spasm01What are ways Renters (of a house) can get into alternative energy?
You probably can’t get anything that properly powers your house because that would need to connect to the grid, but there are small solar arrays you can get for stuff like camping or boats which could probably power some devices. Might have to be via a battery as I suspect the output is variable.
So a camping set up moving to a battery that I can charge smaller things like phones off of?
MinnesotaGoddamBah just run everything offa extension cords like we do with the generator when the power goes out sure it’s more hassle than it’s worth but you get to stick it to the man
You can have a switch such that you use “Shore Power” / the grid when your batteries are low and your batteries when they are full.
For anyone interested: I absolutely do not recommend as a DIY project, hire an electrician. You will kill yourself by stopping your heart or burn your house down. Or both. At the same time.
I’ve heard this described as an island switch (making your home an island, cut off from the rest of the grid). I don’t think it’s appropriate for renting though, you’d surely need to make permanent alterations to the house’s electrical circuits.
ah. True. Wasn’t thinking about the modifications required and renting.
You can choose utility companies that use renewables or plans within. My electric company has a 'renewables first' type policy where you only get non renewable power if there's a surge of use.
Sadly not an option in many places in America. Where I live I have one and only one option for electricity.
Am a renter. Recently got two solar panels installed, maxing out at about 600 watts. It’s called a balcony power plant and you essentially just plug it into an ordinary outlet.
Seconded, same here, though if OP lives in the US chances are that’s illegal.
However, OP, it’s still worth a try imho if you have a way of doing it semi-stealthily. I got four used 220Wp panels, a used DC to ac converter and then plugged that right into an outlet. Now when the sun shines, we generate between 2-4kWh per day, which is usually used right up by appliances and chargers. We figure we’ll break even in 3-4 years, but that’s a bit skewed because of high electricity prices here on Germany and the low upfront costs of getting everything used and then installing it on our slanted sunroom roof conveniently facing southwest
Why would that be illegal?
The line workers would not be aware of power coming from the load side and therefore may accidentally work on a live line and die.
Most rooftop solar that plugs into the grid is set up to switch off if power goes out for this reason.
This is mostly and educated (from a solar class years ago) guess.
This is right. A proper system has a transfer switch that prevents back feeding the grid if it’s down. There’s also a safety aspect in that supplying power to the branch circuit in this way bypasses the overcurrent protection, so one could potentially be loading that circuit with 5 A on top of its rated load and cause significant damage.
If a person wants to offset their electricity at this small scale, better to have it powering a shed or charging power tool batteries. Won’t get as good a return, but you’d never get a return on a permitted grid tied system at that scale either.
EavolutionWould you not have to get a proper switch installed? We have a diesel generator in our house (countryside, unreliable power) and we had to get a big isolater switch, so when the switch is set to generator, nothing can go back into the grid.
hoodatninjaAs much as landlords like to pretend otherwise, they pretty much have all the power when it comes to legislated rights/protections. They just point to the occasional instance of a squatter or someone abusing the system to pretend like they are victims of said system.
Source: am landlord (rent out my old home) and frankly I can do almost whatever I want. I’m before people start shouting at me about rent seeking and all of that, I actually charge probably 20% less than anyone around me and I’m friends with almost all my tenants lol if shit breaks, I fix it. I do not understand why that is so hard for other landlords. But apparently the bar is so low that that makes me exceptional.
Could you elaborate on the setup you used? I am in a similar boat and thinking about doing this.
dan1101You could build a solar heater to help with heating in the winter.
blazeraCheck with your power company if they offer options for electricity from renewable sources
This, I have to pay a small extra fee to my utility but in return they must buy 100% of the energy I use from wind. It’s not the most impactful arraignment, but it’s a small way I can encourage my utility to invest in wind.
Some have community solar too that you can “buy” panels and in return the energy they produce is deducted from your bill, minus a fee for them to host and maintain the equipment of course.
You don’t want to install anything permanent since you’ll have to remove them when you move out. You can get portable solar panels + those big Anker portable batteries that can run full sized appliances. But a more meaningful way to help the environmenf is to do composting. Up to 80% of the weight of your household waste is compostable material. Simply composting them drastically reduces the amount of waste from your house to the landfill. Plus no more smelly watery garbage bags and now you can plant veges.
Thing is, most of our trash that isnt recycled is packing material for the food. We really dont waste much food in my household
cecilkorikThe problem is you have no safe way to connect them without building a totally separate electrical system, since they have to be separated from your grid connection. Let me suggest an alternative “alternative energy”: LiFePo battery packs/banks are available in a wide variety of sizes, they require no outdoor connections and don’t have to be interconnected with each other as they can operate independently and standalone. What you can do is charge them from the grid at low-power-usage times (typically overnight, when the wind farms are spinning, dams are flowing, and nuclear is nuclearing with nobody to use it). Then unplug them during the day and run stuff in your house off battery power, potentially all day long if they’re big enough. Technically this is only energy storage, not energy production, but it’s an important part of the alternative energy landscape, as energy is very hard to store and renewables like wind and solar depend on the grid’s ability to do so, which you will be helping it to do.
They are sometimes sold as battery “generators” for RV/camping as the modestly sized ones can fill a portable role similar to small gasoline generators. Many of them include charging ports for solar too, so you can add solar modules on as well if you want to go that direction, to further increase runtime during the day and provide backup power if you ever need it. They get big and expensive really quickly though, so you can either get lots of small independent ones or a few big ones, but either way you’re going to be spending many thousands of dollars.
If we ever end up replacing the supermajority of our power generation with solar, we would need the extra storage at night instead of during the day, but that’s likely a long way off and requires a LOT of other load shifting like EVs charging overnight, electric heating at night, etc.
Depending on where you live, yes. We have a setup of 4 panels placed in the backyard connected to an inverter and some batteries. It’s technically temporary so legal where we are, basically a large solar charged battery bank.
2dSomething like Arcadia might be available in your area
Arcadia? Looking at the arcadia.com, looks like vaporware
Aw. I’m so excited for there to be some fake “make energy from water vapor” blockchain bullshit company. Then we get to say vaporware as a double entendre.
(I do feel like I vaguely remember something about harvesting energy from humidity? Tiny nanotubes or something?)
HR_PufnstufExtension cord from the neighbors house… ;)