Very good pages about photovoltaics
Eurosolar - European Association for Renewable Energies
Our house has two independant photovoltaic systems and one solar heating system. One PV plant of peak power 980W is an island system with energy stored in 1600 Ah 12V lead acid batteries. It covers almost a third of our electric energy needs in spring, summer and autmn and much less in winter. The wind turbine with its 100 W power helps when the weather is more windy. Our first PV power plant of 150W has been built in 1993 - the three cells above the collectors.
The second PV power plant is mounted on
sun trackers behind the house and
has a peak power of 3 kW. It is grid connected and is used to produce the energy
we need to drive by our
electric cars
Six big solar collectors make hot water and help heating in sunny days
On october 2006 we installed a 3 kW electric (10 kW heat) heat pump air-air that
works through a kind of Trombe wall (a corridor filled with black bricks and
radiated by sun) and this pump proved to be efficient even in cold days when
there was enough sun. Below one can see the heat pump on the top of the glass
corridor that is connected to our heating system.
Hot water is stored in three tanks each containing 200 litres.
The last step is a heat pump (590 W) that makes hot water when everything else
fails (no sun, no central heating). Of course all three containers are connected
to solar collectors to be heated when there is enough sun.
Sometimes there is no sun and no wind and if we want to do
some exercise, we can fill the batteries by this leg driven bicycle equipped by
an old car alternator instead of the classic noisy and stinky brake
One of the projects finished in 2009 was also a rainwater
system for the toilets and other technical water. It is rather complicated, but
it works fine.
We also had a small biodiesel production system that made
biodiesel from used fry oil we get from restaurants. We have used it quite a lot
to power our cars before we made electric cars, now we do not use it any more.
Done in 2013:
We installed 3 PV cells for direct charging of our low voltage electric cars Piki and Superpiki. Also house insulation has been improved, so we can heat with low temperature system.
2015 - 2016:
Huge PV have been installed all over the house and on 1st of January 2016 we went offgrid for most of the time. House is now powered from storage system integrated in "Sustainable energy cycle", cars are (during winter time) still charged from the grid at off peak time.
How it has been built:
March 2009 - PV finished, system is equipped with perfect trackers from Sat Control
Dec.2008 - we have installed iron bars that will hold PV
trackers for our 3,3 kW power plant
Most of the photovoltaic cells are on the south part of the roof fixed
on an steel frame.
Sun
tracker we installed on the ex chimney. Such trackers will be used on the
new PV plant
Regulation of PV power plant and wind turbine
