Greetings from Ruxton Island once again. I must say I was thrilled when I spotted the Green theme.
You see, where we are there are no services of any kind. And this means that electricity is included in the "no services" list. The list goes on, but I am sure you will all agree that not having electricity in this day and age would put a severe damper on ones' lifestyle.
Just think, my poor wife would have to forego watching TV! Major tragedy there!
What would be even worse, I would not be able to use all my power tools. Now we're talking something far worse! A serious calamity!
Fortunately, we have been able to figure out the intricacies of generating our own solar electricity.
The principles of solar power are easy enough to understand. Sunlight arrives at earth after a journey of roughly 93 million miles. It takes about 8 1/4 minutes to get here once it leaves our sun. Should you be fortunate enough to have a solar panel, you are in for some free electricity!
What happens next is that the sunlight is converted by that magic little panel into DC (direct current) electricity. The DC travels through wires to a battery bank. It is from this battery bank that the normal 120 Volt AC (alternating current) is made.
In order to turn DC into AC, we need an inverter. When DC power is hooked to the input side of an inverter, AC comes out the other end. Voila, power for my wife to watch TV. Domestic bliss reigns once again.
Obviously, this is the highly simplified short version of how this functions, but essentially, that is all there is to it.
We have been living with solar power since we arrived on this island, and will do so until the day we leave. For us, solar power wasn't just a possible option, it was a necessity. There is no grid power here, and I have my doubts that there ever will be. I cannot imagine what the cost would be to bring such a luxury to this island. Certainly in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not the millions. Running cables under the ocean is prohibitively costly.
There is one terrific advantage to having your own solar system. If I were to ask you what that advantage was, what would your guess be?
Most people say "No more electricity bills!" when I ask them. And while that may be nearly true, it isn't really the best answer. It's a good one, for sure, but there's a better one.
What happened to you the last time your power went down? How often does it fail? How long does it usually go out for? Are you expecting the power to go out again during the next big storm?
I'm betting you are so used to losing your grid power you are almost at the point of shrugging your shoulders and muttering "here we go again". Maybe you get a bit more annoyed than that. But, let's face it, the grid goes down all the time. In fact, I would be willing to say that the grid NEVER stays up 100% across north America at any given second. Someone, somewhere is without electricity.
What if I were to tell you that we have never had a power failure here. Never. Ever. Not even once. Twelve years of total reliability. Solar power can do that for you. If that sounds like an outrageous claim, I assure you it is 100% true.
Does it all happen without some effort? Very nearly. Once or twice a year I wash the solar panels off, if I think about it that is.
The battery bank is gel cells, which require no maintenance. And really, there is nothing else that is likely to go wrong. The breaker box is highly unlikely to fail. The inverter is expected to live longer than I am. And as long as everything is installed properly in the first place there is no reason to expect any kind of failure.
As you can imagine, I have been a proponent of solar power since the day we hooked up. I cannot see that changing any time soon.
My hat is off to Qassia for going green this week, I certainly hope it won't be the last time.
Keith
