"A large (by UK terms) 5 bedroom house (in the country) has an area of about 100 sq. m."
Good lord! My 5 bedroom here in the states is 250m^2.
You never should have taxed the tea...
New Solar Cells, alright
I dont get that calculation, sorry. I would assume that due to the pitching even if you covered only the sun facing side (assuming that one side is facing south and the other is facing north), you would IMHO still get quite a bit of area here. It of course depends on the angle of the pitch. I dont know what people in the UK consider large, but 100m^2 is not large by any means. Houses in Austria are small compared ot the US, but even my parents house had considerably more than 100 m^2 of roof area facing south. US houses are huge by Austrian terms though (I have seen houses with 400 m^2 on sale for less than 200k Euros in Dallas). Those houses of course have quite a bit of square footage on their roofs.A large (by UK terms) 5 bedroom house (in the country) has an area of about 100 sq. m. Given the fact that they have pitched roofs the effective area for solar exposure is actually much smaller as a rule (shadow, directionality etc.) assume root 2 as a best case which gives about 70 sq m.
Anyway, even with 1KWh output per squarefoot and assuming only 50 m^2 of roof area, you should be doing quite well. I never need more than 4KW at any time in my apartment here (80 m^2). So 50KW should give me quite some headroom. Of course storage is always a problem. For those times when the sun does not shine, you will need alternative solutions (and really you are preaching this to the choir with me), but still at those efficiencies, solar is worth a second look, even for someone who is as skeptical of the tech as I am. It might make sense for some, epecially for people that live in areas with lots of sunny days (e.g. Dallas).
You got me wondering how "big" my house is. I guess there are various ways of measuing it, but my UK 4 bed house comes out as having a 64m^2 footprint, so 128m^2 counting all floor space. (I think UK measurements generally just include the main living area spaces often not even including the kitchen, not the area of the footings, so will typically look "small". Square footage is rarely used as a UK measurement for residential space.)ladajo wrote:"A large (by UK terms) 5 bedroom house (in the country) has an area of about 100 sq. m."
Good lord! My 5 bedroom here in the states is 250m^2.
You never should have taxed the tea...
I have occasioned to be housed in the US and in Australia also and I don't actually think there is much difference in usable space. What the difference is is age of the property. Early houses in an urban area are big, then they get smaller..and smaller..and smaller as the use of permitted expansion space is used more and more "economically", 'til they pretty much end up all the same "minimal" size in all 3 countries. As UK is long-settled, you can figure we've got into the "small house" category of size long ago - the old big ones have been turned into flats or knocked down for multiple town houses, or such. Old large Edwardian town houses in urban areas are often bought up by businesses and converted into commercial premises.
If you have an old big house in an area of limited urban expansion, good for you. If you have a new big house, it means you are in an area of urban expansion. There is no urban expansion in the UK any more, hence no big new houses.
Of course it is. Current cells are actually more in the 0.1 to 0.2KW output range. Way to little to be cost effective. But it is really hard to explain this to ordinary people, who think that there is something like a free lunch.Figure about 1 KW/ sq m or about 100 W/sq ft. And that is peak input. Optimum collector angle.
However, if those cells as described above really were as effective as could be interpreted by the text, then they would be worth having a look at for some purposes. Of course you would still have to employ other means for those times when the sun does not shine.
Depending on where you are in the states, they count certain things or not. For example, here in VA they only count heated/air conditioned space. So my house also includes a 400ft^2 garage with a 200ft^2 loft in it, but that is not counted as "living space", nor does for example and enclosed deck out back that may be another 250ft^2 (unless it is heated/conditioned).chrismb wrote:You got me wondering how "big" my house is. I guess there are various ways of measuing it, but my UK 4 bed house comes out as having a 64m^2 footprint, so 128m^2 counting all floor space. (I think UK measurements generally just include the main living area spaces often not even including the kitchen, not the area of the footings, so will typically look "small". Square footage is rarely used as a UK measurement for residential space.)ladajo wrote:"A large (by UK terms) 5 bedroom house (in the country) has an area of about 100 sq. m."
Good lord! My 5 bedroom here in the states is 250m^2.
You never should have taxed the tea...
