrel what's going to happen when it's $250 a barrel? I don't think it's out of the question and they experts are calling for it! I know this may sound paranoid, but I see a day in the not so far future when the difference between the haves and the have nots may be things like gas and heat.

[SolarGary]

Hi,
Solar heating collectors (ones that heat air or water directly from the suns heat) are about 10 times more cost effective than solar PV for heating. If you rated them the same way PV panels are rated, they are about 50 cents per peak watt vs $5 per peak watt for PV.

If you are handy, solar air heating panels can be built for a materials cost of about 1/10th of the commercial heating panels -- making them about 100 times more cost effective than solar PV for heating. They are dead simple to make -- basically a black painted absorber inside a glazed box that you blow air through.

This is the one I use:
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/SpaceHeating/SolarShed/solarshed.htm
It has a one year payback in saved propane in our climate.
There are a bunch more in the solar heating section of the same website.

Gary

[Catalpa]

I've been reading through a lot of posts here, and checking out links provided...I'm really getting confused. I'd like to go off-grid when I build my new house, though from everything I'm reading, it may be prohibitively expensive to do so.

At first I was thinking a geothermal heat pump system, with solar to provide electrical for the pump would be a good way to go; but then some folks say the pump would pull way too much power, while other folks say that the pump doesn't pull much at all.

Then some say using propane to heat the house is a good way, since doing so by solar would cost too much, but propane is what I'm trying to get away from!

I have already gone through almost $2,000 in propane this season, and I didn't even turn my furnace on until Novemeber 1st. And when the furnace runs, my electric bill also jumps (to over $100/month) due to the induction fan and circulating fan on the furnace. So I don't see this as a small load at all - seems like a single pump for geothermal would use a lot less power.

I keep thinking there has to be a way to free myself from the propane man altogether - and I'm really thinking ahead to when I retire. I can't afford him now, let alone when I'm on a fixed income.

Does it make sense to believe there has to be a way to build a home in Michigan than can be energy efficient, relying on solar power, so that I don't have these crippling utility bills my whole life? Not to mention the fact that it seems I lose power every time the wind blows - and my area gets a lot of 45+mph wind events.

I'm willing to give up my clothes dryer, I hardly use it anyways. I plan on a soapstone wood stove in the great room for supplemental heat, and incorporating passive solar into my home plan. But what about the big loads - washer, refrigerator, dishwasher, stove, well pump, and those other things I use all the time, comptuer, tv, breadmaker, etc.?

Is my dream of having everything electric, and then providing the majority, if not all of that electric by solar, completely unrealistic?

Oooh, this is frustrating!

Cat

[jott]

No I don’t think your ideas are completely unrealistic. The problem is most people don’t understand how much energy is in the fossil fuels they use. Even using electricity, if you had to produce it using a hand crank generator very few people could run a 60W light bulb for more then a short time. People have come to expect things to work with just the flick of a switch. If you want to use the same amount of energy as you use when you use fossil fuels then yes solar will be very expensive.

If you cut back and pay up front for a more efficient house then you could do it. Wanting to heat with electric dose make it much harder but is still doable. I would look at solar heat collectors instead of PVs. Wood could be a good back up. A heat pump could be used for over night or when you are out of town but I don’t know if I would want to put that load on a battery because of battery cost and life.

I think the first step is to make your place as efficient as possible. Once you know things like how many BTU/hr you need to keep temps nice, and have lights were you want them, then you can start looking at how much it cost to do it.

[wy0mn]

If you get that kind of wind and your not 'zoned' or otherwise prohibited, I'd use a hybrid system for electric.
The passive heat panels are indeed easy to make, and if they are verticle and tall enough they'll work without a blower. Hot air rises.
I've made passive indoor 'shutters' for exposed windows. Darker, but warmer, and monkey simple. Doesn't require super insulation either since any leakage is inside the house anyway, BUT proper sealing/insulation would allow for a higher heat gain & better efficiency.
Seems I read somewhere about a solar expo in MI this spring... anyone remember such a beast?

[AlchemyAcres]

For an existing house I'd look to 'passive' thermosiphon heating collectors as already mentioned in conjunction with a solar closet as a thermal storage unit.....an extra room or basement could easily be converted to the solar closet.

I favor the collector designed by William Larkin...it's totally passive...no moving parts and no reverse siphoning at night.

http://www.geocities.com/davidmdelaney/larkin/larkin-tap-1.html

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT4519383

DeSoto Solar uses this design for their collectors.

http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/SC_Madison/

Here's a good link describing Solar Closets........

http://www.ece.villanova.edu/~nick/solar/solar.html

Assuming you have a good site for wind generation of electric. There will be times, especially this time of year (the windy season), when you'll likely be generating more electric than needed.....the excess power can be diverted to a DC heater or water heating element used to generate heat and stored in the solar closet as well...

Some stuff to think about anyway...... ;)

~ Martin :)

[Catalpa]

I'm still researching and asking questions.... :D

There is a large windfarm that was just built about 15 miles north of my land. My building site is on a hill, so I'm sure the potential is good for using a windmill of some kind.

