Your Questions About Solar Power Whole House Generator

Henry Dover answers:

Billrussel42 is correct, if you want to generate power and be on the grid. It is not the power companys rules though. It is the governments rules. Anyone on the national power grid must conform. If you are generating power the company must pay you for it. You will still pay them the same amount every month that you are paying them right now.. Every month they will pay you for what little bit of power you generate. They wont screw you on the price, the government sets the price per KWH.

If you want to make power and use it, isolate yourself from the grid. Have three setups. One that disconnects your house from the grid for good power generator days and emergency. Have another that disconnects a portion of the house that you can fully and reliable generate power for. Of course, it will be good to be able to reconnect the whole house to the grid because i doubt you can generate power more reliably than money hungry big business.

Why does everyone want to generate power? You would get a GREAT return on your money if you buy new windows or insulation. Not solar panels. Not wind power. If you want to generate electricity you need a small river. If you dont have one of those, the only other thing worth money is an anaerobic digester. They make natural gas out of rotting compost. They are very popular in third world countries. That is what they use to heat and cook. And once you build it, it should not cost any money!. Just dump rotting crap in it. They dont even smell because the gas is being collected.

Henry Dover answers:

Not knowing what your skills are at programming,electrical and mechanical stuff and how far away you are going to be from the observatory (back yard to other side of the planet). You have some basic things to consider.

Power – Does your site have shore power on site? Or will you need to run a generator or use solar cells and batteries? You’ll need to figure out overall current demands for things like motors, computers, telescope, cameras, dew heaters and so on. My observatory (I guessing) runs about 5 amp hours with the scope, computer, monitors, USB hubs and cameras running at the same time.

Something else to think about – What happens if you loose power completely? How will you be able to button up the observatory? If its a short walk, that’s one thing. If you have to drive for hours, that’s quite a bit different matter.

Security – If the observatory is going to be aways away from your location, you need to be able to not only lock it up remotely but also monitor what’s going on. That might means some sort of monitored alarm system, webcams and microphones.

Internet access – This day and age, its really nice to have that on site. Then you can login remotely, run the whole system, get your pictures or data and monitor the the facility. You can use dial up for monitoring and control, but high speed for high bandwidth stuff for photos.

Dome vs. Roll Off Roof. Domes are what people expect an observatory to look like. So if its at a remote location, it might be an easy to spot target for someone looking to break in. Domes also mean more power to keep the slit in line with where the scope is pointing (unless you’re using a clamshell design). But you’ll need safety switches that tell you if everything opened and closed as expected and a way to auto stop, if something (like the scope), get in the way.

Roll-offs can be made to look more like a shed and as such, less tempting of a target. And they are easier and cheaper to build. You can use a garage door opener with a wire loop to push open and pull close the roof (depending on your power source, could be AC or DC). But you’ll need to install safety switches to stop the thing if it bumps into something. You’ll also need a way to park the scope before the roof closes. And a latching system to secure the roof when closed.

Weather – Depending on your location, you could have high humidity along with heat or heat with low humidity. Or like me here in Oregon. Nice summers, but cold and damp winters. So you may need to run a heater or dehumidifier, just to keep the observatory from rusting over or growing mildew.

If your not that far from your observatory (walking distance) and you have good power and internet access at the site, observatory control could be nothing more than having a motor control system and a joystick with a couple of buttons.

The system could of set of wires that goes from your location (say in the house) to the observatory. Have a little toggle switch that jogs the dome left or right and a pair of buttons that opens and closes the dome. Or if you go with a roll off roof, just open and close with contacts that tell the roof to stop at the end of its run. The control lines would be low voltage (signal) lines and the observatory would have the control relays. This way your not switching house power directly, but through isolated relays (less of a hazard from electrical shocks or blowing up circuit breakers).

The other thing to do is to search the web and see what others have done -

http://massapoag.org/astro_2/observatory/dome_control/dome_control.html

http://www.jatobservatory.org/control.html

More than a few sites here don’t work. The page has never been updated.

Http://obs.nineplanets.org/obs/obslist.html