I have occasioned to be housed in the US and in Australia also and I don't actually think there is much difference in usable space. What the difference is is age of the property. Early houses in an urban area are big, then they get smaller..and smaller..and smaller as the use of permitted expansion space is used more and more "economically", 'til they pretty much end up all the same "minimal" size in all 3 countries. As UK is long-settled, you can figure we've got into the "small house" category of size long ago - the old big ones have been turned into flats or knocked down for multiple town houses, or such. Old large Edwardian town houses in urban areas are often bought up by businesses and converted into commercial premises.
If you have an old big house in an area of limited urban expansion, good for you. If you have a new big house, it means you are in an area of urban expansion. There is no urban expansion in the UK any more, hence no big new houses.
My cousins have a really nice 3 story flat in London, and a farm up in Yorkshire. Those properties seem reasonable in size, but not so much in cost.
While the houses in Europe may tend to cover less ground area than those in the US, I'll bet they are constructed like a brick s***house (for non-US readers, that means very well built) in comparison to the pressboard-and-plastic, slapped-together-by-low-wage-illegal-immigrants-who-use-1/3-the-recommended-number-of-nails-to-get-it-done-faster, leaky, squeaky, creaky crap that passes for housing in modern day America. I don't really blame the illegal immigrants. They see an opportunity and work hard to exploit it. It's the American-born real estate agents, construction company owners and building inspectors who should be lined up and shot with a Polywell-powered nailgun.
Our cabin is 1440 square feet, which converts to 134 square meters.
Present solar is a small 48 watt panel, and I have an 80 W panel ready to install as soon as my solar heating system is ready to hook up. The real workhorses in this system are five 4 ft by 8 ft (roughly 3 square meters each) solar hot water panels for domestic hot water and space heating. The PV system provides some backup lighting and will run the circulating pumps and valves for the hydronic radiant heat system. The neat thing about this application is the pumps only need to run when the sun is shining, so I don't need batteries for that aspect, and backup power for a few lights is a 12 V RV battery.
The four big panels I expect to use for space heating can probably produce 32,000 BTU/hr in full sun, about 4-6 hours per day. At the very least that should keep the place from freezing, and will probably keep it comfortable most of the time. The energy storage system is stone-axe simple: tons and tons of thermal mass in the concrete floor, gravel bed under the floor, and the log walls.
I expect to experiment with the system's cooling ability as soon as I get it set up. In principle, on a clear night the panels may run about 7 C cooler than the outside air temperature, because they are blackbody radiators. If this is really so I may be able to drive the pumps either on line power or from the battery and cool the house.
Space heating with PV is for the birds. Most people with PV systems realize they don't need the advertised amount of PV power if they use it wisely. If people lived as if they used solar, we would see noticable reductions in domestic power use.
But most people would rather not think about how much they are using, and don't want to mess with it.
Many industries would be hard-pressed to run on solar. I'm trying to picture an electric steel plant doing it.
Transportation ... some commuters might recharge their cars on solar, but it would really cramp the style of most people, and long trips would be out.
It is possible to make solar aircraft with present solar technology, but the things are absolutely gossamer (I should be careful ... I work with Aurora Flight Sciences and they might be jealous). There are plans to make solar-powered aircraft that can stay up 24 hours a day using batteries. These would certainly benefit from better batteries, but doubling or tripling the PV performance should dramatically improve performance.
Present solar is a small 48 watt panel, and I have an 80 W panel ready to install as soon as my solar heating system is ready to hook up. The real workhorses in this system are five 4 ft by 8 ft (roughly 3 square meters each) solar hot water panels for domestic hot water and space heating. The PV system provides some backup lighting and will run the circulating pumps and valves for the hydronic radiant heat system. The neat thing about this application is the pumps only need to run when the sun is shining, so I don't need batteries for that aspect, and backup power for a few lights is a 12 V RV battery.
The four big panels I expect to use for space heating can probably produce 32,000 BTU/hr in full sun, about 4-6 hours per day. At the very least that should keep the place from freezing, and will probably keep it comfortable most of the time. The energy storage system is stone-axe simple: tons and tons of thermal mass in the concrete floor, gravel bed under the floor, and the log walls.
I expect to experiment with the system's cooling ability as soon as I get it set up. In principle, on a clear night the panels may run about 7 C cooler than the outside air temperature, because they are blackbody radiators. If this is really so I may be able to drive the pumps either on line power or from the battery and cool the house.
Space heating with PV is for the birds. Most people with PV systems realize they don't need the advertised amount of PV power if they use it wisely. If people lived as if they used solar, we would see noticable reductions in domestic power use.