The long axis of the house will face south, so I'm thinking along the lines of lots of windows on that side, with a tile or concrete floor for thermal mass, and a heating system that is some sort of hybrid with a geothermal heat pump tied together with a solar water heater like the one built by Gary Reysa that I saw in one of the links posted here.

I went to the library, but they had nothing, :P so I bit the bullet and went to Amazon last night. I ordered: "Power with Nature Second Edition: Alternative Energy Solutions for Homeowners Updated"

"The Renewable Energy Handbook: A Guide to Rural Energy Independence, Off-grid And Sustainable Living"
and
Natural Home Heating: The Complete Guide to Renewable Energy Options".

Now I can't wait until they come and I can do more reading!

I'm beginning to realize I'll have to break things down into two systems: one to make hot water for heating the house, showers, etc., and a second system to generate electricity. I still don't know if a battery bank or going grid tied would be better. I do know that a local fellow had to go to court and sue Detroit Edison to force them to allow a grid-tied system when he put in a windmill. Not sure I'll ever have the money to do battle like that. Has anyone else run into that kind of problem?

Thanks for the links, Martin. Some of that stuff is way over my head, but I'll be studying on it! :)

Cat

[machinemaker]

Catalpa,
I too have problems getting books from the local library, but I do use the "prospector" interlibrary loan system. That way I can get books from anywhere in the region and most universities. I read Dan Chiras' book on pasive solar design and found it very helpful. It talks about the ratios of south facing windows, thermal mass in floor, walls and with different materials and both heating and cooling. I will probably buy the book, but did the interlibrary loan first for a test drive. I think that your doing the best thing by reading and doing your homework. I don't know how many times I've changed or wanted to change things because I got in a hurry. It is also nice to do my library searchs on line at our local county library system web site.
kent

[Catalpa]

My books came today!!! Now I've got lots of interesting reading to do, and hopefully I'll learn something.

I looked for a solar expo somewhere in the state for this spring; if there is one, they're keeping it secret. The only thing I found was an old web page about last year's first annual alternative energy fair; somehow I missed that, and I haven't heard of one for this year. :-/

But now to the books! :D

[ryanmercer]

Well you could do a lot to reduce heating need just by the way you construct your house... keep in mind that the ancient Romans were heating and cooling buildings to a certain extent without burning fuel or having electricity.

If you insulate extremely well, put solar reflectors outside of your windows (of course make sure you caulk those windows good) reflecting more light into the windows, and take advantage of the soil's heat... you could probably get by with wood burning, especially if you are only heating the room(s) you spend the most of your time in.

[Catalpa]

Yeah, Ryan, I'm making plans along that line. Small, open floor plan, wood stove with a masonry wall that'll act as a heat sink, lots of insulation, etc., but I can't rely on just the wood heat since I'm gone all day at work. But I'm going to do everything I can to reduce the utilities the house will need by designing it right.

I tell ya what, iffen I had me a windmill this week, I wouldn't need no stinkin' electric company. The wind has been so strong and so constant ya can't look north without gettin' yer ears pinned back!

[ryanmercer]

Yeah, Ryan, I'm making plans along that line. Small, open floor plan, wood stove with a masonry wall that'll act as a heat sink, lots of insulation, etc., but I can't rely on just the wood heat since I'm gone all day at work. But I'm going to do everything I can to reduce the utilities the house will need by designing it right.

I tell ya what, iffen I had me a windmill this week, I wouldn't need no stinkin' electric company. The wind has been so strong and so constant ya can't look north without gettin' yer ears pinned back!

I'm watching Science channel right now... and they are showing these wood houses (basically a log home... but the boards are cut smaller, then 3 are glued together so that sustainable tree farms can be used for the boards and beams)... and they had a cool way of heating and cooling it... it was basically a house inside of a house. Their was an inner wall with a foot or so between it and the actual outer wall of the house, with it opening into the basement on one side, then into the attic on the other side. In the summer it pulls cool air out of the basement, in the winter it heats the house to the 55, plus heats the house with that house-inside-a-house bit. the windows were doubled two (set of windows, with another set of windows several inches separated). The wood would also store and radiate heat throughout the day... much like the tire-earth walls of the Earthships does.

[Anon001]

Yeah, Ryan, I'm making plans along that line. Small, open floor plan, wood stove with a masonry wall that'll act as a heat sink, lots of insulation, etc., but I can't rely on just the wood heat since I'm gone all day at work.

My question is why would going to work keep you from heating with wood? I don't work away from home now, but when I did, I banked the stove good of a morning and turned it low... The house would still be warm when I came in at night. Of course, my house is just 24 x 24 and an open floor plan. But the thing to remember is that wood stoves come in different sizes and BTU ratings and if sized properly, you could leave for work all day and still come home to a warm wood heated home. I did it for several years. You also have to make sure it is a good quality airtight stove.

I have also been 100% off grid since May 1998 and never regretted it.

Good Luck,
PaulNKS