But most people would rather not think about how much they are using, and don't want to mess with it.
Many industries would be hard-pressed to run on solar. I'm trying to picture an electric steel plant doing it.
Transportation ... some commuters might recharge their cars on solar, but it would really cramp the style of most people, and long trips would be out.
It is possible to make solar aircraft with present solar technology, but the things are absolutely gossamer (I should be careful ... I work with Aurora Flight Sciences and they might be jealous). There are plans to make solar-powered aircraft that can stay up 24 hours a day using batteries. These would certainly benefit from better batteries, but doubling or tripling the PV performance should dramatically improve performance.
There is no point in building structures with a lifespan of more than 50 or 60 years. The technology is changing too fast.DeltaV wrote:While the houses in Europe may tend to cover less ground area than those in the US, I'll bet they are constructed like a brick s***house (for non-US readers, that means very well built) in comparison to the pressboard-and-plastic, slapped-together-by-low-wage-illegal-immigrants-who-use-1/3-the-recommended-number-of-nails-to-get-it-done-faster, leaky, squeaky, creaky crap that passes for housing in modern day America. I don't really blame the illegal immigrants. They see an opportunity and work hard to exploit it. It's the American-born real estate agents, construction company owners and building inspectors who should be lined up and shot with a Polywell-powered nailgun.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
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CaptainBeowulf
- Posts: 498
- Joined: Sat Nov 07, 2009 12:35 am
Tom, if you don't mind talking about it, where is the best place to buy panels, pumps, batteries, etc. and are there any brand names you prefer? Also, what sort of wiring setup are you using? I have a place in the country where I might want to set up something similar when I have the time. Also, if it's ok with you, do you mind posting the approximate price per item or providing a link to a place that sells the parts and quotes prices?
Also, keep us updated on how your experiments go... I'd like to learn from your experience if I ever get around to my own project!
Also, keep us updated on how your experiments go... I'd like to learn from your experience if I ever get around to my own project!
Wood-frame housing technology is changing too fast? I'm all for replacing it with something like ICF (Insulating Concrete Form construction, not Inertial Confinement Fusion), but what would all the unemployed real estate agents, construction company owners, and building inspectors do for a living? Might be more humane to shoot them. Besides, China is buying up all the concrete. Assuming ICF remains a minor piece of the residential housing pie, quality of dwelling experience, at least in the first few years of occupation of a typical wood-frame home, would be nice for a change. System life > 60 years is desirable to some (maybe more so if life-extension technology ever progresses), but, agreed, it is less important to current society, given the historical trend of disintegration of American family continuity and the mold-like growth of mini-malls selling useless junk/services, which eventually go bankrupt and become crack dealer hangouts.MSimon wrote:There is no point in building structures with a lifespan of more than 50 or 60 years. The technology is changing too fast.
You don't see folks using Model Ts for regular transport. Houses change slower. They do change. Houses built in 1950? Inadequate electricals. Probably no provision for central air. Wiring it up for your electro car is going to cost.DeltaV wrote:Wood-frame housing technology is changing too fast? I'm all for replacing it with something like ICF (Insulating Concrete Form construction, not Inertial Confinement Fusion), but what would all the unemployed real estate agents, construction company owners, and building inspectors do for a living? Might be more humane to shoot them. Besides, China is buying up all the concrete. Assuming ICF remains a minor piece of the residential housing pie, quality of dwelling experience, at least in the first few years of occupation of a typical wood-frame home, would be nice for a change. System life > 60 years is desirable to some (maybe more so if life-extension technology ever progresses), but, agreed, it is less important to current society, given the historical trend of disintegration of American family continuity and the mold-like growth of mini-malls selling useless junk/services, which eventually go bankrupt and become crack dealer hangouts.MSimon wrote:There is no point in building structures with a lifespan of more than 50 or 60 years. The technology is changing too fast.
You want to get rid of crack dealer hang outs? Sell it to the people who want it at drugstores.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
But if you have snow in winter, you will have to clean that off your panels...At the very least that should keep the place from freezing, and will probably keep it comfortable most of the time.
That is another thing I noticed. Most houses in Austria have a cellar(basement). Most houses in the US only have some slap foundation.tons and tons of thermal mass in the concrete floor, gravel bed under the floor, and the log walls.